“The Love of God” is a hymn that has been well-loved by many, and reflects the vastness of God’s character and love. However, once you know the amazing story behind this song, its words become even more powerful.

In the early 1910s, Frederick Lehman was originally a pastor, but unfortunate circumstances caused him to lose the business he ran on the side. Before he knew it, Lehman found himself packing oranges and lemons in a California packing house.

Despite his change in situation, Lehman never lost his faith in God, and even began to write a poem inspired by a recent sermon he’d heard. After writing two stanzas and a chorus, Lehman had hopes of turning the poem into a song. However, songs at that time usually needed three or more stanzas to be considered complete.

While Lehman searched for the perfect words for the third stanza, he began to compose the tune for his poem. At last, Lehman remembered a poem he’d read on an old notecard he used as a bookmark. Lehman dug out the notecard, only to discover that the words fit perfectly with his own poem… he had found his third stanza.

Once question, however, remains… what is the origin of the poem on the notecard? To answer this, we go back two hundred years before Lehman’s time to a mental institution. After an unfortunate patient passed on, the attendants came to clean to room for another patient.

There, scribbled on the wall, they found the words to a poem—the same poem Lehman would later find on the notecard. The patient must have recalled the poem in a moment of sanity, and written it on the wall so they would remember it later. One of the attendants wrote down the poem before painting over it, and those words traveled through history until they finally found their way onto Lehman’s notecard.

But this is not the end of the story… the original writer of this mysterious poem actually lived many, many years before this. After many inquiries about the third stanza of Lehman’s song, historians finally found the writer. He was a Jewish poet named Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, who penned the words to this poem in 1050 A.D.

You can listen to the tune for “The Love of God” here, and you can read the lyrics below.

The Love of God

Verse 1:

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell.

The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
And pardoned from his sin.

Chorus:

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Verse 2:

When years of time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall;
When men who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call;

God’s love, so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Verse 3:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;

To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

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