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LOVE IS PURER
THAN THE
PEAK SNOW-CRESTED,
MORE VITAL
THAN ITS DASHING STREAMS:
THE LOVE OF
GOD ALONE
Rev. Dr. Robert E. Donaldson
Published by World Wide Web
Witness Inc.
September, 2004
ISBN 0 9756840 3 5
Preface
The Love of God,
Higher than the Snow-Capped Peak
More Vital than Vernal Fountains
It seems good and useful to compile
from the numerous chapters on this topic on our site, a collection which, unlike
those within The PQ (the Predestination Quaternion) will not focus on this
aspect so much as on areas which, while they may touch this, are diverse.
In these, we have sought to compile
them in sequence, according to emphasis and direction, so that they can readily
be made into a form
of progressive reading, aiding the comprehension.
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The love of God has been so abused
in language, 'for God's sake'
and the like betokening a frustrated appeal for
some kind of sanity
rather than a request for the love of God;
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it has been so misused in practice
by those affirming
their own pretended lordship is in some way
an expression rather than an abortion of the love of God (cf. Matthew 23:8-10),
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so that many have even tortured,
regarding crucifying as 'love',
when they should rather themselves be voluntarily 'crucified with Christ',
seeking not to rule with force and cruelty, but in the truth and redemption of
Christ,
to act as brethren:
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that it is good to reflect on its
authentic actuality as shown in Christ and His teaching.
To know it, you need to know God, and hence first to find Him.
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To do that, you need a repentant
heart, a grant of the grace of God, and to seek for it, for those who seek, find;
and you need to be founded not on your classic or other ideas of religion, but
on the word of God, whose mouth has not, after all, been dissevered from His
Being!
When once you know God, then His
friendship has a love, His compassion has a personal tenderness for which the
Bible so often uses the term 'lovingkindness', and His presence has a lustre
which words must be sought to describe. That is the way of reality, which does
not look for some reckless, feckless or hectoring realty of this world to relate
to a word, as if in abortive analogy. Instead, having met the actuality, one seeks
rather for the words to cover the experimental case, the awesome and acute
actuality which one finds from following the word of God to the God of the word, and
in the
salvation of Christ as depicted, who lives in the Christian (Colossians 1:27),
to rejoice in the presence and working of God as wrought in one's
heart, imbuing one's mind and directing one's paths.
In this volume, many aspects of this
torrential magnificence in the alpine scenery of the spirit will be covered, and
it is recommended to those who seek the Lord, to adore and love Him, to know and
work for Him, to be like Him in character increasingly, and to walk in His ways.
While ONLY He is perfect, living in glory and glorious in His life, yet His love
is shed abroad in the heart of the Christian (Romans 5:5), re-united to the
created splendour of the Creator's gift (cf. Romans 5:12-19, Colossians 3:10), so that this
ineffable wonder brings like the dawning of the day, its artistic splendour in
His own name, and occasions the response of delight (Psalm 37:5), of labour and
of devotion.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Myths and Religion -
we start with the general errors that divert from God as we begin our search
Not with a symbolic cross did Christ love, and where He went we must go
Taken from Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 7
Chapter 2
Bogus or Beautiful -
in the special field of love
more particularly, we consider the
symptoms of artful symbols or substitutes, and the grandeur of the real
Taken from Red Heart, Dead Heart and Pure Heart Ch. 6 -
Sentence on
Substitutes
Chapter 3
Looking at Friendship
within the wonder of the love of God, and
seeing examples as
this glorious feature of God's presence is seen in the field of human friendship
in His presence
Taken from Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 5,
Friendship, Love and
Loveliness,
versus Enmity and Strife among mankind, and even with God
Chapter 4
The
Love that Breeds Assurance and the
Correlate of the Power that Produces Victory -
the case where 1 + 1 does not make 2.
Taken from Red Alert Ch. 7, and Biblical Blessings Ch. 16
Chapter
5 The Love that is Exuberantly Self-Sacrificial
and Splendidly Unconfined
Taken from Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Appendix 2
Having seen the authenticity of
love, the phoney follies of inane substitution, the power of it and the
practicality, we come now to its intensity, insistence not on forcing itself,
but doing all that sacrifice can find to render ready the way of response,
opportunity profound and that naturalness which only the supernatural can supply
for man, since it is most unnatural to deny the Author of one's own nature.
Chapter
6
Love in the Kingdom of Heaven
Now we survey the scene where love
is operative in righteousness, purity and peace, where hearts congregate and
spirits aggregate, not like bees, far less ants, though with the discipline of
both, a Kingdom of which every Christian is a member, where the dynamic visa
works and the air is the atmosphere of roses, their red the payment often
required while one is a pilgrim in this world, since this Kingdom is not wanted
on voyage by the multitude on earth, to so large a degree, that to be a citizen
of the Kingdom of Heaven is rather like being a German in Australia in World War
I.
