The Love of God — T.M. Anderson

I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth.

For thy sakes I sanctify myself that they might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for all them also which shall believe on me through thy word that took me in. That they only be one as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them, that they might be one even as we are. I am them, thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved me, loved them as thou hast loved me.

Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory that thou hast given me, for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.

And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.". I never read the seventeenth of John, but what I feel that I'm intruding somehow into the privacy of the prayer life of my Lord.

The Vastness of God’s Love

But I've been praying earnestly since the early morning hour as to the message. It isn't a question of what to preach in the morning, it's where to find a bay, a pail of water here at the ocean, but what is his message.

And I still believe I have his message, I'm confident I do, and I'm going to preach to you as best I can on the love of the Lord. Put your ears open and your heart toward him, and the Divine Spirit will make clear to you what I am incapable of making, because to me it's as vast as the seven seas.

It's measureless and unfathomable, but at least we can get a bit of it and recognize something of the significance of the Savior's prayer, where it closes here with the twenty-sixth verse. I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it, now you'll notice that there is progression there, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me, now just ponder that one a moment, the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them, in them.

For the sake of those who are making the recording and some that are taking notes, I will project for you four aspects of this that I would want to discuss, but see how far we get. One of them is to bring before you the fact of the principle, the principle of God's true love.

We want to look at that a little, because it's very, very essential. Then when we have viewed that a little, then let's come closer to the passage and take a look at the prayer for God's love, for the whole of it is a prayer, a holy petition, and let's view it in that light.

Then if time is still allotted us, then let's look at the possession of God's love. For he said that it might be in them, becoming an integral part of a possession of their spiritual being. And then the fourth we would view, and that is the perfection of his love, because he used that word, that they might be made perfect in one, for various reasons of it.

So I'll talk to you like you didn't know anything about it, and I won't miss any of you. But I am confident that when you leave this camp, you will find occasion to rest yourself upon the love of God as perhaps you never have before, because the dangers of the days in which we live are becoming more and more evident, and the world is hurrying toward the climax.

Something is pending. It is either a world war, a clash of nations that would make the other world war look like a catfight in the backyard compared with its destruction, or it may be the coming of the Lord.

But in any event, if it's a war, and he wants us to go through it, I want something that will give me poise and balance and stability, whether I'm a martyr to communism or whether I'm evaporated and blown into nothing by a bomb.

I want that that will stabilize me. And if it is the second coming of the Lord, I want to be found loving him when he comes. Now, that love to me is high standard in living on that relationship with the norm of spiritual life.

God’s Love as an Inherent Divine Principle

Therefore, I come in to the study of it from the standpoint of the principle of God's love. And if you understand the principle, it is that quality, that inherent quality of the divine nature. For it is expressly stated that God is love.

And you may think that the preacher is a little far-fetched, but think it over when I tell you that John 3 .16 existed before creation, and out of that came the creation, and that it is evidently an inherent principle of the divine nature and of the entire government of the eternal God.

But let's analyze it from this standpoint. Let's go back to the divine nature and find the principle manifest in a desire. Had it ever occurred to you that God has a desire for love, and that that desire must somewhere be gratified or compensated, and that there must be something to answer to that desire in its mutual return, or else it would be a rather strange thing to have a desire for which there was nothing to satisfy.

Therefore, God has a desire. And when you go back basically to that, you've gone back to a basic principle. What does he want? What is his desire? What's he seeking? What's it all about? So then go back into that and ask yourself this question, why did he create me in the first place?

Am I an afterthought of God? Am I a product of a strong, drawn-out process of evolution, or am I a direct creation of God? If so, why? Why? Why am I here? Or answer the salvage question, what is man that thou art mindful of him?

What is it? The only thing I can tell you is that it's the gratification that man is the answer to a divine desire. And that desire is to have a creature that he can love. I don't know what place angels fill in his economy.

I don't know what place they occupy in his great system. I know this, that they are ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them who are the heirs of salvation. I know that. But somehow or other, the man, the creature that he made in his own image, is different.

And that as far as revelation is concerned, he's the only creature that's ever been made in the image and likeness of God. He stood next to his Maker. Had you ever thought of that? There isn't anything to tell you that an angel was made in his image, nor a seraphim, nor whatever they are, but a man is.

