The Love of Christ which surpasses
knowledge by Alexander Smiley from The Secret Place 1907 the love of Christ which surpasses
knowledge Ephesians chapter 3 verse 19 no love stoops like Christ's
love it abandoned place and prospects and power to save me it traveled
from the heights of heaven to the depths of sinful earth God
pure and holy chose voluntarily to make his home with me a sinner
The sole qualification I need to commend myself to him is not
my conviction of worth, but my conviction of worthlessness,
my knowledge that I am devoid of goodness and holiness. Then,
when I confess myself penniless, he will invest me with his treasures. He banishes no self-destroyed
and forlorn and penitent man outside the pale of his grace.
His love stoops. No love suffers like Christ's
love. The test of affection is its
willingness to suffer sacrifice and pain for another. Never has
any affection stood the test like the love of Jesus. It is
certain, one writes, that not for one hour on earth was our
Lord without the anguish of His passion. And at last He made
the supreme offering of His life for me. Such bitterness, such
dereliction, such unspeakable sorrow there were in my Saviour's
death. For me he bore the hiding of
his father's face on Calvary. It is an unfathomable pre-eminence
of grief. It is a horror of great darkness
which I may not pierce. His love suffers. No love gives
like Christ's love. Love is always giving. But when
was there human love with such wealth to bestow and such willingness
to communicate it as the love of Christ? In simple fact, He
imparts nothing less than Himself to me. The most unholy, the most
tempted, the most despairing, cannot desire anything more sufficient. His love gives. And no love lasts
like Christ's love. The truest and tenderest earthly
love says farewell to its beloved in death. And too often, even
on this side of the grave, doubts insinuate themselves, and suspicions
arise, and covenants are snapped and broken. It is not so with
the love of Christ. Neither things present nor things
to come, the demands of today and the contingencies of tomorrow,
chill that great heart of love. Christ's love is like himself,
eternal and unchangeable. His love lasts. Does not His wondrous love deserve
my whole soul and body, all that I have and all that I am? Nothing
is stranger and nothing more sad than that bathed in Christ's
love, I should be so indifferent, so forgetful, so cold. you