Elohim February 2015 | Page 18

s I read the Bible, I find love to
be the supreme and dominant attribute of God.
Because of His holiness, God cannot condone or
countenance sin, but He loves the sinner.
Because He is just, He cannot excuse sin. But
since His love goes hand in hand with His justice,
He has made provision to forgive sin through the
atonement of His Son.
Romans 5:8
“God demonstrates His own love toward us, in
that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”.
The promises of God’s love and forgiveness are
as real, as sure, as positive as human words can
make them.
But just as the total beauty of the ocean cannot
be understood until it is seen, God’s love cannot
be understood until you experience it, until you
actually possess it.

No one can fully describe the
wonders of God’s love.
Some of our modern “experts” in theology have
made attempts to rob God of His warmth, His
personal affection for mankind and His sympathy
for His creatures.
Never question God’s great love, for it is as
unchangeable as His holiness. Were it not for
the love of God, none of us would ever have a
chance in the future life. But God is love! And His
love for us is everlasting!
Ours is the God of law who, loving the earth’s
people, and realizing that we had offended in
every point, sent His only Son to redeem us to
Himself and to instill the law of the Spirit of life
within us. His eyes of compassion have been
following men and women as we have stumbled
through history under the burden of our own
wretchedness.
Jeremiah the prophet wrote,
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Jeremiah 31:3
“The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: ‘Yes, I
have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore
with loving kindness I have drawn you’”.
Calvary should prove even to the most sceptical
person that God is not blind to our plight, but
that He was willing to suffer with us.
Compassion comes from two Latin words meaning “to suffer with.” God’s all-consuming love for
mankind was best demonstrated at the cross,
where His compassion was embodied in Jesus
Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:19
“God was in Christ reconciling the world to
Himself”.
Paul speaks of God as one
Ephesians 2:4
“who is rich in mercy, because of His great love
with which He loved us”.
It was the love of God that sent Jesus Christ to
the cross.
But God’s love did not begin at Calvary. Before
the morning stars of the pre-Edenic world sang
together, before the world was baptized with
the first light, before the first blades of tender
grass peeped out, God was love.
Turn back, if you will, to the unwritten pages of
countless aeons and centuries before God spoke
this present earth into existence, when the earth
was “without form and void,” and the deep,
silent darkness of outer space formed a vast gulf
between the brilliance of God’s throne and the
dark vacuum where our present solar system
now is.
See God’s dazzling, scintillating glory as cherubim and seraphim cover their faces with their
wings in awe and reverence toward Him who is
high and holy!
Yet, as lofty as the vaults of Heaven may be, and

©1955 Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used with permission. All rights reserved. www.billygraham.org

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