Extreme Love

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YOU ARE A PEARL OF GREAT PRICE:
God’s Unbelievable Investment in Us

MERCIFUL LOVE GEORGE WHITEFIELD

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

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

 

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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

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

 

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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

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 .

 

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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

 

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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

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

 

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THE BRIDEGROOM’S LOVE - GEORGE WHITEFIELD

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

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