His Love Endures Forever: Reflections on the Immeasurable Love of God

by Garry J. Williams

A Love Unlike Any Other Love

God is love. There are few more quoted statements in all of Scripture. Although wonderfully simple, this truth is incredibly profound--and therefore often misunderstood, twisted, and taken out of context. Rather than remembering that it is God who is love, we too often make human love our standard.

Exploring what the Bible teaches about God's love, this book will lead you to marvel at both its unique nature and its immeasurable greatness.

Genres: Theology, Christian, Spirituality

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2016

Reviews

[Richard Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

What does it mean that God loves us? What is love unmarred by change? What is love without ignorance? What is love without need? What is eternal love ?

Garry Williams addresses these questions and more in a simultaneously accessible, academic and devotional book. Put simply this book is fantastic.

Each chapter considers something about how we should understand God's love - in relation to an aspect of how we think or a different truth about God. Following an insightful discussion of that each chapter then ends by inviting the reader to meditate and pray over the material studied with suggested questions to guide such meditation and a pre-written prayer.

Strengths
- strips away many common wrong understandings of the love of God
- invites the reader to marvel at his transcendent God
- invites the reader to worship God for the glory of his love
- presents the love of God rooted in a solid biblical (i.e. Trinitarian classical theist) foundation
- Shows how God's love relates to other truths about God such as his eternality, his omniscience, his nature as trinity, holiness etc.

Weaknesses
- Endnotes instead of footnotes (ugh)
- Only 195 pages... I want more
- a little dense in places, particularly to those not used to these ways of thinking, probably best to read a slightly easier book on the nature of God first (perhaps Nick Tucker's "12 Things God can't do")

Conclusion
I've read this three four times now and I expect to go back to it again, I reccomend this to all christians who are capable of reading it.

[Deiniol Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was excited to read this book since in my experience finding theologically rich devotional reads is difficult, and I’ve enjoyed reading it. Garry is concerned that we understand the doctrine of the love of God as God has revealed it to us, rather than beginning with our (mis)conceptions of love and projecting them onto God. At times, this means that the book feels a lot more of a description of what God’s love *is not* rather than what it *is*. But, taking a step back at the end of the book, this would not be a fair review as the book on the whole. As his framework for surveying God’s love, Garry takes the attributes of God and emphasises the need to interpret each attribute of God in light of the rest of his attributes. Those who would be critical of the Classic Theist portrayal of God, particularly on the perceived unbiblical reliance on philosophical terms to describe God, would take issue with this. Personally, I don’t share that criticism and would recommend this book, although it would require some understanding of theological terms prior to reading it. I would love to read more books with chapters in the same format as Garry’s here: Intro > Doctrine > Meditation > Prayer. It didn’t disappoint as a theologically rich devotional read for that reason.

[Matt Lillicrap · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is frankly one of the best books I have read in years. Careful theology and deep doxology.

Investigates the wonder of God’s love through the lens of the creator creature distinction in a way which is sadly all too rare in modern conceptions of God’s love. The result is rich and beautiful and a million miles from either dry theology or anaemic appeals to our emotional experience.

As calls grow to understand God’s love as though we influence his ‘emotional life’ and even his very being; as God’s love is depicted in increasingly ‘human (but bigger)’ terms; and as God’s unchangeability is challenged as though the very idea renders him passive and less loving (rather than unchangingly loving at full volume as Garry Williams beautifully shows) this is a much needed book!

(And what’s more, the sentences are far more intelligible than the one I just wrote!)

[Alexandru Croitor · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's amazing how the richness of theological reflection grounds devotion - this book's goal is orienting your heart and mind towards God's enduring, immeasurable love. Here's a quote from the book that nicely sums it up:

"God’s love is, in the words of Samuel Francis’s hymn, the “love of every love the best.” When we love, we may feel that we must be the first ever to have had this amazing intensity of experience, but before any creature ever loved, God is love. We may love with an extraordinary devotion, to the point of turning what we love into an idol and hurting it, but God’s love is always rightly proportioned. We live in a time when fatherhood is breaking down, but God is the perfect Father who makes us his children and promises never to leave us. We love because we need to love, but God loves without any need for his beloved, purely from the overflow of his goodness. Our force of affection may leave us helpless before one we love, but God is always sovereign in his love. Our love may wax and wane, but God loves with an eternal and unchanging love. Our passion varies, but God loves with a passion full of the highest degree of life. The more we discover about people, the harder it may be to love them, but God knows us perfectly from the outset and still loves us. We may harbor a desire for retribution that destroys our love, but God forgives us and at the same time maintains the demand of his own holy being for justice. We may seek a beautiful bride, but God finds us in the filth of sin and lifts us up, washes us, clothes us, and makes us beautiful. In these ways and many more God’s love is different from our love in its manner, and the uniqueness of its manner lends it a peerless magnitude."

[C.T. Eldridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

The strength of this book is that it is deeply theological, and the author understands this approach to increase the book’s devotional nature. It’s not a devotional read in spite of being theologically rigorous and precise; it’s devotional because it’s theologically rigorous and precise.

To this end, there is a section titled “Meditation” at the end of each chapter followed by a final section titled “Prayer”. This structure sets the author up to make his theologizing work towards drawing his readers into self-reflection, worship, and prayer. The “Meditation” section was especially helpful because of the specific questions and suggestions for journaling and/or self-reflection.

Though he aims to plumb the depths of the doctrine of God’s love, his writing is illustrative and accessible. The book is perhaps not the best read for someone brand new to reading theology or Christian books, but it’s definitely a good choice for someone who is even just a few years in to following Christ and familiarizing oneself with biblical and theological terminology.

The weakness of the book is the first two chapters. It’s good content, but they (somewhat admittedly by the author) don’t totally fit the book’s aim of exploring the doctrine of God’s love. Instead, they focus on how we can know God at all, and thus deal with sin, depravity, God’s revelation in nature and humanity, and regeneration. Again, it’s good content, but it just seems forced. This kind of thing makes me leery that the publishers just wanted him to add content in order to reach 200 pages, a common milestone for publishers to be able to justify pricing a book at a certain rate that helps ensure profitability.

But overall this book is well worth your time. It will provide a lot of encouragement to follow Christ and inspiration to worship him.

[Lidia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really good take on what God's love really meaning, how is manifested and how is defined and the most importantly how different is for our human love and the joy it brings in knowing all this things!

[David Meiklejohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting investigation into the love of God, comparing it to human love and looking at the differences. Some good thoughts, though I thought the use of stories that very few will have heard of would have benefitted from a more inclusive approach.

[Vaclav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished reading this book, and my heart is refreshed with the solid biblical teaching of how different from human love is from God's love which endures forever. Or as my friend, Dr.Haykin says of it, "A truly profound study...".

[Blake Western · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an outstanding book on a much misunderstood subject, love. The author rightly points out that we should get our ideas of love from God and not from what we see with people. There is a thought provoking discussion of love within the Trinity. The book discusses how the love of God relates to his other attributes. This is a book well worth reading.

[Joshua Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Garry J. Williams writes with a strong voice of clarity to a confused world that muddles the subject of the love of God. Strongly theological and vibrantly doxological. I recommend to all.