This little volume grows out of preaching at the First Church of God in St. Louis, Missouri, and the First Church of God in Springfield, Ohio, where I am now privileged to minister.

The chapters of the book are based on the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians.

If this little book makes any contribution to anyone’s understanding and appreciation of the love of God, I shall be happy and fully repaid for whatever effort these chapters may have required.

May the God who in love “gave his only begotten Son” put his blessings upon the feeble attempts of one of the least of his disciples to speak on such a tremendous theme as this.

—Harold W. Boyer
Springfield, Ohio

Chapter I
The Love of God

The nearest I ever came to seeing the love of God in perfect demonstration was in the life of a mother whose daughter lay at the point of death because of her own sin. I was the pastor, and I had despaired of the girl’s life because she deeply resented any spiritual ministry. The doctor had said she was beyond the help of medical science. Society does not look with kindness on these cases, and so the girl was left pretty much alone except for the mother who sat day and night at the hospital bed, holding the dry, hot hand of her dying daughter, whose hair was like straw and whose complexion had the pallor of death. In loving devotion she stayed at the side of her child and held on to God in prayer. God proved his love and manifested it in a marvelous experience of divine healing. I have in my possession a statement to this effect from the medical doctor. When I look at that girl today, now a grown and healthy woman,

I am made to exclaim in awe and wonder at the love of God. Many, many books have been written and many sermons preached on the timeless and inexhaustible subject of the love of God. Yet in some seventeen years of preaching, this is my first attempt. Oh, yes, I have tried to preach about the love of God. I have preached around it, over it, under it, and by the side of it, but never ventured to come directly to the point. Doubtless, the reason has been that I did not understand, therefore could not tell others.

Yet how can one refrain from dealing with so grand a theme? How can a Christian escape the text, “God is love”? But if we use this text we have said it all, for the text is so all-inclusive, so final, that it leaves nothing to be said. It is with trembling soul and faltering tongue that we approach the greatest text of the Bible, “God is love.”

Where can we find a text that is not so final and yet gives us a handhold on such a tremendous subject as the love of God? Without hesitation we walk through Matthew, Mark, and Luke and on to the great telescopic lens of the Bible through which we are permitted to see the heart of God—John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Here we have something we can get hold of, because it is an expression of the love of God. In this magnificent portion of Scripture we have that which thrills the heart of a little child or rimes the deepest thought stream of the greatest theologian.

In every act and thought of God there is love. Every command he ever uttered, every law he ordained, every precept he laid down—anything and everything that ever came from God is an expression of his infinite love. It is more the nature of God to love than for the sun to give light. The sun may ultimately become cold and dark, but God’s love will never dim or fade. Some may find it hard to understand why God loves. Multitudes have asked, “Does God love me?” There is nothing the devil would have you doubt more than the fact that God loves you. You can believe in God and be lost. You can believe in the blood, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit; but unless you believe in the love o f God you will go on in sin and finally land in torment where there is no love. When someone asks, “Why does God love?” we counter by asking, “Why does the sun shine?” The sun shines because it is light and cannot help itself. God is love and cannot do otherwise than love. The clouds may obscure the sun for a while and leave us in semidarkness, but above the clouds the sun still shines. Just so, sin may separate us from God, but God does not change in his eternal love. Let the sin be removed by confession and forgiveness and we will find God still there and still loving. It is his very nature to love. Though the tides may cease their ebb and flow, the sun set to rise no more, the seasons no longer tell of seedtime and harvest, the rains refuse to fall or the sun to shine, though a mother despise her own offspring, and all nature go berserk; God will still love. He is powerless to do otherwise. God is love. Man may hide from the love of God as a mole burrows down into the subterranean darkness, but God’s love continues just the same.

Some may ask, Cannot God change? Can light be turned to darkness, heat to cold, age to youth? Can the force of gravity be reduced to nothingness or the earth be made to stand still? Certain characteristics are inherent in each bit of God’s creation, and if it were possible to change those characteristics, the original would be lost. One is reminded of the ancient fable of the selfish king who thought the greatest happiness in life would be obtained if everything he touched should turn to gold. How quickly he learned that the real values in life were not in earthly success. God in his infinite wisdom has set things in order as they should be for the well—being of man. The basic elements of life cannot be changed. Of all that is basic in life, God is most basic. Just so, beloved of the Lord, God cannot change. “I am the Lord, I change not” (Mal. 3:6). “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Jas. 1:17).

