Unfailing Love

 Unfailing Love

 

Long ago the LORD said to Israel: “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.”

JEREMIAH 31.3

 

How precious is your unfailing love, O God! All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings.

PSALM 36.7

 

The law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ.

JOHN 1.17

 

“That’s it! I can’t take it anymore!” Your friend has hurt you one too many times and you’ve had it. You decide the friendship is over.

That’s how we tend to love other people. Our love has limits. And when we reach our limit of another person’s rudeness, coldness, rejection, or betrayal, our love comes to its end. As humans we are sinful, changeable, and unfaithful, and even though we want to love others well and love them faithfully, we fail.

But God is not like that. His love doesn’t have limits — it’s not like human love. Paul writes, “Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance” (1Cor 13.7). He’s drawing a picture of ideal love — something we can never live up to. Only God can love this way. His is the only love we can completely count on. And we can be confident that it will not fail, now or in eternity.

Sometimes when something hard or painful happens in our lives, we think God’s love has failed, that he has somehow stopped loving us. But that’s when we have to look at our circumstances through the lens of our confidence in God’s unfailing love rather than looking at God through the lens of our disappointing circumstances. As God’s children, we can be confident that no matter what happens to us, God is loving us in and through it. His love will never fade away or fail.