08032024 Incomprehensible Love

Dear Missionary Lady,

Greetings again in the name of the God of love. The adjectives I shared last week have lingered in my thoughts and encouraged my heart. Of course, there is no plumbing of the depths of God, so it is not at all surprising that I thought of two more adjectives as I continued pondering!

God’s love is intrinsic. “God is love” (I John 4:8&16). There is no separating God and love. Love is a vital and fundamental part of His nature. It defines Him. To see God and His actions is to see love. God is the best way of understanding what love is.

God’s love is incomprehensible. “And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19a). God’s love is so great that it cannot even be understood by human minds. In some ways, the realization of this adjective is the logical response of considering all the others. Who can possibly comprehend love that is unmerited, embracing, unprecedented, everlasting, abundant, overflowing, expansive, inseparable, unquenchable, sacrificial, transformational, and incomparable?

To be sure, we can see limited aspects of many of those qualities in the love of people. The more strongly that any of those characteristics shine within human love, the more amazed we are by such love. But no human can approach the level of God when it comes to these qualities. Furthermore, no person does all of them, nor does any person do a single one of them perfectly or continually.

As I pondered the incomprehensible aspect of God’s love, I asked myself why it is so impossible to fully comprehend. Is it because the human mind is just too small to fully absorb such an amazing concept? Is it because we have no point of adequate comparison in our temporal world? Or is it because God is just too big? Is He simply grand beyond the capacity of humans to understand?

I think both are true, and they are really opposite sides of the same coin. We are so fallen and finite, and God is so great and infinite, that we cannot meet Him or understand Him on our terms. All we can do is stand in wonder. This is true of any aspect of God, and certainly true regarding His love.

My thoughts went to Isaiah 40. The following selections from that chapter are enough to illustrate that God is too great for us frail humans to comprehend. “Behold your God! Behold, the Lord GOD will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him. … Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. … All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. To whom then will ye liken God? Or what likeness will ye compare unto him? … Have ye not known? Have ye not heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning? Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth … that bringeth the princes to nothing. … He shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither … To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. … He calleth them [heavenly hosts] all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power. … Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding.” (40:9-28).

Every aspect of God is too much for us to comprehend, because He is so far above us. When it comes to the love of God, perhaps that disparity is best summarized with this phrase: It doesn’t make sense.

To the human mind, the kind of love that God has for man does not make sense. I think two verses can make that abundantly clear. “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7-8).

I’ve been thinking off and on about this all week, knowing that I would reference these two verses. Yet to come to the point of typing them out has brought me to tears. Listen – no one does what God has done! Hardly anyone ever will die even for someone who is really good, but Jesus died for us when we were vile sinners. “Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (I Corinthians 6:10-11).

I was the enemy of God, with no good in me, and He loved me so much that He sent His Son to die for me, to rescue and redeem me, to transform me and purify me. I can only conclude that the love of God is incomprehensible. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Truly, there is no one like You!

Love in Christ,

Peggy Holt

member at Open Door Baptist Church in Lebanon, PA