Some few years ago in the city of St. Louis, I went to visit a man in a mental institution. Before going to the room to visit him, I asked for an audience with the psychiatrist, which was graciously granted me. I asked him for his opinion about me, a minister, visiting this man whom I had never seen. The doctor told me that he, of course, could not know what the reaction of the patient would be. Then turning directly toward me, he said, “But this I know; God is basic to life. If you can give this patient a grasp on God, he will have something to which he can hold. Now he has nothing.”

God is basic to life, and no matter what else may change, he will not. This fundamental fact about God gives us the “faith of our fathers.” God is love—the highest height, the deepest depth, the broadest breadth, the very essence and wellspring of love. God cannot change.

Because he loved and wanted a being like himself upon whom he could bestow his love, he created man in his own image. Man is God’s offspring, the crown of his creative genius. Because we are his creation God loves, us, and no matter how far astray we go, he will love us so long as we live.

The wrath of God of which the Bible speaks is not a carnal hatred directed toward sinners. His wrath is kindled against sin because sin destroys the objects of his love. Sin destroys people and separates between the God of love and the people he loves. That is why “God gave his only begotten Son,” because he loved man enough to give all that he had that man might be redeemed from his lost and undone condition. Oh, the unspeakable, indescribable love of God! So pure, so unselfish, so absolute! This love of God was manifest in Jesus in so many ways that when Paul wanted to express it he simply said, “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

Can the world offer such love as this? Ah, no, my friend; no love can be compared to the love of God. The psalmist was overwhelmed by this love when he wrote Psalm 139. Let me quote two verses: “How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I could count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.” Nothing can change this. To change it would necessitate changing the very nature of God himself. His love is everlasting because he is eternal and he is love. But let us never misunderstand him or his love.

God’s love is also severe. He has no favorites, and he plays no favoritism. All nationalities, all social strata, all races appear the same to him because God is love and he loves us all alike. God loves man too much to allow sin to destroy him, if He can help it. Sin is spiritual poison. Sin is the malignant cancer of the soul. But God loves, and because he loves he desires to destroy sin before sin can destroy us. May I attempt to illustrate?

Dr. David Gaulke, missionary doctor and Christian extraordinary, has enough of God in him to go to Africa where he gives his life and skill to the healing of the malignant sores and diseases of a people who do not know God or the Bible—a people who live in the dark shadows of pagan superstition and know nothing of God’s love. These pagan people will see and feel the love of God through the healing deeds of this missionary doctor and the words he will speak even as he ministers healing to the diseased or broken bodies of the people. Even so, beloved of the Lord, God gave his Son from the celestial heaven to this dark world to cure and heal the cancer of sin in the human soul. We see God’s love in Jesus Christ. We feel his love and compassion through his Word and Spirit. God has always been love, but the world never comprehended it until Jesus came, the divine manifestation of that love. Jesus came to heal the diseased and broken souls of men and to set man’s feet on the way of life. He took our sins and carried them to Calvary’s cross where he tasted hell itself in taking our punishment on his own heart that we—poor, helpless, finite human beings—might through his atonement be redeemed from our lost state in sin. If we refuse all this love and choose rather to serve sin, the flesh, and the devil, then it will not be God who damns our souls. We will be damning ourselves by refusing his proffered mercy. It would not be the wrath or judgment of God that separates, but, “your iniquities have separated between you and your God” (Isa. 59:2).

God’s love would receive all into the sinless place called heaven which Jesus has gone to prepare for all those “that love his appearing.” But God must protect the sinless there by not allowing any sinful thing to enter and defile its holy purity. No liar, no gossip, no slander—none of the things that hurt or destroy shall enter its courts. No sin or sinner can ever enter heaven. So behold also the severity of God’s love. His love, being holy, cannot compromise with sin. Man does not have to stay in sin, for God has made a way of escape. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9). Only man’s refusal of the love of God can bring damnation to his own soul. “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all’ should come to repentance” (II Peter 3:9).

