An Everlasting Love

Jeremiah 31:3 The LORD appeared to him from afar, saying, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.


How wrong we see God when we understand Him as less than what He is:


1 John 4:7-9 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.


The Bible says "God is love."


It does not say God has love.


It does not say God's character is to love.


It says "God is love."


He is the definition of love.


You see behind God there is nothing else. There is not a set of standards that God Himself is subject to. There is no ideal called love that we can compare God to. There is no higher authority than God. God is the standard by which everything else is considered.


God did not have to be love. He could have been hateful. Many think He is. He could have been selfish. He could have created the world for nothing more than His own pleasure.


When people say that there could be no God because of the existence of evil I have often wondered what my friend Harvey Katz once asked an atheist after he made such a statement. He said, "Who told you God had to be good?"


This is pivotal. God could still be God and be evil. The presence of evil does not demand that there is no God. It just gives the possibility that God may not be what we think is good.


I would suggest that believing in a God that hates is not inconceivable as many people believe in just such a God. And in fact God could have been hateful. And if He was so He would still be God.


How thankful I am that He is not hateful. He is love. He is the very essence of kindness, care, generosity and compassion.


The other wonderful message in today's meditation is that His love is everlasting.


It never ends.


I don't know about you but my love, as strong as it may be, runs out if tested to great limits. Were it not for God I would not even have real love.


I don't have such a great memory these days but I vividly remember what I was like before I knew Jesus. There was nothing of true, self sacrificing love in me. Even my narcissistic love ran dry rapidly upon demand of selfless giving. 


But God's love is everlasting. It goes on forever. That's because He is love. Since He is eternal, love is eternal. 


What is almost beyond my comprehension is that every single person that Jesus will say, "Depart from me" to is now and will always be loved by him. He gave everything for them. For God so loved the world..... John 3:16


This is the irony of our human existence. As much as God loves us He cannot change us until we respond in kind to His love. 


This is true of us with our fellow humans as well. No matter how we love them we cannot make them change one bit. No matter how much they love us they cannot change us one bit. In fact as sad as it may be both God's love and our love given to a narcissistic person can actually let them grow deeper in their pride. And it is the same for us if we remain in our narcissism.


God is love and the one who does not love in response does not love or even know God. That is because He is love. 


To truly know God is to truly know love. To be filled with God is to be filled with love.


The baptism in the Holy Spirit includes being filled to overflowing with love. That is why I believe what Keith Green said, "The primary evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is love for Jesus and others." 


Keith had it right. The "gifts" of the Holy Spirit are amazing and extremely important for a believer. But without the love of God filling our hearts..... the Spirit of God Himself filling our hearts, the gifts are actually going to be destructive. 


We must never rest on being loved by God. Hitler was loved by God. Charles Manson is loved by God. Karla Holmolka is loved by God. Being loved by God does not change people. Loving Him and those He loves in grateful response to His love does. 

1 Corinthians 13

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.