Extreme Love: discover and experience God's love for you

[Lily]

MERCIFUL LOVE

George Whitfield

Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord,
and of your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.
PSALM 25:6 NRSV

Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit of which God had commanded them that they should not eat. When arraigned before God, they could not be brought to confess it. What reason can be given as to why the sentence of death should not be pronounced against the prisoners at the bar? How can God, consistently with His justice, possibly forgive them? Yet mercy cries: Spare these sinners, spare the work of Your own hands! Look then, wisdom contrives a scheme how God may be just and yet be merciful.

An amazing scene of divine love here opens to our view, which from all eternity had been hidden in the heart of God! Although Adam and Eve were repentant and did not so much as put up one single petition for pardon, God immediately passes sentence upon the serpent and reveals to them a Savior.

Adam and Eve stood by as criminals, and God could not indulge them because they had broken His covenant. God the Father and God the Son had entered into a covenant concerning the salvation of the elect from all eternity. The first Adam proved false. Therefore, to secure the second covenant from being broken, God puts it into the hands of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. Adam after the Fall stood no longer as our representative. He and Eve were only private persons, as we are, and were only to lay hold on the declaration of mercy contained in this promise by faith.



Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

LOVE AND THE SAINT’S REST

RICHARD BAXTER

Put me on trial, LORD, and cross-examine me.
Test my motives and my heart.
For I am always aware of your unfailing love,
and I have lived according to your truth.
PSALM 26:2–3 NLT

Christian, believe this and think on it: You shalt be eternally embraced in the arms of that love which was from everlasting and will extend to everlasting. You will be embraced by that love which brought the Son of God’s love from heaven to earth, from earth to the cross, from the cross to the grave, from the grave to glory. You will be in the arms of that love which was weary, hungry, tempted, scorned, scourged, buffeted, spit upon, crucified, and pierced; which did fast, pray, teach, heal, weep, sweat, bleed, and die. It will be loving and rejoicing, not loving and sorrowing. Yes, it will make Satan’s court ring with the news that the saints are arrived safe in the bosom of Christ, out of the reach of hell forever.

Know this, believer, to your everlasting comfort: If those arms have once embraced you, His love to you will not be as yours was on earth to Him—seldom and cold. He who would not cease nor abate His love for all your enmity, unkind neglects, and churlish resistances, can He cease to love you when He has made you truly lovely? He who keeps you so constant in your love to Him that you can challenge tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword, how much more will He Himself be constant!


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

SPECIAL LOVE

CHARLES FINNEY

This is how God showed his love among us:
He sent his one and only Son into the world
that we might live through him.
1 JOHN 4:9 NIV

More is evidently implied in the expression “God so loved the world” than simply its greatness. It is most exceptional in its character. Unless we understand this, we shall be in danger of falling into the strange mistake of some people who are forever talking about God’s love for sinners but whose notions of the nature of this love never lead to repentance or to holiness. Some people seem to think of this love as simply good nature. They conceive of God only as a very good-natured being, whom nobody needs to fear. Such notions have not the least influence toward holiness but the very opposite. It is only when we come to understand what this love is in its nature that we feel its moral power promoting holiness.

It may be reasonably asked, “If God so loved the world with a love characterized by only greatness, why did He not save all the world without sacrificing His Son?” This question suffices to show us that there is deep meaning in this word. It was not a mere emotion or feeling. It was not a blind impulse. God had emotion but not emotion only. Indeed the Bible everywhere teaches us that God’s love for man, lost in his sins, was paternal—the love of a father for his offspring—in this case, for a rebellious, disobedient, prodigal offspring. In this love there must, of course, blend the deepest compassion.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

LOVE AND DUTY

REUBEN ARCHER TORREY

And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us,
and hath given himself
for us an offering and a sacrifice to God
for a sweetsmelling savour.
EPHESIANS 5:2 KJV

I once heard a story that brought me such a glimpse of God’s love as I never had before. I do not know whether it is true or not. A man was set to watch a railway drawbridge over a river. He threw it open and let vessels through. He heard the whistle of a train up the track and sprang to the lever to bring the bridge back into place. As he was doing so, he accidentally pushed his boy into the river. He heard the boy cry, “Father, save me; I am drowning.” What should he do? The man stood at the post of duty and brought the bridge back so that the train could pass over in safety. Then he jumped into the river to save his boy, but it was too late. He sacrificed his boy to do his duty.

