Antinomianism in a religious mind seems to me to be an impossible moral phenomenon. Love (26)(agape) is a self-sacrificing, caring commitment that shows itself in seeking the highest good of the one loved. God is not love. viii. (2) God’s providential love over al that he has made. Robert Browning has an exquisite little poem which he calls “One Word More.” The idea of the poem is this. Love is not to a crowd; compassion, pity there may be for a multitude, but love is separate; it is personal; it is distinct and peculiar. p. 43, 44. , called אהבה, "love". Let’s be careful we don’t go through the motions without loving those we’re talking to. Banks.]. Why, then, do you say that Christ made, or bought, or in any way procured the love of God, when it was God’s love that sent Him forth on His mission? All rights reserved). Man is responsible for it, not God. 1 John 4:8. But look into old creeds, look into modern philosophy, where God is Force without heart, and Law without pity. I know that when I see God He will be wise; but how little do I know of the wisdom of God? Colour like the turf and dead grass? I know what light is as it shines from my candle, but do I know what the sun is from that? They are not born again, because they do not practice biblical love. As far as God’s love is concerned, the Cross might be placed in Genesis as well as in John, in Leviticus as well as in Luke. Love is the true salvation. I know that many reason more refinedly, and that the ancients especially have perverted this passage in order to prove the divinity of the Spirit. Sometimes by the courage that love gives she actually drove the hawk away; sometimes she laid down her life for her brood; in either case it was love that saved the little ones. O, what can prove. The good of man includes the whole man. Look at your own lives, at the records on the pages of memory, and think of the still fuller entries on the book of judgment. Fleeter than darting fish or startled dove; All, all declare the same, that God is Love! II. But I hear it said again, “Why has God left such a vast proportion of the inhabitants of this earth ignorant of Christ, and of the way of salvation?” God has not left them ignorant. 1 John 4:8 REV and Commentary - Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. Have you been tempted to withhold your love? (b) Had the Church done her part, the earth would by this time have been enlightened. None of these things could tell His love—tell the depth of it; the necessity that man was to Him.1 [Note: J. M. Jones, The Cup of Cold Water, 148.]. The light is dim, and as you pass you see they are carrying one poor patient out of the common ward, and you know they are carrying him where he may die alone, without disturbing the others; and then, when you go out into the open air, and the light and shine of the sun, and feel the spring of health in your limbs, the simple thought that you are well thrills you! The capacity to love is not love; it does but accentuate the void. So is it with some of you. 58 (trans. He has been telling it unweariedly through the ages. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.a. The love is lost by default that must hire counsel to take up its case and eloquently contend for its existence. Love needs an object, and since there was a time before anything was created, there was a time when the only love in the universe was between the … I stand here to preach illimitable love, unbounded grace, to the vilest of the vile, to those who have nothing in them that can deserve consideration from God, men who ought to be swept into the bottomless pit at once if justice meted out to them their deserts. God is love. God’s love is personal: it is not mere compassion for the multitude; it is an infinite affection for the individual. In the original structure of things before sin entered, when all was pronounced “good;” in the things designed to promote happiness, where the only thing contemplated is happiness, and where it would have been as easy to have caused pain; in the preservation of a guilty race, and in granting that race the opportunity of another trial; in the ceaseless provision which God is making in his providence for the wants of unnumbered millions of his creatures; in the arrangements made to alleviate sorrow, and to put an end to it; in the gift of a Saviour more than all, and in the offer of eternal life on terms simple and easy to be complied with - in all these things, which are the mere expressions of love, not one of which would have been found under the government of a malignant being, we see illustrations of the sublime and glorious sentiment before us, that “God is love.” Even in this world of confusion, disorder, and darkness, we have evidence sufficient to prove that he is benevolent, but the full glory and meaning of that truth will be seen only in heaven. 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