HEBREW WORD STUDY – ABUNDANT LOVE –  KARAB  RACHAMIKA     Kap Resh Beth    Resh Cheth Mem Yod Kap

Psalms 51:1: “To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.”

So David is pleading with God to have chesed, mercy to restore a relationship and he asked for it according to the lovingkindness racham of God.  We have many wonderful words in the English for racham, I wish we could apply each word in this case.  Here, however, most translators rendered it as lovingkindness.  I have done a number of studies on racham and yet I have yet to do justice to that word.  Lovingkindness is good, sometimes it is rendered as tender mercies, but as beautiful as these English words are they still do not come up to the standards of racham.

Some Rabbis teach that racham is a love that a mother feels for her baby while it is still in the womb and has not yet had the chance to wound her heart with rebellion and defiance.  Some have called it a childlike love, totally innocent.   It has been called a pure love. Some liken it to the starry eyed romanced of your first love. Yet, racham is that perfect love you find in a Hallmark movie and maybe you don’t not find it on a human level, but God still believes in that kind of love and that is the kind of love He has for us and so wishes we have for Him.

Yet, this is not what David is appealing to, not just the perfect love or racham of God but the rab racham the great or abundance in perfect love. We cannot comprehend this great love that God has for us anymore than we can comprehend that perfect love in a Hallmark movie as being realistic.  Yet, I have spent many years searching for the heart of God and I have not even come close to understanding this love that fills His heart. But I am enjoying these Hallmark movies more.  I have come to know this one thing, the closer I get to the heart of God the more I realize that no matter what sin I commit His love is so great that He will forgive it if I seek chesed, the mercy to restore that relationship. 

I used to fear sinning and losing God’s blessing on my life but after years of seeking God’s heart, I no longer fear the consequences of my sin, I do not fear hell, or that God will do something bad to me if I sin.  Oh, He may allow something bad to happen just like He did with David, He is after all a just God. If I sin I am ready for Him to do His worst, I deserve it and I will take it like a man. But I do fear one consequence that is worse than a serious health problem, worse than financial disaster, worse than hunger or want.  As I draw closer to the heart of God the worst thing that can happen to me is what David feared most, being cast away from the presence of God.  What makes hell so bad, eternal fire? Well, maybe for someone who has not experienced the love of God and searched for the heart of God, you need to dangle a little fire and brimstone.  But for someone who has tasted of the love of God, the precious soothing presence of His Holy Spirt, the fires of hell are nothing compared to the thought of  eternity separated from the rab racham the abundant love of God. To spend eternity separated from that is beyond imaginable suffering. 

It is interesting that Samson Hirsch the nineteenth century linguist and Hebrew master associates the word racham with raham which means to increase. Our love relationship with God is not static, it doesn’t reach a certain point and end right there. It is always increasing and increasing.  I have heard people say: “Oh, that we had the love for God like a new Christian.”   I don’t want the love for God like a new Christian.  That is shallow, it is infatuation.  I want a love that has the meat of years and years of faithfulness and caring behind it. Think of this, when we are with God in eternity our racham will still be raham increasing, our love for God will still be increasing and keep increasing for eternity.  

When you are in love and your beloved walks into the room, you just shine or light up like the sun.  Is that what John Newton meant in his song Amazing Grace when he says: “When we been there ten thousand years, bright shinning as the sun.”  In eternity we will just shine and keep shining brighter and brighter until we are shinning like the sun and we will get more brilliant than ever in our love for God.