COLUMNS

Everlasting Love

T.M. Moore

December 13, 2024

God is love, that’s why.

A Christian Guidebook: Why Has God Saved Us? (1)

The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying:
“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. Jeremiah 31.3

So many gifts!
Sinful and self-centered as we are, it is easy to lose sight of the many and unsurpassable gifts the Lord has granted us. We who are nothing, less than worms, even enemies of God (Rom. 5.10). Yet He has abounded toward us in so much unexplainable, unfathomable goodness! Consider the gifts of God to you and me:

– He sent Jesus for our salvation. His own beloved Son!
– He has put the very Name of Jesus upon us: We are Christians!
– He has sent His servants to bring the Good News of Jesus and His Kingdom to us. And we are saved!
– He has transferred and conveyed us into His own realm, where righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit obtain. We are citizens and ambassadors of a Kingdom not of this world!
– By His grace He has saved us, through the gift of faith.
– He has given us eternal life with Him in perfect and complete joy forever!
– He spreads daily before us such a great salvation to grow into, possess, and proclaim. And His Word to guide us in this salvation and His Spirit to teach and empower us!

And yet there is more!

These are, literally, unbelievable gifts. Yet we have them all, and we are encouraged to enjoy them all with such consistency and gusto that others will see the hope we have and want to know how they might have it, too.

All of which raises the question: Why? Why has God done this? He does not need us. We consistently disappoint His purposes for us. The existential gap between us is infinite. And yet we have these glorious and joyful gifts! Why?

Made for love
From what I can gather, the answer is love. God is love. We are made for love. To know love. Enjoy love. Share love. Seek love. Grow in love. And do all things in love. Being loved and loving: that’s just who we as human beings are.

Well, were. For a while. God made us for love, especially to know His love and build a world upon it, and to return love to Him through grateful obedience and unceasing worship. But Adam and Eve wrecked that, precisely as God knew they would. For He had a greater plan for love than what they would ever have known or shared had they kept perfect obedience with God. We would never have known the eternal and everlasting love God showed in giving His Son for our salvation apart from our rebelling against God and His love from the beginning.

But now Jesus has renewed us in the love of God. Love is the hallmark of a Christian, the goal of all our instruction, the greatest of God’s spiritual gifts (Jn. 13.35; 1 Tim. 1.5; 1 Cor. 13.4-13). We were made for love so that we could participate in God’s love and know the joy that accompanies that experience.

We are made for love, and to the extent that we neither know love nor give love, we are acting in ways that are, frankly, less than human.

And what does that suggest about our society today?

Love everlasting
I would like to be able to explain the everlasting love of God, but I cannot. It is too vast, too unthinkable, too filled with improbabilities and unexpected blessings. I can try to describe it and encourage you to seek it; but we can only know this love by coming into true and personal contact with God Himself, by His Spirit, according to His Word, and through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

And yet I feel constrained to attempt some description of everlasting love. Love continuously reaches out, cares and seeks to improve, wants only what is good for the other person. This is how God regards us; it’s how He wants us to regard one another.

God’s love is everlasting. It has always been in operation. It reaches to everything in our lives—every aspect of our being and all our interests. God’s love is present at every moment. It will be there tomorrow, and the next day, and forever.

The everlasting love of God draws us to Him. We want to be with Him, to know more of His love in every moment of our lives. We want to be the proof of God’s love to others, to love them as God loves us, so that they will look to the Lord for the love only He can give.

Why did God save us? Because He is love, and He loved us with an everlasting love, the deep mysteries of which we will never fathom, but the reality of which we can know, delight in, and express every day. God made us out of love and unto love, and all for His glory and honor.

Search the Scriptures
1. Read 1 John 4.8. What does it mean to say that God is love? Do you experience Him as love? How?

2. Read 1 Corinthians 13.4-13. What makes love “the greatest” of God’s gifts?

3. We think so little about loving others. Why is that? What are we thinking about instead of knowing and expressing the love of God?

Next steps—Preparation: How would you describe the state of love in your life at this time? Love toward God? Love toward others?

T. M. Moore

Additional Resources
If you have found this study helpful, take a moment and give thanks to God. Then share what you learned with a friend. This is how the grace of God spreads (2 Cor. 4.15).

This segment of A Christian Guidebook is adapted from our book, Such a Great Salvation. To learn more about what it means to be saved, order your copy in book form by clicking here or in a free PDF by clicking here.

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