He stood next to his Maker. Did you ever wonder about what God said and what he was thinking when he said about the man after he'd created him and placed him in an environment conducive to every form of happiness and pleasure, a garden glorious in its beauty, with not a want, with not a wickedness, with not a wrinkle, with not a sickness?

And yet when he had created that and put the man in it, then, as if to have an afterthought, he turned around and said, It isn't good for the man to be alone. Alone? Would he be alone in such a paradise?

Would he be alone in such a surrounding? I think God was thinking out loud about himself, and what he's saying is, It isn't good for me to be alone. And Jesus, he left the glories of heaven, the adoration of the angels, the beauty of that world, and he laid it all aside and come down here to be a companion of humble fishermen and men of this world, and found more happiness in living with them and associating with them than he did back in heaven.

And when he left them, he said, I'll be back again, for I'll be alone without you. I'll be alone without you. Therefore, you can see something about what it is and where you fill a peculiar place in the desire of God.

God’s Decisive Pursuit of the Sinner

Not only, then, is there that principle in which there is that desire, but there is a principle in which there was a decision to be made. Because to gratify that desire, to fulfill it in its beauty, it required a decisive act to do something.

And what do you think he wanted with you anyway, or wanted with me? When I was a ragged lad, without a father, with a mother that had been gone and married and left me homeless, and he was much seen at eighteen, nineteen years of age, I think as Methuselah did nine hundred and sixty-nine, what did he want with me?

Why did he beat a trail to my door? Why did he seek me out? I don't know. And you're still a mystery to yourself how he ever got to you or why he ever come to you. It looks like if he'd done a just thing, he'd have washed his hands of you and let you drop into hell and be forgotten forever.

But he didn't. He didn't. He didn't. And when you're disobeying and turn your back on him and act a fool and go out as a prodigal, he stands in the front yard like a father and scans the horizon. He never went back in the house.

He never went back in the house. He stood out there. And he saw that boy when he turned that bend in the road. They were looking for him. And God's expecting you. He's lonely without you. And when he saw that boy coming around that bend in the road, he knew him.

The boys started running toward home, and the daddy started running toward the boy, and they met on the highway. And I said, well, besides the devil that was in between them, he'd get mad. Then he threw his arms about him and embraced him and smothered his repentance under his robe.

You were like that. Then love yet yearned over you and longed for you. And if you were here this morning in spirits of defeat, he's expecting you to come back. He's not going to the hog pen with you. But if you leave the hog pen and come home, he'll meet you on the road somewhere.

I think that boy listened to that old sow Ethan, and he said, listen, hogs, if you get your supper at the next meal, somebody else will give it to you. I'm going home. A decision is made in that that he wants to do something for you.

And the greatness of a desire and the principle operates out there. And then Jesus said to the father in this prayer, I have declared thy name, and I will declare it. Yes, sir. He's declared the name of the Lord.

And in his declaration of that name, which comes from a great word, meaning to reveal by word of mouth as well as by deed of word, he said, I want to confer that name on you. Therefore, to make it known to him means he wants to confer that on you.

And had you ever thought that when a white woman becomes in this nation, of ours, in our civilization, when she becomes the wife, she takes his name, and that he has declared his name and conferred his name on her?

And has it ever occurred to you that every child born in that union bears the father's name, and that he always identifies his children and identifies his companions? Do you think if my wife were to walk in here this morning that I wouldn't know that she was my wife?

Do you think for one moment I could get mixed up with somebody else's wife and wouldn't know her? Do you think if one of my children walked in here, they'd have to have a tag on them and say, I'm your child?

Why, man, I'd know it anywhere I saw it. And you can send your children out to a Sunday school picnic with 500 other children, and you'd know it by just looking at it. You never get mixed up with anybody else's.

And God never gets his mixed up with any of the devil's brats. He's conferred that name on you. And it's a sight what he'll do about that name. You know, the preacher told us last evening about thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Profanity, that's incidental in that. What he's really saying is this, if you're going to bear my name, you'll be a credit to me, don't you, profanity? Don't you just raise my name, I've got that on you.

And it's my new name of love. Why, there in the book of Revelation it said, I have written the name of my God and of the city of my God on my people. Now, there is his name and his address. So that when the postman comes around on the resurrection morning and sees your name, God's name on you and address, he'll put you in the right place.