When I heard that story, I wondered if it had been my boy what I would have done. That man owed it to those on the train to do what he did. God owed you and me nothing. We were guilty rebels against Him.

What are you going to do with His love? Accept it, or trample it underfoot? Accept Christ, and you accept that love. Reject Christ, and you trample that love underfoot. I cannot understand how any man or woman in their right senses can harden their hearts against the love of God.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

LOVE AND TENDERNESS

HANNAH WHITALL SMITH

He redeems me from death and crowns me
with love and tender mercies.
PSALM 103:4

Discomfort and unrest are impossible to the souls who come to know that God is their real and actual Father. I must make it plain that it is a father: such as our highest instincts tell us a good father ought to be, of whom I am speaking. Sometimes earthly fathers are unkind or tyrannical or selfish or even cruel—or they are merely indifferent and neglectful—but none of these can be called good fathers. But God, who is good, must be a good father or not a father at all. We must all of us have known good fathers in this world or at least can imagine them. I knew one, and he filled my childhood with sunshine by his most lovely fatherhood. I have learned to know a little about the perfect fatherhood of God because of my experience with this lovely earthly father.

But God is not only a father, He is a mother as well, and we have all of us known mothers whose love and tenderness have been without bound or limit. And it is very certain that God could never have created earthly fathers and mothers who were more tender and more loving than He is Himself. We must heap together all the best of all the fathers and mothers we have ever known or can imagine, and we must tell ourselves that this is only a faint image of God, our Father in heaven. What a good father ought to do, God, who is our Father, is absolutely sure to do.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

LOVE AND THE RAINBOW

JONATHAN EDWARDS

Like the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day,
so was the appearance of the brightness all around it.
This was the appearance of the likeness of
the glory of the LORD.
EZEKIEL 1:28 NKJV

Glory belongs to the Father and the Son: to the Father that He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, to the Son that He so loved the world as to give up Himself. But there is equal glory due to the Holy Spirit for He is that love of the Father and the Son to the world. Just so much as the first two Persons of the Godhead glorify Themselves by showing the astonishing greatness of Their love and grace, just so much is that wonderful love and grace glorified by the Holy Spirit.

Christ purchased for us that we should have the favor of God and might enjoy His love, but this love is the Holy Spirit, which is but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart. Christ purchased for us spiritual joy and comfort, which is in a participation of God’s joy and happiness, which joy and happiness is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the sum of all good things.

The various sorts of rays of the sun and their beautiful colors do well represent the Spirit. They well represent the love and grace of God and were made use of for this purpose in the rainbow after the flood, and I suppose also in that rainbow that was seen round about the throne by Ezekiel, and round the head of Christ by John in Revelation 10:1.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

THE BRIDEGROOM’S LOVE

GEORGE WHITEFIELD

God gave the land of these kings as an inheritance—
His faithful love endures forever.
PSALM 136:21 NLT

Do you desire one who can love you? None can love you like Christ. His love is incomprehensible; His love passes all other love. The love of the Lord Jesus is first and without beginning; His love is free without any motive; His love is great without any measure; His love is constant without any change; His love is everlasting.

The love of the Lord Jesus Christ brought Him down from heaven and veiled His divinity in a human soul and body. It was love that made Him subject to hunger, thirst, and sorrow. His love carried Him back to heaven that He might make intercession for those whom He had redeemed.
If you have promised yourself to Christ, you will converse with Him. You will endeavor to promote His interest and advance His name in the world.

It is likewise your folly to refuse and neglect the gracious gifts of being the spouse of Christ. You forfeit all love that He would bestow upon you. You choose rags before robes, rubbish before gold, pebbles before jewels, wounds before healing, defilement before cleansing, deformity before comeliness, trouble before peace, slavery before liberty, the service of the devil before the service of Christ. You choose dishonor before a crown, death before life, hell before heaven, eternal misery and torment before everlasting joy and glory.

