THE LOVE OF GOD

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Nov 8, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 45.

Wonderful love that would move the heart of God to give even His only-begotten Son! Wonderful love that would lead that Son, He who was in the bosom of the Father from the beginning, who created all the shining worlds, and the thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers of the universe, to whom the shining myriads of heaven delighted to pay homage,—wonderful love which would lead Him to come to earth, to be made lower than the angels which He created, to clothe His divinity in sinful flesh, to be made sin for man! He could have blotted men and the earth from existence in justice, and put in their place an earth unmarred by sin, a race higher than man. But this would not have manifested His love to dying man.

Follow Jesus of Nazareth in all His earth-life from the temptation in the wilderness to the cross of Calvary, and it speaks with ever-increasing volume and melody the one word, Love. Christ was the manifestation of God, and in every unselfish act of His earth-life (and all were unselfish) we see the manifestation of the love of the Godhead. It was Divine Love which withheld not His Son to die; it was love divine which breathed through the prayer, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." And that same love still reigns. Jesus lives to plead the blood shed for sin in behalf of those who trust Him; and He pleads to the sinner, "Come;" to the backslider, "Return." With love more tender than that of a mother for her little nursling, He reproves and chastens, that we may come near to Him and thus be made like Him.

But where can we pause? Time, eternity, would fail to tell God's love to fallen man. He says that He loves us; His deeds are more than His words. Would you know His love, dear reader? Then yield to Him your heart. "Taste and see that the Lord is good."