He knows. We know what city you belong in and knows your address. Now, Miss Sippy some years ago had been away from home about four or five weeks and got a letter from my wife. Oh, I get a lot of them.

But in that particular letter, back in that day, she said, please send me some money. That's not unusual. And then as if to justify her request, she told me about the bills, like the light bill and the water bill and a few things that have fallen due, insurance.

Well, I just had a little in the bank. I think my bank account was then running in two figures. And I said, here's a check, just my name signed to it. You go ahead and cash it and get what's in there anyway.

Then when I got back home, I said to the banker, I don't know much about this business, but I can't afford to have my wife writing to me all over the country for money. And I said, the two of us are one, and whatever we've got, it belongs to both of us.

Now, how can she manage it? He said, just sign your name, put hers under it. She'll get all she's got, and she's doing that now. The reason she can sign my name is because she's just my wife. And when you've got his name, you can just sign it to any of those checks on the bank of heaven.

Christ’s Intercessory Prayer for Believers

And I never had no one of me to bounce. Never had that one to come back and said, oh, the principal in there. Now, let's move it again into the matter of his prayer. I told you, I feel like I've intruded into the sacredness of his prayer.

But he had previously made this announcement. Then the 14th of January, he said, if you love me and you keep my commandments, I'll put you on my prayer list, and I will pray the Father for you. Now, he didn't say there in the 14th of January, unless you try to read it into it, he didn't say in that, I'll pray the Father to give you another comfort.

He didn't say that. The gift of the Holy Spirit came through the passion of the cross and not from the prayer of the Savior. But what he did was, he prayed for his people. And the Divine Spirit makes that prayer real.

That's how it's answered. So when he said, I'll pray for you, just write the 17th of John into that. Then when you've got all in the 17th of John, then say, now how will this come to pass? It'll come to pass by the power of the Divine Spirit.

But now let's look at that prayer of love. You know, I can understand why I would need to pray, but I have a difficulty to understand why God would need to pray for me. That's the mystery. I can understand why I would need to press my claim at the court and to seek help from the Father, but how about the Son of God praying for you?

Now, what kind of love is it? That puts you on a prayer list, lifts you up before the presence of the Father, and talks to him about you. You know, when Jesus was preaching, in his preaching he was talking to man about God.

But in his praying, he's talking to God about man. And it comes from a great word, an intercessor. And an intercessor is one that's bringing— sometimes it may be bringing a charge in a court of law, a complaint, and asking for justice.

Why that woman went into that court of law before that unjust judge and asked for a decision. That's the reason why he said, you then must keep crying until the final decision is handed down. And he handed down.

One of these days will come when the Father will say, son, I've heard enough. Now go down there and clean up that mess, and his elect will be avenged. But that ain't it. Here it is, he is interceding, he's holding a conference between the Father and you.

And had you ever thought that this prayer of divine love is a living, immortal something? Whoever asked me that question, how you could get what it was you were seeking, whether it was your regeneration or your sanctification, I'll tell you how you can get it.

If you ever get down on your knees any place at this altar or any other place, if there happened to be a man or a woman around there to stand there and help you pray, that's all right. But I want you to see that there's another one to lead them by, and that's Jesus Christ.

You're a praying, he's a praying. That other person there to tell you to lift up your hands or to let go or to hang on or something else, they're not helping you near as much as he is. And that prayer is just as vital and as much alive today as it was when it came out of his heart in that upper room.

Why, man, there's nothing to keep you from getting the blessing when he's a loving praying for you. And it's the prayer of a lover. It looks like you ought to get it, don't it? Why, man, it looks to me like it'd be much more difficult not to get it than it would be to get it.

He's a praying for you. But that intercession not only involves that, but that intercession means kind of holding a conference over you. It's a conversation between God and his Son and the child that he loves.

A Personal Story of Intercession and Healing

Interesting. I'll tell you this, and I—oh, I had so many of them, but I'll tell you one anyway. Maybe that'll illustrate it a little. I was in a meeting for just a night or two, two nights, I think, in a week in Jackson, Mississippi, during the time of the great Asbury revival.

And I came out of a church and stopped by at a restaurant to get a—it was on a Wednesday night, I think. I wanted a glass of warm milk. We had 90 miles to drive through, cold weather. And I noticed a man and a woman in there, a young woman.

