◄ The DEPTH of God’s Superlative Love - Character and Attributes of God (14) ►

STUDY - Character and Attributes of GOD 

For God SO loved the world that he GAVE His one and only Son, that WHOSOEVER believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16

Whosoever

The breadth of God’s love encompasses the whole of the world and reaches into the eternal. The length of God’s love is the gift of God’s supreme love in the Son of His love – to effect eternal life. But what of the deep, deep depth of that fathomless love.  What of the enigmatic, depth of the love of the eternal, holy omnipotent God? The mysterious depth of the love of God is revealed by that word – WHOSOEVER.

Fathomless Love

The love of God stoops down to the sin-encrusted earth from His hallowed heaven. The love of God scrapes up from humankind the sick, suffering, sin-stained sinner. The love of God rakes from the pit of hell, fallen sons and daughters of Adam. And yet He knew that He – the Giver of life and love, would be so despised and rejected. He knew that the precious Son of His love would be oppressed, and afflicted by men. He knew His chosen, anointed One, would be led as a lamb to the slaughter by those He came to save. He knew that the chastisement for our peace was upon Him... His own dear Son, and that by His stripes we are healed.

Offering For Sin

And yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. Isa.53:10 – and you know, child of God – He did this because you are so precious to Him.

Contemptible Familiarity

Yet is not that wise saying, so very true.. that familiarity breeds contempt? Isn’t it so that being close to a person can engender disdain, disinterest, disrespect – instead of a deepening intimacy, and a love and longing to know them more and more. It seems we are so 'familiar with the depth of God’s deep deep love that we forget. We ignore and diminish the enormity of the deepness and distance of His great love.

Self Murmurings

We murmur like the idolatrous children of Israel, when life gets uncomfortable. We complain self-pityingly, when circumstances do not meet our approval. We vainly attempt to add human self-merit into the equation of the redemption! We proudly seek to rely on self-effort for spiritual growth and soul-sanctification. We think we can better advise God on the preferred direction our lives! We think we can even hold God accountable!

Place of Death

Never! Never in a million years! Never! Never in a trillion years! True discipleship nails 'self' firmly and permanently and daily upon the cross. It accepts His will. "Thy will not mine, be done", Luke 24:22. It abandons all claims to self-will, self-control and self-importance. It renounces forever the idea that 'I am someone' – for I am not and neither are you. For I am nothing and you are nothing – but He is everything. And yet He loves you and He loves me. He loves us to the depth of his Being.

Total Surrender

It daily abandons any latent desire that my will be done and my voice be heard”. It surrenders all rights and expectations that God will inform us of His plans. He will do so if He chooses! And He will keep silent when His chooses! God will never comply with our own expectations of Him.. you see He is God!!  It is we who are to have our own expectations hammered into the finest powder... until we, by Faith, submit willingly to His entire leading and unimpeded guidance.

Human Love

It was once said, 'We love the lovely because it is flattering to us to do so'. We love our kith and kin because it is the economy of pride to do so. God loves the unlovely, and broke His heart to do it.

Divine Love

The Bible reveals God to be the lover of His enemies. We stick to our 'rag-rights' (our own self-righteousness), until by God’s engineering of our circumstances... all self-righteousness is blown away from us and we are left with nothing, and we become abject paupers and finally say:- 'It is all up – it is finished'.  And then He moves. And then we find ourselves in heaven.

Christ-Clinging

It is not by self-wrestling, but by Christ-Clinging that we shall be most blessed. Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! Oh the DEPTH OF HIS LOVE. How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!