Boundless

Often truth grips us through song. It lingers for days on end until we must confront the reality of it and watch God do His work in our hearts to allow us to marvel at His glory all the more. Recently this happened to me while singing a song both at our worship service on a Sunday morning and during my commute later that week via the CD to which I was listening.

One word in particular grabbed my attention. Boundless. It means infinite, vast and unlimited. What comes to mind when you think of things without limit? Wasteful government spending? The number of items on your growing ‘to-do’ list? The stupidity and nerve of the other so-called drivers messing around on the road? What about the joy of watching your children grow in maturity? The pleasure of seeing the good guys finally win? Or maybe it’s the simple mind-bending exercise of contemplating the reach of the cosmos while looking at the stars?

Enter lines five and six of verse one. The song begins with a call to explore God’s grace by way of personal invitation to remember what Christ has done for us at the cross. What exactly happened there? The extremes of boundlessness met.
Where Your boundless love
Conquered my boundless sin

I think it is important, painful though it may be, to contemplate the absolute depravity of our situation as humans. We are indeed boundless in our ability to pursue sin and all of its destructive behavior and outcomes. If you doubt this in any way, just read through the words of Hosea or those of Paul in Romans 7. As you catch yourself identifying with any number of the items mentioned, consider where this thought process leads you. It doesn’t take long for me to go from “Wow, it’s as though this were written about me!” to “Well, at least they don’t know about…”. But my mind can still conceive of an end to this sinful reality. At some point, I console myself by noting that there are SOME things I wouldn’t do. Would I? Sometimes the truth stinks.

But all of this was conquered. This victory was not deserved. It was not possible for me. It was not even something I was looking for or trying to obtain. My limitless appetite for folly, especially the self-directed kind, was all that I knew. But God allowed His love to do battle with my never-ending waywardness. And that love always wins. It is not a love that needs to muster up strength to accomplish its plans and stake its claim. It is a perfect love that ever endures. It has never shown a limit in its power or reach. When one conceives of a way to push to the outer edges of this love, they find that they are still in the center of it. It has no beginning or end, so it always has been and always will be. Somehow it continually finds a way to grow, though it is continually fully mature. In a word, it is boundless.