One thing some of us struggle with is God’s everlasting love. Jesus shares that same love. This daily devotional, the first in a series, looks at the breadth of God’s everlasting love and how it is shown in a covenant relationship with God.
Nuggets
- God loves us even after we disobeyed Him.
- God loves us so much that He designed a plan to restore our relationship with Him.
- God’s everlasting love means that — no matter what we do — He is going to love us.
- Even as His love for us is going to last forever, God is going to have an agreement with us that will last forever.
Devotions in the Comprehending Christ’s Love series
Oh, man. I haven’t done this in a while. I grabbed something from the drafts folder to do this devotion.
When I am researching devotions, I like to find sermons that are just outlines. The writer gives you a couple of words for direction and any number of Bible verses.
I like to go back through and see what was being said. Then I determine if I believe the same thing. (Didn’t we have a whole series where we tried to figure out what we believed and why so we could have an intelligent answer when we witnessed?)
I found this neat sermon by Baker entitled Comprehending Christ’s Love.
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Oh, yeah. Sometimes that can be mind boggling. Let’s see what insight Baker gives us.
Programming note first: The issue I am having is it is there is a lot of ground to cover. I had already planned on breaking it into a series of three devotions. This one is getting long, so I am going to have to break it. I will have to decide if we are going to start the tranquility – peace – series Monday or hold off a little until this is finished.
We are going to hold off on the connections and the application until the next devotion. So, this is going to end kind of abruptly. Trust me, it is long enough.
Let's Put It into Context
“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is” (Eph. 3: 18 NLT)
Baker started with Ephesians 3: 18. We looked at this verse in conjunction with other verses in a devotion entitled The Fullness of God’s Love. We said that Paul wanted to make sure that we got that this was a heart-issue, not a head-issue. We have to understand at the heart-level.
We can’t try to understand at the head-level. We aren’t God.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
In the title, Baker said he was writing about Christ’s love. In the verse, I read it to be God’s love. So, I talk about both here.
Let’s see where Baker takes us. Note: The headings are his words, not mine.
The Dimensions of This Love
“I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I’” (Isa. 65: 1 NIV)
The breadth is seen in reaching out Divine mercy to sinners who are far off from God
“Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Isa. 45:22 ESV)
The first mind-boggling item is how God loves us even after we disobeyed Him. As far as the Scriptures tell us, Adam and Eve had one thing they were supposed to obey – they couldn’t eat the fruit of a certain tree in the Garden.
Man, did they blow it. They sinned. Sin is actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
Glossary
But God tells us to repent and be saved. Repentance is expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to changing ourselves through obedience so that we no longer do the wrong things. Salvation is deliverance from evil and the consequences of sins to replace them with eternal life and good.
If you have not admitted that your relationship is not right with God,
have not asked Jesus to be your Lord and Savior,
and have not confessed your sins,
please read through the Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
Top that off with the mind-boggling fact that God designed the plan of salvation before Adam and Eve ever sinned – before they were even created.
Glossary
Why? “… For I am God, and there is no other” (Isa. 45:22 ESV). That is who God is – He is just, holy, and good.
Hull explained it this way. He wrote, “God’s justice is not merely the infliction of penalty; God’s salvation is not merely deliverance from penalty. … But justice in God is something far grander than the mere exercise of retribution; it is the love of eternal truth, purity, righteousness; and the penalties of untruth, impurity, unrighteousness, are the outflashings of that holy anger which is founded in His love of the right, the pure, and the true. In the same way, God’s salvation is more than the mere deliverance from penalty.”
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Because of God’s plan of salvation, we are justified. Justification means the act of making something righteous before God. Jesus justifies us when we put our lives in His hand.
But we have to turn. We have to repent and give up our love of sin – even our pet sin. We have to obey God’s laws and commandments.
The length of this love reaches from eternity to eternity
The second mind-boggling item is how deep God’s love is for us. Even though we willfully disobeyed Him, He doesn’t just turn His back on us. He still loves us.
God loves us so much that He designed a plan to restore our relationship with Him. Why was that necessary?
God has a low tolerance for sin. “But you are pure and cannot stand the sight of evil. Will you wink at their treachery? Should you be silent while the wicked swallow up people more righteous than they?” (Hab. 1: 13 NLT).
“The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness’” (Jer. 31: 3 NIV)
Everlasting love is a mind-boggling concept. We just talked about the plan of salvation being designed before we were even created. That is, before we even had the opportunity to sin.
God’s everlasting love means that — no matter what we do — He is going to love us. Yes, He will love us even if we don’t love Him.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
God will forgive anything that we ask of him. He will even forgive our unbelief when we begin believing that He is the One true God.
What He won’t forgive is our continued unbelief. He won’t forgive us when we don’t submit to him.
Glossary
Evans noted that God’s love is “… founded by His Will. His most wise, righteous, and holy Will.”
