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What Matchless Love!, August 1
You have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is
the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
Romans 8:15, 16
, RSV.
While the law of God is maintained, and its justice vindicated, the sinner can
be pardoned. The dearest gift that heaven itself had to bestow has been poured out
that God “might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” By that
gift men are uplifted from the ruin and degradation of sin to become children of
God. Says Paul: “Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba,
Father”....
With the beloved John I call upon you to “behold, what manner of love the
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.” What love,
what matchless love, that, sinners and aliens as we are, we may be brought back to
God and adopted into His family! We may address Him by the endearing name,
“Our Father,” which is a sign of our affection for Him and a pledge of His tender
regard and relationship to us. And the Son of God, beholding the heirs of grace, “is
not ashamed to call them brethren.” They have even a more sacred relationship to
God than have the angels who have never fallen.
All the paternal love which has come down from generation to generation
through the channel of human hearts, all the springs of tenderness which have
opened the souls of men, are but as a tiny rill to the boundless ocean when compared
with the infinite, exhaustless love of God. Tongue cannot utter it; pen cannot portray
it. You may meditate upon it every day of your life; you may search the Scriptures
diligently in order to understand it; you may summon every power and capability
that God has given you, in the endeavor to comprehend the love and compassion of
the heavenly Father; and yet there is an infinity beyond. You may study that love for
ages; yet you can never fully comprehend the length and breadth, the depth and the
height, of the love of God in giving His Son to die for the world. Eternity itself can
never fully reveal it. Yet as we study the Bible and meditate upon the life of Christ
and the plan of redemption, these great themes will open to our understanding more
and more. And it will be ours to realize the blessing which Paul desired for the
Ephesian church when he prayed “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of glory, may give unto you
the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge
of him
: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what
is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the
saints, and what is the
exceeding greatness of his power
to us-ward who believe”
(
Ephesians 1:17-19
) (
Testimonies for the Church 5:739, 740
).
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