"The Love of God"

In an age where music has largely gone mindless, sensual or “ugly on purpose,” and where religious tunes seem to rely on the beat and instrumentation while the words focus on self, I hearken back to the old hymns. Many of them are so rich in teachings about who God is and why we should serve Him. They point us to His majesty, His fearsomeness, His power, His will, His compassion to sinners.  Their tunes may be more simple and straight than the modern world likes, but the music usually supports the words.

One of my favorite hymns is “The Love of God” by Frederick M. Lehman and Claudia Lehman Mays (1917). Here I find a perfect melding of vivid word pictures and theology.

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. 

Refrain:

O love of God,

how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure

The saints' and angels' song. 

When years of 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.   

(Repeat refrain)

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.  

(Repeat refrain)

 

Can’t you just see the large inkwell of the seas, and the scroll of the sky and all the men with quill pens trying to write the infinite, matchless and beyond-description love of God?  His love is indescribable.  But I'm so glad poets and hymn writers continue to try to help us understand it.

Naturally, the Bible says it best, "For all have sinned and are continually falling short of the glory of God....  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord....  Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God....  God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for for us.  Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him"  (Romans 3:23, 6:23, 5:1-2, 8, 90.

Soli Deo Gloria (“Only for God’s Glory”),
Yours in the love of God,
Hester