The Surpassing Love of Christ, by Alexander Smellie, 1907

“The love of Christ which surpasses knowledge!” Ephesians 3:19

His love stoops!

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, forlorn, and penitent man outside the pale of His grace.

His love suffers!

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 Savior’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 gives!

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 lasts!

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, 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.

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 sadder than that. Bathed in Christ’s love–I should be so indifferent, so forgetful, so cold!

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich!” 2 Corinthians 8:9