In 1917, Frederick Lehman, a California businessman beset by financial setbacks, wrote the lyrics to the hymn, “The Love of God.” His inspiration led him quickly to pen the first two stanzas, but he got stuck on the third. He recalled a poem that had been discovered years earlier, written on the walls of a prison. No one knows the prisoner who scratched it there into the stone, but it expressed a deep awareness of God’s love. The poem happened to be in the same meter as Lehman’s hymn. He made it his third stanza (Our Daily Bread, Kenneth Peterson). Here is the hymn:
- The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.
Refrain:
Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
- When hoary time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song. - 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 ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Never give up! Above, a financial failure and a seemingly hopeless prison sentence could not separate these men from the love of God. This love is expressed “beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell, reconciles the erring child, and pardons the guilty and sinful.” It “endures, is measureless, strong, and at the very heart of the angels’ song.” Romans 8 describes it this way, 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Whatever your condition, no matter how bad your predicament seems to be, “Jesus is at the door of your heart, knocking. He desires to enter into your life as a rescuer and friend” (Revelations 3:20). Humbly “cast all your cares on Him, because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).
By the way, the hymn above has been recorded and popularized by Mercy Me. Listen to and meditate on “the love of God”.