Jeremiah 31:3 “The LORD hath appeared from afar unto me saying: Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you”.

     Everlasting: that is from eternity, always, eternal, lasting, perpetual, at any time, (beginning of the) world + without end.

     A truth, an amazing and comforting truth from the Scripture that God has always loved His elect and He always will. His love is exactly like He is, sovereign and unchangeable. He not only loves us now in the present but it is the same love with which He loved us from all eternity. It is as the song says; ‘Vast, unmeasured, boundless and it changeth never, nevermore’. 

     We can only grasp and know this love by faith but faith is neither the cause of His love nor the beginning of it. There are those who believe and teach that God hated us and only began to love us in time commencing with faith but the Scripture attests otherwise. God Himself chooses whom He will love as evidenced by Romans 9:13 “As it is written, Jacob I have loved but Esau I have hated”.Faith and repentance are an effect and fruit of this very love that is shed abroad in our hearts at conversion and it endures forever. Nothing can or will ever separate us from it. It is the everlasting love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

     We were by our very nature like all mankind, born dead in sins and trespasses and deserving of the damning wrath of God. We walked in those sins and trespasses and delighted in them in our unregenerate state according to Ephesians 2. But the Scripture doesn’t end there as it is only showing us that our nature is no different than the sons of disobedience. It is Ephesians 2:4-5 that gives us the full picture and focus of this chapter and it is; “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His GREAT LOVE with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved). 

     Now we are alive in Christ so we can begin to comprehend the greatness of our union with Him. Christ is made manifest to us and His great love is revealed to us in His Works. His humble incarnation, His life of perfect obedience to God the Father and especially His going to the bloody cross to atone for our sins; these were works of great love for His people over 2000 years ago. This is the love we are to be rooted and grounded in and by faith we can begin to know the breadth of it, the length, depth and height of it. Ephesians 3:17-19. What a glorious gift, the gift of faith for even though it is not the cause of our union in Him by it we begin our lives of communion with Him. 

     While we sojourn here we will never fully comprehend His love for His own but the beginning knowledge of it stirs the very depth of our own hearts and minds; there is no greater love. I pray that we each can know this love and that we can begin to love one another as He has loved us. John 13:34. 

     Grace and Peace!