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THE SET OF THE SAIL
A.W. TOZER

CHAPTER 12
God's Love and Ours

GOD BEING WHO and what He is must love Himself with pure and perfect love.
The Persons of the Godhead love each other with a love so fiery, so tender,
that it is all a burning flame of intense desire ineffable.
God is Himself the only being whom He can love directly; all else that He
loves is for His own sake and because He finds some reflection of Himself
there .
God loves His mute creation because He sees in it an imperfect
representation of His own wisdom and power. He loves the angels and seraphim
because He sees in them some likeness of His holiness. He loves men because
He beholds in them a fallen relic of His own image.

Potentially God loves all men alike, but His active love lights upon some
men more than upon others, the degree depending upon how much of Himself He
is able to impart to them. The truly Christlike soul enjoys more of God's
love because God sees in it a truer image of Himself than in a soul less
purified. God loves His Son with infinite perfection because He is "the
brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person."
God desires that all men should become Christlike, for in so doing they
present larger and more perfect objects for the reception of His outpoured
love.
Conformity to the nature of Christ on the part of a redeemed man restores
the image of God in the soul and thus makes it possible for God to lavish on
the soul without restraint all the boundless love of which He is the
original fountain.

It is hard for a sinful man to believe that God loves Him. His own accusing
conscience tells him it could not be so. He knows that he is an enemy of God
and alienated in his mind through wicked works, and he sees in himself a
thousand moral discrepancies that unfit him for the just enjoyment of so
pure a love. Yet the whole Bible proclaims the love of God for sinful men.
We must believe in His love because He declares it and avail ourselves of
the sanctifying grace of Christ in order to receive and enjoy that love to
the full.
"For our soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest, that it
overpasseth the knowing of all creatures there is no creature that is made
that may fully know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker
loveth us. And therefore we may with grace and His help (behold) with
everlasting marvel this high, overpassing, inestimable love that Almighty
God hath to us of His goodness. And therefore we may ask of our Lover with
reverence all that we will."

God is love, and is for that reason the source of all the love there is. He
has set as the first of all commandments that we love Him with all our
hearts, but He knows that the desired love can never originate with us. "We
love him, because he first loved us," is the scriptural and psychological
pattern. We can love Him as we ought only as He inflames our minds with holy
desire.
Yet there is also a love of willing as well as of feeling. Though we may not
be conscious of any great degree of inward sensation, we may set our wills
to love God and the feeling will come of itself. Let us bring ourselves
under obedience to His revealed Word and our love for Him will grow.
Obedience will strengthen faith and faith will increase knowledge. And it is
a well-known law of the spiritual life that our love for God will spring up
and flourish just as our knowledge of Him increases. To know Him is to love
Him, and to know Him better is to love Him more.

The previous ten chapters are available on request  -  EPC@Comhem.se

ITEMS AVAILABLE BY A. W. TOZER:

The Pursuit of God, 10 chapters
The Knowledge of the Holy, 23 chapters
The Root of the Righteous, 46 chapters

Whatever Happened to Worship, 10 chapters
Worship, the missing jewel of the evangelical Church, 3 chapters

Paths to Power, 7 chapters
Jesus, Our Man in Glory, 12 chapters
Jesus, Author of Our Faith, 12 chapters

A Cross at the core of the Christian life and living  -  articles on the
subject of the Cross.

As usual, sent on request as ordinary e-mail or as MS Word files via e-mail.
Zipped files are also available via e-mail.
EPC@Comhem.se

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Lars Widerberg
The European Prophetic College
Storskiftesgatan 87
S-58334 Linkoping, Sweden

Phone + Fax:  +46 13 213630