Consider who the Lord Jesus is, whom you are invited to embrace yourselves with. There is none comparable to Jesus Christ.

Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

LOVING THOUGHTS

THOMAS WATSON

I hate vain thoughts: but thy law do I love.
PSALM 119:113 KJV

A blessed sign of love is to entertain good thoughts of God. He who loves his friend construes what his friend does in the best sense. Malice interprets all in the worst sense; love interprets all in the best sense. Love is an excellent commentator upon divine guidance; it thinks no evil. He who loves God has a good opinion of God.

This is the language of a gracious spirit: “My God sees what a hard heart I have; therefore, He drives in one wedge of trial after another to break my heart. He knows how I am full of bad temper, how sick of a disease; therefore, He cleanses by blood to save my life. This severe action is either to restrain some vice or to exercise some grace. How good is God who will not let me alone in my sins but smites my body to save my soul!” In this way, he who loves God takes everything with a good attitude.

Love puts a glowing interpretation upon all of God’s actions. You who are prone to murmur at God, as if He had dealt ill with you, be humbled for this. Say to yourself, “If I loved God more, I should have better thoughts of God.” It is Satan who makes us have good thoughts of ourselves and hard thoughts of God. Love takes all in the fairest sense; it thinks no evil.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

THE GREATEST THING

JEREMY TAYLOR

“Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in splendor, doing wonders?”
EXODUS 15:11 NRSV

Love is the greatest thing that God can give us, and it is the greatest thing we can give to God. It is the old; it is the new; it is the great commandment; it is all the commandments. The consideration of God’s goodness and bounty are most commonly the first motive of our love. But when we are once entered and have tasted the goodness of God, we love the source for its own excellence.

Perfection and admiration create love. For perfection and admiration, there is in God an infinite nature, unchanging, eternal, all-powerful, holy, merciful, just, and perfect. The consideration of which may be heightened if we consider our distance from all these glories: our smallness, limited nature, inconstancy, weakness, ignorance, poverty, harsh nature, and unmerciful inclinations.

Love does all things that may please the beloved person. Love is obedient. Love gives away all things to advance the interest of the beloved person. Love is always liberal and expressive. It suffers all things that are imposed by its beloved. Love is patient and content with anything, provided it can be with its beloved. Love is also impatient of anything that may displease the beloved.

Love is not divided between God and God’s enemy. We must love God with all our heart; that is, give Him a whole and undivided affection, having love for nothing else but such things which He allows and which He commands or loves Himself.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

ABSOLUTE LOVE

ELIZABETH PRENTISS

The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.
LAMENTATIONS 3:25–26 NIV

Life is too precious to spend in a treadmill. Having been pardoned by your God and Savior, the next thing you have to do is to show your gratitude for this infinite favor by consecrating yourself entirely to Him, body, soul, and spirit. This is the least you can do. He has bought you with a price, and you are no longer your own. “But,” you may reply, “this is contrary to my nature. I love my own way. I desire ease and pleasure; I desire to go to heaven, but I want to be carried there on a bed of flowers.

Can I not give myself so far to God as to feel a sweet sense of peace with Him and be sure of final salvation, and yet, to a certain extent, indulge and gratify myself? If I give myself entirely away to Him and lose all ownership in myself, He may deny me many things I greatly desire. He may make my life hard and wearisome, depriving me of all that now makes it agreeable.” But, I reply, this is no matter of parley and discussion; it is not optional with God’s children whether they will pay Him a part of the price they owe Him and keep back the rest. He asks, and He has a right to ask, for all you have and all you are.

And if you shrink from what is involved in such a surrender, you should fly to Him at once and never rest till He has conquered this secret disinclination to give to Him as freely and as fully as He has given to you. It is true that such an act of consecration on your part may involve a great deal of future discipline and correction.

But as soon as you become the Lord’s by your own deliberate and conscious act, He will begin that process of sanctification which is to make you holy as He is holy, perfect as He is perfect. He becomes at once your Physician as well as your dearest and best Friend, but He will use no painful remedy that can be avoided.

