The Love of God
Nothing is as secure or strong as the love of God. Nothing.
This is the core message of Romans 8:38-39, which emphatically declares that“nothing—i.e., not death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation—will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This vast and victorious divine love is beautifully described in an old hymn by Frederick Lehman. Written in 1917, the song was birthed after Lehman, a Christian businessman in California, lost everything and began once again the arduous task of rebuilding by manually packing oranges and lemons as a manual laborer. He stay involved, of course, in his church, and one Sunday after an especially comforting sermon on God’s love, Lehman knew one thing would never change: God’s love for him.
He was so moved by this resonating thought that he tossed and turned most of that night. The next day at work, though tired physically, he found himself spiritually energized by lyrics that were coming to his mind, words and phrases he knew described the moving of the Spirit of God in his life regarding the love of God. In fact, some of these lyrics he wrote on scrap pieces of paper, even parts of broken crates. Later, when he got home, he put the initial musical tune to his poem.
Interestingly, Lehman only wrote two verses and the chorus. The third verse, which, ironically, fit with his current expression, came from a poem on a bookmark someone had given him years earlier. Even more interestingly is this: the words on that bookmark were reportedly penned in either a prison cell or insane asylum over 100 years before Lehman. Why the prisoner wrote them on the wall is unknown, other than that he or she must have known, as Lehman did, that their strongest and securest refuge in any crisis was God’s unfailing love.
Those words on the wall survived at least a century and eventually found their way onto the bookmark and ultimately into Lehman’s song. And that song? “The Love of God.”
Today, take some time to read Roman’s 8:38-39, then reflect upon his unfathomable and unconquerable love through this beloved hymn that so wonderfully magnifies the strongest and securest of all things: the love of God.
Pastor Todd
The Love of God
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.
Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
When hoary time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.