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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.

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