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Love that is Measureless, January 4
The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved
thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I
drawn thee.
Jeremiah 31:3
.
Those who know not God cannot by their learning or science find out
God. Christ does not try to prove the great mystery, but reveals a love that
is beyond measurement. He does not make God’s power and greatness the
chief theme of His discourses. He speaks of Him oftenest as
our Father
....
He desires our minds, weakened by sin, to be encouraged to grasp the
idea that God is love....
The father of the prodigal son is the type that Christ chooses as a
representation of God. This father longs to see and receive once more the
son who has left him. He waits and watches for him, yearning to see him,
hoping that he will come. When he sees a stranger approaching, poor and
clothed with rags, he goes out to meet him, if perchance it may be his
son. And he feeds and clothes him as if he were indeed his son. By and
by he has his reward, for his son comes home, on his lips the beseeching
confession, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am
no more worthy to be called thy son.” And the father says to the servants,
“Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand,
and shoes on his feet; and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let
us eat, and be merry” (
Luke 15:21-23
).
There is no taunting, no casting up to the prodigal of his evil course.
The son feels that the past is forgiven and forgotten, blotted out forever.
And so God says to the sinner, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy
transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins” (
Isaiah 44:22
). “I will forgive
their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (
Jeremiah 31:34
)....
Heaven is waiting and yearning for the return of the prodigals who
have wandered far from the fold. Many of those who have strayed away
may be brought back by the loving service of God’s children....
Think of the Father subjecting Himself to sorrow, sparing not His own
Son, but freely delivering Him up for us all.... O that we had a better
understanding of His love!
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