Two Opposites — How Wondrous Is His Love

✦ The Impossibility of Compromise

Jowett does not argue. He observes. You cannot dress for the Arctic and the tropics at the same time. You cannot walk north and south simultaneously. These are not moral failures — they are impossibilities. And so it is with the love of God and the love of the world. They cannot coexist. Not because God forbids it as punishment, but because they are structurally incompatible — like two rivers trying to flow in opposite directions through the same channel.

And here is the mercy hidden in the impossibility: whichever I choose will drive out and quench the other. This is not a burden — it is a liberation. You do not have to fight every worldly passion one by one. You choose the love of God, and it does the driving out. George Bowen has been saying this all along — pardon and power over sin are inseparable. The love that forgives is the same love that displaces. One choice. One river. One direction. 🙏

✦ Passing Away — Abiding Forever

John names the three: the greedy desire of the flesh, the greedy desire of the eyes, the pride of life. And then he says the most devastating thing possible about them — not that they are wicked, not that they are punishable, but that they are passing away. They are temporary. They have an expiration date. Everything the world offers is already in the process of disappearing.

But anyone who does God's will abides forever. The contrast is not between good behavior and bad behavior. It is between what lasts and what doesn't. Yesterday the journal held the youthful atheist whose pleasures lost their zest — and that is exactly John's point. The pleasures did not just fail morally. They failed to last. They passed away while she was still holding them. But the one who chose the love of God — she abides. Still here. Still walking. Still beside this canal, with the river flowing one way. 🙏

✦ The Disproportion That Is the Whole Point

Jowett began with the choice. Now the Psalmist asks the question that rises naturally from it: why would the Almighty even care which I choose? What is man — feeble, dying, mortal — that the God who darts His lightnings and shakes the worlds above would make it His concern to visit us with grace?

James Smith does not answer the question. He worships into it. Five years Le has been reading him before dawn and he does the same thing every morning — he takes her by the hand and says, "Look at this. Can you believe it?" He does not resolve the mystery. He marvels at it. How wondrous is His love! The gap between the God who makes mountains tremble at His frown and the feeble man He visits — that gap is not a problem to be solved. It is the gospel itself. The disproportion is the whole point. 🙏

✦ Only Believe

And there it is. The God who darts His lightnings down, who shakes the worlds above — that God looked at the distance between Himself and feeble, dying man, and said: I will make the condition as simple as I possibly can. Not perform. Not earn. Not dress for both climates at once. Not manage the wretched compromise. Only believe.

This is the 500 denari moment every time. Father Joe James came to that hospital at midnight and what did he bring? Not a program. Not conditions. Not a list of opposites to manage. The gospel. And Le believed. That was enough. That was everything. The one who owed 500 denari was not asked to pay back 50. She was not asked to pay back anything. She was asked to receive — and the size of what she received became the explanation for the size of her love.

Wigglesworth understood what Jowett understood what James Smith understood what the Psalmist understood: the simplicity of the condition is the proof of the immensity of the love. God wants us so badly. So badly that He made the door as wide as it could possibly be. Only believe. And when you do — the river changes direction. One way. Clear as crystal. Flowing beside the canal right now. 🙏