So long as we live, the love and mercy of God will follow us and hound our every step. If we insist on traveling the broad road of sin and thereby rejecting the love of God, his love will still follow us and weep as we plunge off that awful precipice into a devil’s hell. Even in hell a man will remember how often he spurned the love of God. He will remember that he chose to be in hell by refusing the loving mercy and great salvation offered repeatedly to him. Only then will God blot man out of his love and out of his memory. Then man will be left an unloved, unwanted soul to writhe in the pits of torment throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity, remembering, remembering the love that he spurned and that is gone forever. May God help us to see and realize what it will mean to get beyond the love of God. Only the fool would say in his heart, “There is no God.” Only the foolish will reject God’s love.

Is it any wonder our Lord asks, “That will you give in exchange for your soul?” and then leaves the question unanswered because there is no answer? There is no exchange for a man’s soul. Its value cannot be compared to the riches of earth. God’s estimate on the value of a man’s soul is seen in the cost to him of its redemption. If redemption’s price was the death of Jesus on the cross; what can we give or even offer in exchange for our souls? We must either take God’s offer or be lost forever. Is it any wonder Love cries in amazement at man’s stupidity: “What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” What folly is carnal ambition! What idiocy to believe that “ ‘life consists of the abundance of the things a man possesses”! Let us hear the wisdom of a man who tried all that the world had to offer. Solomon had the world at his feet and its gold in his hands, but he grew weary with its vanity. Solomon got for his fleshly gratification men singers, women singers, great vineyards, walled cities; he lay on silken couches, ate the finest food, possessed a thousand wives, and indulged every whim and fancy of the flesh. But at the end of the trail Solomon said, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.… Hear the conclusion of the whole matter, Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

I care not for worldly fame,
Buildings great or small;
I care not to be heard of men;
Christ is my all.

God is love and God loves you. He will keep on loving you, but he is powerless to save you until you turn to him and allow it. Cast yourself on his loving mercy. Plead only the blood of Calvary, and God for Christ’s sake will forgive your sins and grant you pardon. Why should you trifle? Why should you be denied? Why should you risk eternity? Jesus says, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest.”

Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling;
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.

It is the love of God that calls, “Come home!” It is the love of God that will receive you when you come. It is the love of God that will keep you. It is his love that will finally receive you into heaven. Will you accept his love and throw yourself at his feet?

Chapter II
Religion that Echoes

We who pray for the sick often find a bargaining attitude on the part of the afflicted. We need to learn that we are not in a position to bargain with God. “God is the giver of every good and perfect gift,” and the way for us to receive special favors or blessings such as divine physical healing, help in time of trouble, or the supplying of some need, is to give God the kind of love for which we are asking. What better illustration of this fact than the two thieves who hung on their respective crosses with Jesus. The one cursed, reviled, tried to bargain, and died in his sins, a thief and murderer at heart. The other in true penitence asked for loving mercy, and the Lord said, “This day thou shalt be with me in paradise.” Any religion that attempts to bargain with God will echo with its own emptiness, for God cannot be bargained with. Doubtless we have all been guilty of expecting much from the love of God while being quite unwilling to give much love in return. The reason for this one-sided attitude is that we have probably not understood the love of God as we ought. Most of us are prone to selfishness. We have been willing to give a little love in order to obtain our desire, but the little we have been willing to give has not been commensurate with what we expected in return. The basic lesson of love, which we must all learn, is that love is not the attitude that seeks to get. Love is the attitude that gives.

“God so loved the world that he gave.” It is quite proper for us to ask, “Why?” It is also proper for us to answer frankly. God did not give his only begotten Son to the world in any vain hope that he might gain the adulation of the world. “He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Jesus Christ came that the world might be saved. Pure love never has any concern about what it is to get; it only concerns itself with giving.

What did Jesus expect to get by coming to the world? He expected a crown, but he knew it was to be a crown of thorns. He expected a crowd, but he knew that same crowd would turn against him and cry, “Crucify! crucify!” He expected a life, but he knew it would be short and bitter and end on a cross. It was love that brought Jesus to earth—love that gave all and asked nothing. His coming and his sacrifice were not with any ulterior motive. He came and he gave himself for man whether man accepts him and his atonement or not. Love impelled him, and he would have come whether anyone had accepted him or not.

What did Paul expect to get? God said, “I will show him what great things he must suffer” (Acts 9:16). Paul himself once said, “The Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me” (20:23). Paul did suffer; only the grace of God could have sustained him, but he bore it gladly because of the love of God.