They seemed to be under such a burden, distracted. They couldn't—just didn't hardly know how to wait on you. And finally I said to them, Are you sick? They said, No, I'm not sick. But they said, My wife is in the hospital and she can't speak.

And it looked like she's about to die. Now, I don't know whether he's a prophet or a Catholic or anything about him. I don't know. That's beside the question. Well, I said, When I get back to my room in Jackson, Mississippi and have a little bit of rest, then I'm going to talk to the Lord about your wife in the hospital.

I had joined in an intercession. I got up the next morning quite early to keep my covenant with God. I can't tell you how I did it. I don't know. Although that woman was 90 miles away, I in one sense picked her up, just like I would this New Testament, and took her right before the Lord and talked to him about her.

That's the way Jesus does you. He just in his love just picked you up, you know, and said, Here, Father, one of my little children, and I want to talk to you about it. Then he holds a conference with the Father, and love is just filling the room.

I went back down to Mississippi a night or two after that, and I almost forgot about the restaurant. Then I went over there to get my glass of milk, and it was getting a bit late. They were just about ready to close up.

And when I opened the door and walked in, this man saw me, and he threw up both hands and said, Oh, mister, mama's up, mama's up, mama's up. And the little girl that was in there, her daughter, came over and sat down with me with great hot tears.

She said, What did you do to my mama? I said, I took her in the presence of the Lord and talked to him about her. Out of her eyes, she said, Oh, hold me up and talk to God about me. After I'm dead and forgotten, and your best friends are dead and forgotten, there'll be one that'll love you.

And he'll take you in right in there and talk to the Father about you. He'll hold you up right in there. I just imagined the Father who's got you, sir. Well, son, he is quite infirm, isn't he? Yes, he is.

Hopping around here on a cane, or lost one eye, or don't know very much. Well, he's been through quite a twist and storm and difficulty. But Father, I want to talk to you about this one. Because if you look far beyond the infirmity and get way inside there, you'll see that this one is worth everything it costs us to get it.

You've got to go a long, long way and be awfully mean if he quits talking to God about you. Now, the next time you get sort of down in the mouth and think, Well, I'm just an isolated case. Poor me. No, you're not.

You say a rich us. Is that true in the matter of an intercessory prayer? Well, let's come still closer to what the Savior said to me, the most amazing truth I've come upon. If I had found it in the book, I couldn't have taken it.

The Love Given to Believers and the Perfection of Unity

That's the love. Wherewith thou hast loved me. Now, don't miss that. Put a period down on it. Thou hast loved me, the identical love with which thou hast loved me. I want that in there. Ladies and gentlemen, how much did God love his Son?

And if he was in that peculiar place to give his Father pleasure, beyond all compare, and never disobeyed him and said, I do always those things that please him. And on the other hand, we know this, that we haven't done always those things that please him and have had to find pardoning mercy, and yet he wants to lift you to that place and put something in you.

Then he can look on you and say, in truest sense, I love you as I love my own son. And I will do as much for you as I will for my own son. There it is. And you'll find that, you'll find that, you remember, in the parable of the twenty-fifth of Matthew, where he said about certain ones, he said, as oft as you did it, unto the least of these my brethren.

You did it unto me. I'll just ask you a question, whether between you and me in the gatepost. If you've got children like I have, and a wife like I have, then don't you offer me any kind of love and respect that you won't give my wife and my babies.

I won't have it. And if you would come and do something for me and say, but I won't do anything for them, you can't do anything for me. And Jesus said, we are so closely identified in this that if you do for me what you won't do for them, I won't have it.

Bless his name. Bless his name. And when they come to take him in the garden, in the night with their staves and with their swords, he said, whom do you seek? Who are you looking for? He said, we're looking for Jesus of Nazareth.

They said, I'm hate. You keep your hands off of these. Let these alone. And if there's any knaves to be driven, if there's any stripes to be laid on, if there's any crown of thorns, if there's any privation and poverty, I'll take it, but you let these alone.

I looked at my wife and looked at my babies, and I said to myself, I can't help but say it, I mean it, that a disease walked in at that door personified and said, I've come here to afflict one member of your family, your wife or your babies or yourself.

