God's Abounding Love

Today as I continue my Holy Week meditation theme on the Character of God, I am thinking about God's abounding love, or as the NASB translates it, "lovingkindness".  Again, this is one of the descriptions God uses of himself when He reveals Himself to Moses - Exodus 34:6-7 NIV:

[6] "And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, [7] maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin...."

The original Hebrew here translated abounding love, is 'rab checed'.  The word rab is an adjective that describes something as much, many, great, abounding in, more numerous than, abundant, strong, greater than.  The word checed is defined as goodness, kindness, faithfulness and is often translated mercy. So we could say that God reveals himself as abounding in, having more than enough goodness, kindness, faithfulness and mercy.

This is good news, because He is saying He doesn't run out, doesn't come to an end of His goodness, His kindness, His faithfulness and His mercy.  In other words He will never lack these attributes, especially as He deals with us and our human inadequacy and weakness.  This is definitely one area where I appreciate God's non-humanness.  We try to understand God, and so we tend to apply what we observe in man and apply it to God, taking our observed characteristics and somehow mapping these to an infinite God.  It gives us helpful insight, but to think that we have complete understanding would be fallacious.

One of  my favorite authors, A.W. Tozer describes God's infinite characteristics in his book, "The Knowledge of The Holy", and He walks through each of the main characteristics or attributes and meditates on each, building a foundation of thought that is so important.  As He says in in his introduction to the topic, "All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him." (Tozer, page 2)  He goes on to say the following about God's infinitude, as a precursor to his discussion of His attributes:

"The reason for our dilemma has been suggested before. We are trying to envision a mode of being altogether foreign to us, and wholly unlike anything we have known in our familiar world of matter, space, and time.

"Here, and in all our meditations upon the qualities and content of God," writes Novatian, "we pass beyond our power of fit conception, nor can human eloquence put forth a power commensurate with His greatness. At the contemplation and utterance of His majesty all eloquence is rightly dumb, all mental effort is feeble. For God is greater than mind itself. His greatness cannot be conceived. Nay, could we conceive of His greatness He would be less than the human mind which could form the conception. He is greater than all language, and no statement can express Him. Indeed, if any statement could express Him, He would be less than human speech which could by such statement comprehend and gather up all that He is. All our thoughts about Him will be less than He, and our loftiest utterances will be trivialities in comparison with Him." (Tozer, pg 45)

Continuing on he adds:

"He is above all this, outside of it, beyond it. Our concepts of measurement embrace mountains and men, atoms and stars, gravity, energy, numbers, speed, but never God. We cannot speak of measure or amount or size or weight and at the same time be speaking of God, for these tell of degrees and there are no degrees in God. All that He is He is without growth or addition or development. Nothing in God is less or more, or large or small. He is what He is in Himself, without qualifying thought or word. He is simply God." (Tozer, page 45)

All of this, plus much more is from Tozer's reflection just on God and His infinitude.  If we take this and then apply our minds to His faithfulness, kindness, goodness and mercy, we realize that we cannot possibly fully comprehend God's word's about Himself.  We can define the words from our human experience, but we can't define the fullness of what is meant by God in His statements.  His understanding of Himself is perfect, and His words about Himself, limited as they are to our human understanding of language, are still but a shadow of understanding. This is a shadow of what God means when He says abounding, something beyond our ability to understand, grasp or communicate,and at the same time more than our best understanding.

Reflecting on God's Lovingkindness, Tozer writes the following, after a brief discussion of John's statement that God is love (1 John 4:7-8).

"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." (Tozer, pg 98).

He goes onto discuss God's love as follows:

"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." (Tozer, 98).

"Love is also an emotional identification. It considers nothing its own but gives all freely to the object of its affection." (Tozer, page 100)

"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." (Tozer, page 100)

- and -

"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." (Tozer, page 100)

Finally, Jesus defined His love, and invited us to do the same - John 15:12-13 NIV: "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. [13] Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."   We celebrate Him doing exactly that this Holy Week, and we can gaze from this distance of understanding that God loves us that much, and gave His own life for us.  We can understand that action to the best of our ability, and yet never fully grasp God's statement that He is abounding in lovingkindness.  What He ultimately means, we will one day understand, and that will be a fantastic day.

In the meantime I am grateful for His revelation.  He loves me!  His love, kindness, goodness and faithfulness towards me will never end,

Amen!