What did Thomas, often called the Doubter, expect to get? On one occasion when Jesus decided to return to the center of persecution, Thomas said to the other disciples, “Let us also go, that .we may die with him” (John 11:16). Love does not ask to save itself. Love gives its all and never whimpers or complains. Love may occasionally doubt and maybe question or even fear, but if it is perfect love it will cast out fear, cease to question, and drown doubt. Pure love does not attempt to save itself but gives itself instead.

What does a mother expect to get from her love for her child? She expects nothing. She only trusts and hopes that the child will respond to her love and give love in return. She keeps on loving whether that love is returned or not. He who has religion for what he can get has only an echo of the genuine. His religion can do him little good and can conceivably do him much harm, because a religion without love only mocks us when we need comfort the most. I shall never forget an occasion when I had been called upon. to preach the funeral of a prominent attorney in the city of Indianapolis, Indiana. I have never been sure why I was called upon; in times like that we do not question. After the service was over I went to the widow to speak, if possible, some words of personal comfort. Her only answer was, “He was all I had.” Stunned, I turned away with the deep consciousness that hers was a “religion that echoed.” There was no love for God, no personal contact with God—just a form that was worse than nothing with which to face the real issues of life. What can mock a lost man more than the echo of his own frantic call for help?

Jesus made clear the meaning of true love by saying, “If a man love me, he will keep my words” (John 14:23). There you have it “if he love me.” His way is the way of a cross, but it ends in glory. Paul sums it all up in the inimitable words of our text: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods .to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing” (I Cor. 13:1–3). So what good is religion and what profit is there in life if we have not love? Remove love from life and we have a hell in this world.

Do we ask, “What is love?” Certainly the answer is not found in the “gooey” sentimental songs of the world that drip with nauseous nothings. Take one of the better love songs as an example:

I love you, I love you, I love you;
Sweetheart of all my dreams.
I love you, I can’t live without you....

There you have it. “I love you,” but it is a love that wants, not a love that gives. I love you, and I want you, and I can’t do without you—always the eternal sentiment of what I want and seldom the essence of real love that expresses itself in what I can give.

What is love? Certainly no dictionary can properly define it. It defies all definition and can be known only in experience. It is useless to say, “I love you,” unless a demonstration of that love accompanies the words. All the words I say will merely echo unless backed up by actions, forgiveness, longsuffering, and tolerance.

“God is love,” we read in the Bible; but how do we know? We know because he demonstrates his love. He has done everything for us, even to the giving of his Son Jesus Christ. If we respond to God’s love by allowing him to make us into his image he will bestow his blessings upon us, and all things will be ours. Jesus did not speak idly when he said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Jesus is meek, and when we become like him we shall have the kind of victory he had. The world and the flesh will not dominate us, but we shall, by the grace of God, put all things under our feet. It behooves us to return the same kind of love that he bestows upon us. The meek inherit the earth by the simple expedient of exercising self—control in regard to it instead of allowing it to dominate them. All carnal ambition is burned out of the meek, and the love and will of God take precedence.

If I love the world I shall gain a certain amount of its pleasure, but with the gain I inherit eternal separation from God and damnation in hell. Satan is incapable of love, and so cannot respond to the goodness of our love; neither is he capable of giving any good thing. If I love God and righteousness I gain peace and eternal bliss. It lies in the power of God alone to give me these blessings. God is love.

Selfishness may gain its immediate goal, but there will be no afterglow. Hate may inflict temporary pain, but where are the merchants of hate such as Mussolini, Hitler, or Caiaphas? Greed may gain a temporary wealth, but the end of greed is despair. One wealthy man once said, “I got ulcers trying to get rich enough to eat steaks. Now I have the wealth, but my ulcers are so bad I cannot eat the steaks.” Brute strength can compel, but compulsion cannot gain a response. And if there be no response, of what value is the thing gained? God, being love, never compels a man to serve him. Had God been interested in servants by compulsion, he would have created such. He was not interested in that sort of being; he wanted beings like himself, and so he created man in his own image. Man is capable of the same kind of love that is in God, and so we must respond to his love and become like him, or know him not at all.

Love is that quality of spirit which causes the lover to give to the beloved, asking nothing in return. Love is totally unselfish. Wrapped up in the Beatitudes of Jesus are all the facets of love. Without it, who can be poor in spirit, concerned for sin, meek, righteous, merciful, peacemaking, or pure in heart? Without love, who can go the second mile, turn the other cheek, give the cloak also, keep sweet in bitter persecution, or manifest the right attitude when men falsely accuse of all manner of evil? Love is the absolute essential to being a Christian. Without it, religion is hollow and life is hell.