At times, however, it can be more
like a hostage in the hands of al Qaeda, whose mercies are legendary by their
vacations.
Taken from News 23.
Chapter
7
Love is not Another Thing
It is not enough
to realise the profound evils of fraud where love is concerned,
which is rampant in human and divine dimensions, since man frequently deceives
himself,
his partners and seeks even to deceive his God,
or acts as if deception were so de rigueur that one does not even think
about it,
just performing ...
It must be
realised that DIVINE LOVE IS NOT ANOTHER THING, nor is any resultant that flows
from it, as the fresh waters from the snow-clad peaks.
This is taken from
The Power of Christ's Resurrection and the
Fellowship of His Sufferings Ch. 7
Chapter 8
The Love of the Child and of the
Father
Translated to Man and for him.
The love of God for children is shown in ways positive and negative, to this
world, and the WOE because of offences thunders like a Florida with perpetual
hurricanes.
In some
ways, it then becomes good to compare man to the condition of children, in that
man cannot enter the kingdom of heaven unless he humbles himself and becomes as
a little child.
Therefore we first take Ch. 3 from Little Things, and then from SMR a
short topical adventure on the latter point, from pp. 620-623.
Chapter 9
LOVE ON MISSION
What love does not bother, and
what love does not go, remains immovable, inert, seduced by success, satiated
with self-respect ? One cannot but think that such a person's love would not be
as the rose, but as the ginko, were it ever stirred.
Missionaries are not angels, and
some of these doubtless have been seduced by their own errors, just as many
pound the pavements of this earth in order the better to earn a remittance of
remedy adequate to get them to those gates from which the sentence on
presumption still rings: I NEVER KNEW YOU (Matthew 7:21). However, the mere
presence of quacks does not remove skilful doctors from being extant, nor does
fraud here remove the authentic vision and love of the missionary.
The greatest of these is Christ,
without whom there would be only hell, and no scope for mission at all.
Taken from SMR pp. 582-594.
Chapter 10
LOVE IN INTERMISSION
HUMAN FOULINGS OF THE PURITY OF
LOVE
RESEMBLE THEIR FOULING OF THE SEA AND ATMOSPHERE.
YOU CANNOT FOUL GOD, BUT YOU CAN FOUL YOUR UNDERSTANDING,
POLLUTE YOUR HEART |
AND ENTER A FORCEFUL GLIDE
TO THE OBLIVION OF LOVE IN YOUR LIFE.
Taken from Spiritual Refreshings
... Ch. 9.
Chapter 11
LOVE AT WORK
Love's very purity is the
certainty that it will not leave folly alone, impurity in charge or declivity on
track.
This is taken from Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 10.
Chapter 12
LOVE IS AMPLE, BUT NOT AMPLIFIED
INTO WHAT IT IS NOT
The love of God is insistent,
persistent, tenacious and true.
It is neither narrowed to the
program of the salesman nor extended into the fallacies of laxity.
Its loss by delusion is the basis of
much confusion, and its intimacy with the truth of God, makes a lapse in either
wing, likely to affect the other.
This is taken from Spiritual
Refreshings ... Ch. 12
Chapter
13
THE CRITERION OF LOVE, THE MEANING
OF LIFE
AND THE KEY OF DESTINY
Love explains what wisdom palls to
find without it. Its absence voids access to reality, and its refusal when it is
from God, is like asking to have the atmosphere turned off.
This is taken from Spiritual
Refreshings... Ch. 15.
Chapter 14
USE-OBJECTS AND
LOVED CREATIONS:
THE VAST CONTRAST
The ways of love
are considered, in the light of the Lord, and examples of His dealings
illustrate.
This is taken from
Overflight in Christ, Ch. 2.
Chapter 15
LOVE APPLIED
Rivers that live are lively, and
their results
are found in abundant realities
and realties.
Vain religion wants an emotional
swamp or a philosophic pastichel but God gives life.
This is taken from The Biblical Workman, Chapter
6
CHAPTER 16
THE INGREDIENTS IN
A CREATION TO LOVE
Having seen how the
heights of love are applied, we consider now its pre-conditions for man.
Love can be
emotional, spiritual, but it is limited until there is a likeness that has a
match for inter-relation. It is aborted where there is only program; contorted
where there is self-limited desire and consummated where its heights become
mountains of aspiration,
and its depths profundities of peace.
Taken from
Deliverance from Disorientation Chapter 8
CHAPTER
17
THE LOVE THAT GROWS COLD
DOES NOT KNOW ITS FIRE
This is taken from His Time is
Near, Ch. 5.
CHAPTER 18
THE WORD, THE WAY AND THE LOVE
ARE BONDED BEYOND PARTING
Fruits of Love
This is taken from His Time is
Near Ch. 6