Remember that it is His will that you should be sanctified and that the work of making you holy is His, not yours. At the same time you are not to sit with folded hands, waiting for this blessing. You are to avoid laying hindrances in His way, and you are to exercise faith in Him as just as able and just as willing to give you sanctification as He was to give you redemption.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

LOVE AND THE NEW COVENANT

WILLIAM TYNDALE

“O Lord, God of Israel,
there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath,
keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants
who walk before you with all their heart.”
1 KINGS 8:23 NRSV

If anyone thinks he believes in Christ and has not the law written in his heart to love his brother as Christ loved him, the faith of that person is vain. It is built upon sand of his own imagination and not upon the rock of God’s word. True faith makes a man to love his brother.

In the sacrifices of the Old Testament, Moses offered half the blood to God and sprinkled the people with the other half to confirm the covenant. The new covenant of Christ is confirmed with a better blood to make people see love and to love again. For if God gave us His Son, what will He deny us? If God so loved us when we were sinners and knew Him not, how much more does He love us now that we love again?

Our service to Christ is only to believe in Him for the remission of sin, to call upon Him and give Him thanks, and to love our neighbors for His sake. Now they who believe in Christ for the remission of their sins and for His sake love their foes are not Christ’s enemies. Sin is forgiven only for Christ’s sake; and again, that our duty is to love our neighbors no less than Christ loved us. Let us exhort each other to trust in Christ and to love each other as Christ did.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

LOVE EVERLASTING

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

But the steadfast love of the Lord is
from everlasting to everlasting
on those who fear him.
PSALM 103:17 NRSV

Jesus will not let His people forget His love. If all the love they have enjoyed should be forgotten, He will visit them with fresh love. “Do you forget My cross?” says He. “I will cause you to remember it. At My table I will manifest Myself once more to you.”

Mothers do not let their children forget them. If the boy has gone to Australia and does not write home, his mother writes, “Has John forgotten his mother?” Then there comes back a sweet letter, which proves that the gentle reminder was not in vain. So is it with Jesus. He says to us, “Remember Me.” Our response is, “We will remember Your love.”

Your love is ancient as the glory that You had with the Father before the world was. We remember Your eternal love when You embraced us. We remember the love that suggested the sacrifice of Yourself. We remember Your love as it was manifest to us in Your holy life, from the manger of Bethlehem to the garden of Gethsemane.

We track You from the cradle to the grave—for every word and deed of Yours was love. We rejoice in Your love that death did not exhaust Your love that shone resplendently in Your resurrection. We remember that burning fire of love that will never let You hold Your peace until Your chosen ones are all safely housed, until Zion is glorified and Jerusalem settled on her everlasting foundations of light and love in heaven.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

CHEERFUL LOVE

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Each of you must give as you have made up your mind,
not reluctantly or under compulsion,
for God loves a cheerful giver.
2 CORINTHIANS 9:7 NRSV

If you know the love of Jesus as the deer thirsts for the brooks, so will you desire greater portions of His love. If you do not desire to know Him better, then you do not love Him because love always cries, “Nearer, nearer.” Only be content with an increasing acquaintance with Jesus. Seek to know more of Him in His divine nature, in His human relationship, in His finished work, in His death, in His resurrection, in His present glorious intercession, and in His future royal appearance. An increase of love to Jesus and a better understanding of His love to us is one of the best tests of growth in grace.

Our God requires no slaves to adorn His throne. He is the Lord of the empire of love and would have His servants dressed in the uniform of joy. If He sees that we serve Him from force and not because we love Him, He will reject our offering. Take away joyful willingness from the Christian, and you have removed the test of his sincerity. In the joy of the Lord, we are strong.

Cheerfulness is to our service what oil is to the wheels of a railway car. Without oil, the axle soon grows hot and accidents occur. If there be not a cheerfulness to oil our wheels, our spirits will be clogged with weariness. Let us show to the people of the world that our religion is to us a delight and a joy!



Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

COPY GOD’S LOVE

THOMAS WATSON

“Whoever has my commands and keeps them
is the one who loves me.
The one who loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
JOHN 14:21 NIV

It is a vain thing to say we love Christ if we slight His commands. Does that child love his father who refuses to obey him? If we love God, we shall obey Him in things difficult and things dangerous.

Forgiving our enemies is hard. We are apt to forget kindnesses and remember injuries, but if we love God, we shall leave behind offenses. When we seriously consider how many affronts and provocations He has put up with at our hands, this makes us copy Him and endeavor to bury an injury than to retaliate it.

Love made Christ suffer for us. Love was the chain that fastened Him to the cross. If we love God, we shall be willing to suffer for Him. Love is the most suffering grace. It will suffer reproaches, bonds, and imprisonments for Christ’s sake. Love will carry men out above their own strength.

How did divine affection carry the early saints above the love of life and the fear of death! These divine heroes were willing to suffer rather than to make the name of God suffer by their cowardice. They refused to come out of prison on sinful terms.

Many will not forego the least comfort or undergo the least cross for His sake. May not Christ suspect us when we pretend to love Him and yet will endure nothing for Him?


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

LOVE IN NATURE AND IN GOD’S WORD

ELLEN G. WHITE

I will sing of your love and justice, LORD.
I will praise you with songs.
PSALM 101:1 NLT

The poet and the naturalist have many things to say about nature, but the Christian enjoys the beauty of the earth with the highest appreciation. The Christian recognizes His Father’s handiwork and perceives His love in flower and shrub and tree. No one can fully appreciate the significance of hill and vale, river and sea who does not look upon them as an expression of God’s love to man.

God speaks to us through His thoughtful workings and through the influence of His Spirit upon the heart. In our circumstances and surroundings, in the changes daily taking place around us, we may find precious lessons if our hearts are but open to discern them.

God speaks to us in His Word. Here we have in clearer lines the revelation of His character, His dealings with men, and the great work of redemption. Here is open before us the history of patriarchs and prophets and other holy men of old. We see how they struggled through discouragement like our own, how they fell under temptation as we have done and yet took heart again and conquered through the grace of God—and we are encouraged in our striving after righteousness.

As we read of the precious experiences granted them, the light and love and blessing it was theirs to enjoy, and the work they wrought through the grace given them, the Spirit that inspired them kindles in our hearts a desire to be like them in character—like them to walk with God.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

THE PATH OF LOVE

WILLIAM TYNDALE

All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,
for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.
PSALM 25:10 NRSV

By faith we receive the love of God, and by love we give it out again. We must do so freely, after the example of Christ and without any other motive save our neighbor’s benefit. We must bestow pure love ourselves—all that we have and all that we are able to do, even on our enemies to bring them to God.

Christ did not do His deeds to obtain heaven. Heaven was His already. He did them freely for our sakes and to bring the favor of God to us and us to God. No natural son does his father’s will because he would be heir. He is already heir by birth. His father gave him that out of pure love before he was born. Servants work for hire, children for love. So a Christian acts freely, considering nothing but the will of God and the value he can give his neighbor.

A gentle pastor, Jesus brings the Spirit of God, which loosens the bonds of Satan and couples us to God and His will through strong faith and fervent love. The poor and wretched sinner feels so great mercy, love, and kindness in God that he is sure in himself that it is not possible for God to forsake him or withdraw His mercy and love. He boldly cries out with Paul, saying, “Who shall separate us from the love that God loves us with?” In all tribulations, a Christian perceives that God is His Father and loves him even as he loved Christ.



Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

LOVE IN THREE WORDS

REUBEN ARCHER TORREY

Whoever does not love does not know God,
because God is love.
1 JOHN 4:8 NIV

My subject is the greatest sentence that was ever written. That sentence is in the Bible. The Bible has a way of putting more in a single sentence than other writers can put in a whole book. This sentence has in it but three words: God is love. Each word is a monosyllable. One word has four letters, one three, and one only two. Yet these nine letters, forming three monosyllables, contain so much truth that the world has been pondering it for centuries and has not gotten to the bottom of it yet.

