What is love? Oh baby, don't hurt me (Romans 8:38-39)

Paul has quite the way with words. In a single sentence, he paints this amazing picture of the vastness of the love of God. Granted Paul liked to use big sentences, but it’s not the eloquence or flair that we’re drawn to. It’s not the words, but the power of God in those words.

We believe we can describe love, yet we can’t possibly describe the all-encompassing nature of God. How can this be when God is love (1 John 4:8)? The truth of it is that our definition of love is just as inadequate as our low understanding of God. One attempt at understanding God’s character is in “Quiet Talks on Prayer” by S.D. Gordon. “You see God is so much that it takes a number of earth’s relationships put together to get a good suggestion of what He is.”

1. He is a father: This is the most popular relationship people connect with God, probably because this is the word Jesus used all the time. “Father stands for strength, loving strength. A father plans, and provides for, and protects his loved ones.” But this is where most people stop. God is so much more than just a father.
2. He is a mother: He’s what? God can’t be a woman! He’s a man! We’ll I’m sorry to burst your macho bubble, but woman was also created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). There are many references to God in a motherly way. Matthew 23:31 for example. “Mother stands for love, - great, patient, tender, fine-fibered, enduring love. What would she not do for a loved one!”
3. He is a friend: By friend, we’re talking BEST friend. The only friend that you share all your secret thoughts that no one else in the world knows. “A friend is one who loves you for your sake only and steadfastly loves without regard to any return, even a return-love.”
4. He is a lover: Hold on now! This is getting inappropriate! Children might here you say that! “I mean the rare fine word lover. Where two have met, and acquaintance has deepened into friendship, and that in turn into the holiest emotion, the highest friendship. What would he not do for her! She becomes the new human centre of his life. In a good sense he worships the ground she treads upon. And she-she will leave wealth for poverty if only so that she may be with him in the coming days.”
5. He is a husband: Many would think of a husband as an ex-lover. The chase is over and there is no more need to exert any effort. “In God’s thought a husband is a lover plus. He is all that the finest lover is, and more; more tender, more eager, more thoughtful. Two lives are joined, and begin living one life. Two wills, yet one. Two persons, yet one purpose. Duality in unity.”
6. He is a wife: S.D. Gordon doesn’t include wife in his list perhaps because he’s rolled it into his description of the husband. For me as a newlywed, describing God as a husband but not a wife is like describing God as a father but not a mother. My wife has brought such a new aspect of love that I’ve never known before. Her love is a foundational love that is vital in encouragement and provides the footing to stand in confidence for what is right when no one else will. You can step out because you know, even if everyone else hates you for it, it doesn’t matter, because you already have her love and no one else’s opinion matters.

S.D. Gordon concludes with this: “Now, please, do not you take one of these words, and say, ‘I like that’: and you another say, ‘That conception of God appeals to me,’ and you another. How we do whittle God down to our narrow conceptions! You must take all [six] words, and think the finest meaning into each, and then put them all together, to get a close up idea of God. He is all that, and more.”

If you keep a picture of God in your wallet: