God's Love

“We are apt to judge God by ourselves, and to imagine that because we change, He must.”

“Not only may we say that “God so loved the world," but also, God so loves the world.

“We are apt to judge God by ourselves, and to imagine that because we change, He must. We are apt to think because our love may be more intense at some times than at others, or may be transferred to other objects or withdrawn altogether from those on which it was fixed, that so it is with Him. But we wrong the Deity. We think of Him as encompassed with human frailty. We forget that there is no change in Him. His love is like the sun, which ever sheds forth its beams the same, the warmth or the cold which we feel being caused not by any irregularity in his shining, but by our being turned towards or away from him. So the different sense of God’s love which we may have, results not from any change in Him, but in ourselves, according as our hearts are turned towards Him or away from Him. But from Him there proceeds the ceaseless, boundless, warm rays of love.

– From Laird, Samuel. Selection of Sermons Philadelphia: General Council Publication House. 1914. Lutheran Library edition forthcoming.