CHRIST'S Love Is Like HIMSELF-- Eternal And Unchangeable.

The love of CHRIST which surpasses knowledge!
(Alexander Smellie, "The Secret Place" 1907)

"The love of CHRIST which surpasses 
knowledge!" Ephesians 3:19 

No love stoops like CHRIST'S love. 
It abandoned place and prospects and power--
to save me! It traveled from the heights of 
Heaven, to the depths of sinful earth. 
GOD, pure and holy, chose voluntarily 
to make HIS home with me a sinner!

The sole qualification I need to commend 
myself to HIM is not my conviction of worth, 
but my conviction of worthlessness--
my knowledge that I am devoid 
of goodness and holiness! 

Then, when I confess myself penniless--
HE will invest me with HIS treasures. 
HE banishes no self-destroyed and 
forlorn and penitent man outside the pale 
of HIS grace. HIS love stoops!

No love suffers like CHRIST'S love. 
The test of affection is its willingness 
to suffer sacrifice and pain for another. 
Never has any affection stood the test 
like the love of JESUS. 

"It is certain," one writes, "that not for 
one hour on earth, was our LORD 
without the anguish of HIS passion." 
And at last HE made the supreme 
offering of HIS life for me. Such 
bitterness, such dereliction, such 
unspeakable sorrow--
there were in my SAVIOR'S death. 

For me HE bore the hiding of HIS 
FATHER'S face on Calvary. It is an 
unfathomable pre-eminence of grief. 
It is a horror of great darkness which 
I may not pierce. HIS love suffers!

No love gives like CHRIST'S love. 
Love is always giving. But when was 
there human love with such wealth 
to bestow, and such willingness 
to communicate it--
as the love of CHRIST? 
In simple fact, HE imparts nothing 
less than HIMSELF to me! 

The most unholy, the most tempted, 
the most despairing--cannot desire 
anything more sufficient. HIS love gives!

And no love lasts like CHRIST'S love. 
The truest and tenderest earthly love 
says farewell to its beloved in death. 
And too often, even on this side 
of the grave, doubts insinuate 
themselves, and suspicions arise, 
and covenants are snapped and broken. 


It is not so with the love of CHRIST. 

Neither things present nor things 
to come, the demands of today 
and the contingencies of tomorrow--
chill that great heart of love! 

CHRIST'S love is like HIMSELF--
eternal and unchangeable. 
HIS love lasts!

Does not HIS wondrous love 
deserve my whole soul and body--
all that I have, and all that I am? 
Nothing is stranger, and nothing 
more sad, than that, bathed 
in CHRIST'S love--
I should be so indifferent, 
so forgetful, so cold!

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GraceGems has published William Nicholson's choice short article, 
"Delighting in GOD!"