"I have loved you with an everlasting love." -Jeremiah 31:3
I love my wife. I mean, I really love her, and because I love her there is nothing that she can do, no sin that she can ever commit, that will make me stop loving her, that will ever make me abandon her. Truly, I do and I will love her no matter what. Whether she really understands this I can’t say for sure, but I hope that she does, because although she has never tested this fact, it is important to me that she understand it, that she is confident in my love and without fear that I would ever cease loving her, liking her, desiring her, being with her. I will never leave her, nor forsake her. And because this is true of me, a mortal, I know that it is true of God. Whatever good, merciful or loving qualities we possess as fallen creatures, they are a poor reflection of the reality of the endless, deep love of God for us. Can we ever, as believers, cause God to stop loving us, liking us, or being with us? Absolutely not. There is no action, attitude or sin that a believer can commit that will ever cause God to abandon them. And let us not speak of us abandoning God, as though there were any place we could go to get away from his loving presence; it is not possible. God’s love is more persistent and steadfast than any human emotion, and is strong enough to endure all wrongs. Rather, consider: although I cannot say whether she truly believes that there really is nothing she can do that will end my love for her, I know that my wife “fears” to displease me for the same reason all lovers fear to do wrong by the ones they love: because they cannot abide the thought of hurting the one they love so much. After all, love seeks good for its object, not harm. Indeed, if an individual actively sought to harm, to take advantage of and to use the one that it claims to love, is there anyone who would say that there was any love present at all? Certainly not.
There is no danger, friends, in helping people to understand that God’s love, care and compassion, indeed the salvation he offers as a result of these things, will stand firm no matter what they may do. No danger in helping them to understand that these things are eternal and unmoving. Rather, the danger (and it is a very real danger) is that they should not understand these things, that they should assume that at some point God might abandon them, revoke his compassion and salvation that are born from his love. Those who claim salvation and live as they please with no thought for what God desires prove by their actions that they have no love for God at all, for such actions are in no way loving, and if they have no love for God, how can they claim to have received his salvation, at the point of which God transforms the heart, makes alive what is dead and places his Spirit within them? If God places his Spirit, indeed his love, within our hearts, that is a change that cannot be undone. That love will burn and grow though at times it may be subject to the harshest climates. God will stand by his children, he will work for their good, and it is an abominable thing to say that he will ever give one of them up, as though he were as frail and fickle as we are. Indeed, if men and women can stand by each other despite what seem to be earth-shattering wrongs, as many have, God will do no less but will instead show by his example just how small our grandest acts of love have always been, and so he will be glorified in all and through all.
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