To Express the Unspeakable
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Important messages
“To
know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” Ephesians 3:19
 |
| A. W. Tozer |
Just two days ago, I
presented on this blog, A. W. Tozer’s clarification of the well-known statement
of the apostle John, “God is love” (1 Jn.4:8). He felt obligated to do so,
because of the common misunderstanding and misinterpretation of that verse. That
was the apologetic side of his chapter on love in The Knowledge of the Holy.
In what I have read or heard
by many preachers, who attempt to present the love of God to their readers or
audience, few reach the level that Tozer ascends to in his sermons. I have a
recording, in which Tozer claims to use John 3:16 as his text for the first
time. Although he had referred to it thousands of times, he said that, in his
more than 40 years of ministry (at that time), he never felt capable of
preaching specifically on the text, John 3:16, that magnificent statement given
to us by the Word of Life Himself. I have yet to listen to that tape without
tears coming to my eyes.
I will include again in the
first two paragraphs of this article, this clarification, as well as the
correspondence of the love of God with His other attributes. Then we will
proceed. Even though Tozer recognizes his lack of ability, along with the
inability of any human, to worthily put the love of God into human language, I
think you will find that he does as well as possible in his attempt.
“The words ‘God is love’ mean that love is an
essential attribute of God. Love is something true of God but it is not God. It
expresses the way God is in His unitary being, as do the words holiness,
justice, faithfulness and truth. Because God is immutable He always acts like
Himself, and because He is a unity He never suspends one of His attributes in
order to exercise another.
From God’s other known
attributes we may learn much about His love. We can know, for instance, that
because God is self-existent, His love had no beginning; because He is eternal,
His love can have no end; because He is infinite, it has no limit; because He
is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because He is immense,
His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea, before which
we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats
confused and abashed.
Yet if we would know God and
for other’s sake tell what we know, we must try to speak of His love. All
Christians have tried, but none has ever done it very well. I can no more do
justice to that awesome and wonder-filled theme than a child can grasp a star.
Still, by reaching toward the star the child may call attention to it and even
indicate the direction one must look to see it. So, as I stretch my heart
toward the high, shilling love of God, someone who has not before known about
it may be encouraged to look up and have hope. We do not know, and we may never
know, what love is, but we can know how it manifests itself, and that is enough
for us here.
First we see it showing
itself as good will. Love wills the good of all and never wills harm or evil to
any. This explains the words of the apostle John: ‘There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.’ Fear
is the painful emotion that arises at the thought that we may be harmed or made
to suffer. This fear persists while we are subject to the will of someone who
does not desire our well-being. The moment we come under the protection of one
of good will, fear is cast out. A child lost in a crowded store is full of fear
because it sees the strangers around it as enemies. In its mother’s arms a
moment later all the terror subsides. The known good will of the mother casts
out fear.
The world is full of
enemies, and as long as we are subject to the possibility of harm from these
enemies, fear is inevitable. The effort to conquer fear without removing the
causes is altogether futile. The heart is wiser than the apostles of tranquility.
As long as we are in the hands of chance, as long as we look for hope to the
law of averages, as long as we must trust for survival to our ability to
outthink or outmaneuver the enemy, we have every good reason to be afraid. And
fear hath torment.
To know that love is of God
and to enter into the secret place leaning upon the arm of the Beloved - this
and only this can cast out fear. Let a man become convinced that nothing can
harm him and instantly for him all fear goes out of the universe. The nervous
reflex, the natural revulsion to physical pain may be felt sometimes, but the
deep torment of fear is gone forever.
God is love and God is
sovereign. His love disposes Him to desire our everlasting welfare and His
sovereignty enables Him to secure it. Nothing can hurt a good man. The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth
still His kingdom is forever… Martin Luther.
God’s love tells us that He
is friendly and His Word assures us that He is our friend and wants us to be
His friends. No man with a trace of humility would first think that he is a
friend of God; but the idea did not originate with men. Abraham would never
have said, “I am God’s friend,” but God Himself said that Abraham was His
friend. The disciples might well have hesitated to claim friendship with Christ,
but Christ said to them, “Ye are my friends.” Modesty may demur at so rash a
thought, but audacious faith dares to believe the Word and claim friendship
with God. We do God more honor by believing what He has said about Himself and
having the courage to come boldly to the throne of grace than by hiding in
self-conscious humility among the trees of the garden.
