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"The Best Thanksgiving for the Greatest Love"
Jim Newcomer, Associate Pastor
One virtue that our culture prizes is commitment. We love to watch it in an athlete. We admire it in the life of an artist. We respect its presence in the life of a scholar. Personally, I think it is at its highest expression when it is directed towards the God of the Bible. David Brainerd displayed it. He was an American colonial missionary to the Indians who died at the age of twenty-nine. His diary reveals a young man intensely committed to God. He once communicated the following to Jonathan Edwards:
I do not go to heaven to be advanced but to give honor to God. It is no matter where I shall be stationed in heaven, whether I have a high seat or a low seat there…. My heaven is to please God and glorify Him, and give all to Him, and to be wholly devoted to His glory.
Wow. Now there’s a guy who lived and breathed commitment to God. And so did William Booth, the Founder of the Salvation Army. He once wrote:
God has had all there was of me. There have been men with greater brains than I, even with greater opportunities, but from the day I got the poor of London on my heart and caught a vision of what Jesus Christ could do with me and them, on that day I made up my mind that God should have all of William Booth there was. And if there is anything of power in the Salvation Army, it is because God has had all the adoration of my heart, all the power of my will, and all the influence of my life.
Watching such commitment as that of Brainerd and Booth is like watching a waterfall—we are struck with its beauty, rarity, power and consistency.
But we are immediately faced with a legitimate question: What moves a man or woman to such commitment to God? Does it come out of a vacuum within…from out of nowhere, or is it driven by something from without? I believe that the Bible explicitly points out that such commitment is the only reasonable response to a glimpse of God’s love. Even a brisk walk through the pages of the Bible reveals five realities about the Love of God.
First, God’s love is unconditional. The Apostle Paul could never get over this fact. He wrote to the believers at Rome: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Think about the meaning of that verse! When we were the least loveable (i.e., “sinners”), God loved us the most (i.e., “Christ died for us”)! Mark it down: God’s love is not some plateau to which we may ascend in our own strength and on our own merits. We have no strength or merits. We are dead in sin, and we are at the mercy of a God who descends to our need (Eph. 2:1-9, Phil. 2:6-8).
Second, God’s love is unselfish. His is a love that gives…relentlessly! The daughter of the printer who was working on Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible was curious about her dad’s project. She ventured into the shop and found a scrap of paper with part of a Bible verse on it—John 3:16. The scrap contained only the first couple of words of this beloved verse—“God so loved the world that He gave….” How simple, yet how profound! Scripture is replete with references to God’s unselfish love (e.g., 1 Jn 3:16; 4:8, 10; Titus 3:4-6).
Third, God’s love is unbreakable. While weather, time, circumstance, moods, people and plans change, God love remains unmoved wherever it lands! The Apostle Paul again writes to the Romans: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:35, 38-39). Now that is called security!
Fourth, God’s love is unmeasureable. At just the time when we think we have a handle on understanding God’s love we read these words in the Bible: “The love of Christ…surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:19). Read the entire context (3:14-21) and you’ll see that His love for His own has no limits. No boundaries. As the hymn writer put it: “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 oceans dry//Nor could the scroll contain the whole//Though stretched from sky to sky.”
Finally, God’s love is unforgettable. Here is where commitment surfaces—the stuff Brainerd and Booth were made of. Paul too. The Apostle gives his own story: “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore, all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf” (2Cor. 5:14-15).
If you have accepted God’s free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus, look afresh at His great love for you, and give back to Him total commitment (Rom. 12:1). If you have yet to receive His free gift, what could possibly hold you back from such a love?
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