Key Verse: "The Lord
hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an
everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee"
- Jeremiah 31:3 KJV
God is in love with you! The LORD God says to every Christian believer, “The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee” (Jeremiah 31:3). Those words are a great encouragement for every believer. God’s love for you is an eternal love. It is filled with unfailing care and mercy. He does not say, “I will love you,” but “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”
In New Testament terms the apostle John states the same wonderful truth. “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
How do we know such an awesome fact is true? “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for my sins” (v. 10). There has never been a time, or even a moment, when He did not love you.
Nothing but the love of God could accomplish such an amazing feat. He loved us and sent His son to be the “propitiation for our sins.” God’s holiness is satisfied, and His wrath is turned away from us because of what Jesus did for us on our behalf. God’s justice has now been satisfied because His perfect, sinless Son paid our debt in full.
God’s wrath is a settled, controlled, holy, antagonism against all sin. The Law says, “The soul that sins shall die!” “The wages of sin is death.” But a righteous and just God intervened in His sovereign grace. “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” (1 John 4:9). “And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life” (5:11, 12).
God keeps saying over and over again to us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with loving-kindness.” I love you and I have demonstrated that love once and forever in the death of My Son on your behalf.
The Holy Spirit spreads abroad through the heart this amazing love of God which is given to us and then we love Him with all our heart.
We never understand God’s love for us until He appears to us in that demonstration of His grace. By nature we are dead to the presence of God. We are in no condition to apprehend His love until God reveals Himself. We cannot see God and His love until God the Holy Spirit removes the scales off our spiritual eyes. Our heart is dead to any movement of God’s grace until the Holy Spirit changes us. Our conversion or new birth is the work of the Spirit. It is a divine operation. Man cannot do it. True knowledge of the love of God is a divine work.
God says to us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.”
Does your heart swell up with gratitude of a million, “Thank you”? God says, “I have drawn you with lovingkindness.” His arms are always outstretched and reaching down to us even when we were spiritually dead and unaware of it. It is always a mighty act of grace when He comes to the confessing, believing, repenting, trusting sinner. “Oh, to grace, how great a debtor!” His love and grace is patient with us.
“No one can come to Me,” Jesus said, “unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:44).
Jesus said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me; and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). God always finishes what He begins. Our salvation is no exception. His everlasting love will see us through to the end. “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me,” and with a double negative in the original language He says, “I will certainly not [no, never] cast out.” That everlasting love gives us confidence and assurance of eternal life with Him in heaven.
“All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me . . .” Have you come? Will you come to Him right now? With open arms His everlasting love pleads, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believers has eternal life. I am the bread of life” (John 6:47-48).