Love is also an emotional
identification. It considers nothing its own but gives all freely to the object
of its affection. We see this constantly in our world of men and women. A young
mother, thin and tired, nurses at her breast a plump and healthy baby, and far from
complaining, the mother gazes down at her child with eyes shining with
happiness and pride. Acts of self-sacrifice are common to love. Christ said of
Himself, ‘Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ It is a strange and
beautiful eccentricity of the free God that He has allowed His heart to be
emotionally identified with men. Self-sufficient as He is, He wants our love
and will not be satisfied till He gets it. Free as He is, He has let His heart
be bound to us forever.
‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us,
and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’ For our soul is so specially loved of
Him that is highest, says Julian of Norwich, that
it overpasseth the knowing of all creatures: that is to say, there is no
creature that is made that may know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly
our Maker loveth us. And therefore we may with grace and His help stand in
spiritual beholding, with everlasting marvel of this high, overpassing,
inestimable Love that Almighty God hath to us of His Goodness.
Another characteristic of
love is that it takes pleasure in its object. God enjoys His creation. The
apostle John says frankly that God’s purpose in creation was His own pleasure.
God is happy in His love for all that He has made. We cannot miss the feeling
of pleasure in God’s delighted references to His handiwork. Psalm 104 is a
divinely inspired nature poem almost rhapsodic in its happiness, and the
delight of God is felt throughout it. ‘The
glory of the Lord shall endure forever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works.’
The Lord takes peculiar pleasure in His saints. Many think of God as far
removed, gloomy and mightily displeased with everything, gazing down in a mood
of fixed apathy upon a world in which He has long ago lost interest; but this
is to think erroneously. True, God hates sin and can never look with pleasure
upon iniquity, but where men seek to do God’s will He responds in genuine
affection.
Christ in His atonement has
removed the bar to the divine fellowship. Now in Christ all believing souls are
objects of God’s delight. ‘The Lord thy
God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee
with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.’ According
to the Book of Job, God’s work of creation was done to musical accompaniment. ‘Where wast thou,’ God asks, ‘when I laid the foundations of the earth. .
. when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for
joy?’
John Dryden carried the idea
a bit further than this, but not, perhaps, too far to be true:
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
When nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
‘Arise, ye more than dead!’
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music’s power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it
ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.
From “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day”
Music is both an expression
and a source of pleasure, and the pleasure that is purest and nearest to God is
the pleasure of love. Hell is a place of no pleasure, because there is no love
there. Heaven is full of music, because it is the place where the pleasures of
holy love abound. Earth is the place where the pleasures of love are mixed with
pain, for sin is here, and hate and ill will. In such a world as ours, love
must sometimes suffer, as Christ suffered in giving Himself for His own. But we
have the certain promise that the causes of sorrow will finally be abolished
and the new face enjoy forever a world of selfless, perfect love.
It is of the nature of love
that it cannot lie quiescent. It is active, creative, and benign. ‘God commendeth his love toward us, in
that, while we were sinners, Christ died for us.’ ‘God so loved the world, that
he gave his only begotten Son.’ So it must be where love is; love must ever
give to its own, whatever the cost. The apostles rebuked the young churches
sharply because a few of their members had forgotten this and had allowed their
love to spend itself in personal enjoyment while their brethren were in need. ‘But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth
his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how
dwelleth the love of God in him?’
So wrote that John who has
been known to the centuries as ‘the Beloved’. The love of God is one of the
great realities of the universe, a pillar upon which the hope of the world
rests. But it is a personal, intimate thing, too. God does not love
populations, He loves people. He loves not masses, but men. He loves us all
with a mighty love that has no beginning and can have no end. In Christian
experience there is a highly satisfying love content that distinguishes it from
all other religions and elevates it to heights, far beyond even the purest and
noblest philosophy.
This love content is more
than a thing; it is God Himself in the midst of His Church singing over His
people. True Christian joy is the heart’s harmonious response to the Lord’s
song of love.”
Thou hidden love of God, whose height,
Whose depth unfathomed, no man knows,
I see from far Thy beauteous light,
Inly I sigh for Thy repose;
My heart is pained, nor can it be
At rest till it finds rest in Thee.
Gerhard
Tersteegen
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