The Love Of God

Ink, parchment, quills and scribes supply the central picture in Shane & Shane's version of the classic hymn. The first stanza measures God's love by distance, a love that "goes beyond the highest s tar / And reaches to the lowest hell," and by cost: "God gave His Son to win / His erring child He reconciled / And pardoned from his sin."

Stanza two stretches the measuring into hyperbole. If the ocean were ink, the skies parchment, "every tree on earth a quill / And every man a scribe by trade," writing it all down would "drain the ocean dry," and the scroll still could not hold the whole love "stretched from sky to sky." Between the stanzas the chorus keeps coming back with its adjectives, a love "rich and pure," "measure less and strong," bound to "evermore endure" as "the saints and angels song." It is sung twice in a row at the end, so the last word belongs to the refrain rather than to any new image.

John's first letter reasons the same way, that God showed his love by sending his Son, and Romans 5:8 gives the pardon of sinners that stanza one describes. Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3:18-19 for believers to grasp the breadth, length, height and depth of a love beyond knowledge matches the song's inability to finish measuring.