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• We know God is wise. In fact, we know that He is all-knowing.
• Churchy word alert! Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
• Holy means to be set apart, perfect, and pure.
OK, let’s put that in the blender and see if we can mix it up.
God is holy, and He expects us to be the same way. We do that by being righteous. We have His moral laws to follow, which not only show us what is right, but they also show us His character. He knows whether we follow those laws or not in our hearts.
Ooo, baby. God is really out of our league. But He still loves us.
Do you know what the greatest thing is? “… I have loved you …” (Jer. 31: 3 NIV).
Oh, that is a plural you. But it is also a singular you — as in you, me, Tom, Sally, and Elaine.
I think what trips is the most is the everlasting part. No, we don’t get the before-the-foundation-of-the-earth part. Neither do we get the for-eternity part.
We don’t understand because we try to understand based on our past experiences. That is impossible.
It is mind boggling that God’s loving-kindness was the force that drew us back to Him (Spurgeon). We know we would have lowered the boom on Him if He did to us what we did to Him. We would have been in divorce court.
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We forget about God’s mercy. God’s mercy is the unexpected way God responds in love to our needs.
The mercy is extended to us because of the love. Love is usually a drawing card. Stern, heavy-handed dictatorship isn’t.
How are we attracted to God? Spurgeon wrote, “The loving-kindness of God as seen in the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus draws men from sin, from self, from Satan, from despair, and from the world. Next, the hope of pardon, free and full, attracts sinners to God.”
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Think about what Jesus is saying.
- “… I have loved you …” (Jer. 31: 3 NIV) when I helped My Father create You (Gen. 1: 26).
- “… I have loved you …” (Jer. 31: 3 NIV) when I gave up My divinity to come to earth (Phil 2: 7).
- “… I have loved you …” (Jer. 31: 3 NIV) even when I was beaten until I was unrecognizable (Isa. 52: 14).
- “… I have loved you …” (Jer. 31: 3 NIV) as I hung upon the cross and My Father turned away from me (Mt. 27: 46).
- “… I have loved you …” (Jer. 31: 3 NIV) when I rose from the grave (Mt. 28: 6-7).
Do you know what the best part is? Jesus still loves us as He sits at right hand of God (Heb. 10: 22).
Jesus — the most worthy — loves us — the most unworthy. Jeremiah told us that Jesus draws us to Him.
When we couldn’t save ourselves, Jesus provided a way for our salvation. Salvation is deliverance from evil and the consequences of sins to replace them with eternal life and good.
“I will make a permanent covenant with them: I will never turn away from doing good to them, and I will put fear of me in their hearts so they will never again turn away from me” (Jer. 32: 40 CSB).
The Israelites were familiar with the term covenant. Today, we generally call them contracts or agreements. A covenant is an agreement between two parties.
Glossary
God wants to have a covenant with us. He offers us a permanent covenant when we accept it.
Even as His love for us is going to last forever, God is going to have an agreement with us that will last forever. It is a covenant of grace. Grace is a free and unmerited gift from Heavenly Father given through His Son, Jesus Christ that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers.
God provides us that gift of salvation because He loves us. He gives it to us in the form of a covenant.
Gillies helped limit a portion of the mind boggling with regards to the covenant of grace. He wrote, “Its grand end seems to be, to glorify all God’s attributes, indeed, but especially to manifest ‘the exceeding riches of His grace.’”
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No one forced God to make this covenant with us. It was all His idea.
Think about it this way. Adam broke the covenant God had made with Him when he rebelled in the Garden. Satan and some of his fellow angels also rebelled against God. (And it sounds like Satan was a pretty big deal in the angel ranks.)
God devised a new covenant — the plan of salvation — where we could be restored to His favor and fellowship. The same plan is not extended to the angels-turned-demons. They are forever out of luck.
This covenant provides everything we need to have our relationship restored. We just have to agree to the terms — ABCD.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
This is going to be a permanent covenant. It is not going to be replaced by another one. It is not going to be modified because we can’t uphold our end — ie., because we can’t stop sinning. Jesus has already fulfilled the human side of it.
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This is it, folks.
It is a holy covenant. Gillies wrote, “First, it preserves unsullied, yea it peculiarly displays the righteousness and holiness of God’s character and government in at all saving sinners, only through the infinite and vicarious sufferings, death, and obedience of the God-man Mediator, in their room, and on their behalf. Secondly, it secures the personal holiness of all who are brought into the covenant.”
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The covenant succeeds in restoring us to our relationship with God so that we can have access to His Presence. We are changed so that we may approach Him.
See what Jeremiah 32: 40 says. God is not going to turn away from us. He isn’t — all of the sudden — going to say we are unworthy. When we genuinely ABCD and strive to live by His laws and commandments, He will never turn away from us.
Father. We look all around us and see how much You love us. We are awed, and we are humbled. God, You are great! Amen.
What do you think?
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