Pagan religions know little or nothing of love. The Buddhist sits cross-legged and stares into space trying to think himself into nothingness. The Christian becomes filled with the love and grace of God in an attempt to be something and do something worth while. The Muslim longs for a heaven with silken couches and many virgins for his wives. The Christian strives to live holy in this life and treat the wife he has with proper love and respect. The pagan kneels before an idol which he can neither love nor respect. The Christian walks in the warm fellowship of God whom he loves and adores. God returns this love, and the happy fellowship between God and his people is perpetuated.

James says, “Faith without works is dead,” and certainly the inspired writer spoke God’s truth. We take this statement of James, compare it with the Beatitudes of Jesus, and conclude that works without love are a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal Paul says, “Covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet show I unto you a more excellent way.” And here again is the more excellent way of our teat: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels (everybody seemed to wait to speak in some language other than his own. Carnal men are always wanting to do the sensational), and have not charity, I am … sounding brass.” No matter what I may be able to do, if I have no love—but let me use J. B. Phillips’ translation: “If I were to speak with the combined eloquence of men and angels I should stir men like a fanfare of trumpets or the crashing of cymbals, but unless I had love, I should do nothing more.” [* Used by permission from Letters to Young Churches, copyright 1947, by the MacMillan Company.] Though I should sing like as angel; though I should play like David upon an instrument of many strings; though I should preach like Paul, know the doctrine like the finest theologian, serve on the official board—no matter what I do or where I serve, if I have not a love that gives, I am only an echoing noise. What a solemn warning Paul sounds: “But I keep under my body, and bring it unto subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway” (I Cor. 9:27).

We must learn how to love because love is no optional matter. An ultimatum is laid upon us. It is to love or be lost. I would rather know how to love than how to preach. I would rather know how to love than how to heal, perform miracles, or die a martyr. I have listened to sermons that did not say much, but they spoke love to my soul, and I was blessed. I have listened to songs rather poorly sung, but they carried the message of love. Nothing in—the Christian life or service can be professional and still be successful. Oh, it may gain a crowd and make the front page of the papers, but success in Christian service cannot be written on paper or spoken by mouth. Success in Christian service must be written in the hearts of those we serve. Our hearers may be impressed with our wisdom, knowledge, or ability, but they will never be moved toward God except through love.

“Jesus went about doing good” because he loved. He healed the sick because “he was moved with compassion.” Everything worth while in life is motivated by love.

This love of God cannot fully possess us except, as we are possessed by the Holy Spirit. The law of expediency took Jesus back to heaven after he had finished his work of redemption. Then the law of love caused the Holy Spirit to come as the sanctifier of redeemed men. He comes as the ambassador of Christ to reign in our poor hearts. When he comes, self is dethroned and Christ becomes all. Then, and then only, can we love as God loves, and we do it, not in our strength or goodness but through the possessive power of his divine presence. Until we are filly possessed of him we shall have a lot of hollow echoes in our soul, because our souls are empty. When he comes he fills the soul with his own holy presence and enables us to love. True love is selfless.

There is a story told of one of the Church Fathers who often bathed in a flowing stream near the university. One day a young student came running into his presence crying, “Master, master, what is truth?” The good doctor reputedly grabbed the impetuous young man, pushed his head under the water, and held him there until he was quite exhausted for lack of air. He then let him up and said, “My young gentleman, when you want to know truth as badly as you wanted air a moment ago, you will find it.” When you and I want perfect love and feel that it is as essential to our spiritual well-being as air to our physical well-being we shall die out to all self-will, hatred, envy, and such things. Then when we are entirely emptied of self the promised Holy Spirit will come in and love through us.

There is a way of complete and absolute surrender to the will of God. When this surrender is made, the promised Holy Spirit comes in, fills our souls and thus sanctifies us by leaving no room for self. Religion then becomes meaningful, and there are no echoes in either our lives or innermost spirits. It is the “way, of love.”

Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven, to earth come down;
Fix in us Thy humble dwelling,

All Thy faithful mercies crown.
Jesus, Thou art all compassion,
Pure, unbounded love Thou art;
Visit us with Thy salvation,
Enter every trembling heart.
—Charles Wesley