You make a decision which one. I'd say, put it on me. Put it on me, let these alone. And he loves you to such an extent that he's saying that. And the love that thou hast in me. What a capacity we must have for the love of God.

Because it's the only quality in all the world that can fill you to your fullest measure of your capacity. And when Paul put that memorable prayer in the Ephesian letter and said that you might be filled with all the fullness of God, you'd look around and say, well, what is all the fullness?

And he said that you might be able to comprehend with all things. I'm going to stretch your head out so you can understand some things and take the wrinkles out of your mind and rub out your forgetfulness and show you this, that love is dimensional in four directions.

It's height, it's depth, it's length, and it's breadth, and he never put a peg down at the end of either one of them. And he said whenever you've thought of everything you can think of and asked for everything you can think of, God still has some more on hand.

I tried to read a little on this, Einstein's fourth dimension, and I didn't know a thing in the world about it, but here's fourth dimensions. Height, depth, length, and breadth. Any carpenter builder knows that in this world of physics, we can't have a three dimension.

This building's got a length, it's got a width, it's got a height, and that's all. But here's four. But if you ever get into four dimensions and measurements, you've got to establish a center. Therefore, if the platform on which my feet rest was the center, then there's a distance down, there's a distance up, there's a distance out, east and west.

So when Jesus Christ lives right in the center of your being, then there is a depth to love, and there is a height to love, and there is a length to it, and there is a breadth to it. Oh God, how deep is it?

It goes as low as the worst sinner has ever sunk in his sin. Till I don't stand at the rim of a pit and say, You ought to be ashamed of yourself for falling in. But I climb down in there and get under him and lift him out of there.

Oh God! It's as wide as the east is from the west. And if I sat too tall like angel, one of them to go east and one to go west, I'd say to them, shake hands, for you'll never meet again. It's as wide as the arms of the cross.

With a thief on one side and a Christian on the other, and a Christ in the middle. High is the heart of God and the tallest glory of the highest heaven. As long as eternity. That after the suns have burnt themselves to cinders on the greats of eternity and the stars have dropped out of their silver sockets, and the oceans have wept themselves to deserts and the mountains lay level with the plains, you'll never find the ghost of God camping on the grave of anybody.

It will be forever. Love that pursues you. Love that prays over you. Love that wants you for itself. Love that comprehends. Love that's completed in itself. That's what he said about it. How wonderful is that matchless love of the infinite God.

The Dimensions and Limitlessness of Divine Love

Now then, if God has that kind of love for you, it must be perfect for everything he has is perfect. But the interesting thing about it is it has nothing to do with any thought of incompleteness or imperfection of love.

It's just a term that's made something that's just finished up, just filled up. So it is that it is perfect love. And in that perfection there are three interesting things presented. One of them is all bound up in the word one, that they may be one even as we are one, said he.

I am them, and they are me, that they may be made perfect in one. Now, friends, that's union. That is union with him, one. One. We don't know much about that, I'm afraid, in the wholeness movement. We don't know much about that.

Because I fear that there's a little element of sectarianism that's slipped in. And if you don't belong to me and my crowd, boy, we'll let you alone, but that's not this. This is oneness. Oneness. This is union with him.

Until it is expressed into the church as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. One. Whatever that is, it's one. But it is not only a union with him, the coming in to be a part of him. There's no being in a union with him, but it's unity.

There's an interesting union in unity. Unity doesn't mean uniformity. God never has made us uniform. If he did, we'd be just like carpet tacks, flat heads, and all look the same. If he'd made you uniformity, then you'd have had to done like somebody else, had to dress like them, all dressed alike, and all looked alike.

And that would be a monstrosity. But you can have unity without having uniformity. Now, when the Lord gave us the view of unity and of oneness with him, he gave it to us in the matters of Pentecost. Because the fact of the Feast of Pentecost was that they first went out before that feast and gathered the first ripe heads of the barley, big, tall, and they bound them all in a bundle and brought them and waved them before the Lord.

But you see, there were just too many heads. Just too many heads. So they took them and threshed out the grain and ground it into fine flour and baked it with fire and then waved the loaf. You couldn't find any more heads now.

I look over at audiences sometimes when they're praying, and I'm always reminded of a wheat field. All the foreheads are bound and all the ankles are set up straight. That's right.