“God is love” is the greatest sentence ever written. It sums up the whole contents of the Bible. If I were asked for a sentence to print in letters of gold on the outside of our Bible, a sentence that summed up the whole contents of the Book, it would be this one: “God is love.” It is the subject of the first chapter of Genesis, it is the subject of the last chapter of Revelation, and it is the subject of every chapter that lies in between.

The Bible is simply God’s love story, the story of the love of a holy God to a sinful world. There is mighty power in that one short sentence, power to break the hardest heart, power to reach individual men and women who are sunk down in sin and to lift them up until they are fit for a place beside the Lord Jesus Christ upon the throne.



Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

FIRST LOVE, LAST LOVE

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

“I know your deeds, your love and faith,
your service and perseverance,
and that you are now doing more than you did at first.”
REVELATION 2:19 NIV

Look back through all of your experiences and think of the ways that the Lord your God has led you and how He has fed and clothed you every day. He has borne with your ill manners. He has put up with all your murmurings and all your longings after sensual pleasures. He has supplied you with spiritual nourishment from heaven. Think of how His grace has been sufficient for you in all your troubles. His blood has been a pardon to you in all your sins. His rod and His staff have comforted you.

When you have looked back upon the love of the Lord, then let faith survey His love in the future, for remember that Christ’s covenant and blood have something more in them than the past. He who has loved you and pardoned you shall never cease to love and pardon. He is alpha, and He shall be omega, also. He is first, and He shall be last.

When you shall stand in the cold floods of Jordan, you need not fear because death cannot separate you from His love. Now, soul, is not your love refreshed? Does not this make you love Jesus? Does not a flight through limitless plains of His love inflame your heart and compel you to delight yourself in the Lord your God? Surely as we meditate on the love of the Lord, our hearts burn within us, and we long to love Him more.

Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

GIFTS OF LOVE

REUBEN ARCHER TORREY

See what great love the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called children of God!
1 JOHN 3:1 NIV

God shows His love by His gifts. Suppose on his coronation day, King Edward, after all the ceremonies were over, had taken his carriage and had ridden down to the East End of London and had seen some ragged, wretched boy. Suppose his great heart of love had gone out to that boy, and stepping up to that poor wanderer, he had said: “I love you, and I am going to take you in my carriage to the palace. I am going to dress you fit to be a king’s son, and you shall be known as the son of King Edward the Seventh.”

Would it not have been wonderful? But it would not have been as wonderful as that the infinitely holy God should have looked down upon you and me in our filthiness and rags and depravity, and that He should have so loved us that He should have bestowed upon us to be called the sons of God.

I have a friend in the university. We thought a good deal of each other, but I did not know how much he loved me. Years after, he learned that I was in a position in which I needed fifteen hundred dollars. The next day he came to me. “Let me give you that fifteen hundred dollars! You can pay it back later.”

He gave me that fifteen hundred dollars, and I have paid it back, but he did not know I would. I knew then that man loved me.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

LOVE AND THE DARK SHADOW

ELLEN G. WHITE

Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness:
he is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.
PSALM 112:4 KJV

God has bound our hearts to Him by unnumbered gifts in heaven and on earth. Through the things of nature, He has sought to reveal Himself to us. Yet these but imperfectly represent His love. Although all these evidences have been given, the enemy of good blinded the minds of men so that they looked upon God with fear.

They thought of Him as severe and unforgiving. Satan led men to conceive of God as one who is a severe judge, a harsh and exacting creditor. He pictured the Creator as a being who is watching with jealous eye to discern the errors and mistakes of men so that He may visit judgments upon them.

It was to remove this dark shadow by revealing to the world the infinite love of God that Jesus came to live among men. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by Satan. There were whole villages where there was not a moan of sickness in any house, for He had passed through them and healed all their sick.

His work gave evidence of His divine anointing. Love, mercy, and compassion were revealed in every act of His life. His heart went out in tender sympathy to the children of men. He took man’s nature so that He might reach man’s wants. The poorest and humblest were not afraid to approach Him. Even little children were attracted to Him. They loved to climb upon His knees and gaze into the pensive face, compassionate with love.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You