Love Never Fails

[Eleazar]

In 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul offers God’s view of love. At the heart of it is the word agape, found over and over again in that chapter. A rare word, agape love sums up who God is and what He has done for us. God wants us to experience agape love.

Before Christ, the concept of love was a love for the best. If something was deemed worthy of love, it was loved.

Christ dying on the cross changed all that, for He offered a love for which we are completely unworthy. When Jesus died on the cross He revealed a love that flows from God, who is love. He lavished that Holy love on people with no thought of whether they were worthy or not. He turned the tables on love, showering unworthy and unloving people with a pure, unending love.

Now when a Christian wants to know what real love is, he looks to the cross. Having experienced God’s love while yet a sinner, and having been transformed by that great love, the Christian recognizes the people around him as the objects of God’s love. They are love-starved, in need of the transforming power that only Christ’s love can bring.

Jesus set an example by giving himself totally in love, with no thought of receiving anything in return. We, as Christians, are called by God to reflect that love to our spouses, our families, and our world. And the more we reflect it, the more we give it away to others, the more we experience it in our own lives. God’s love is never used up, it is eternal.

 

[Anja]

Yes indeed his love never fails.
Jesus opens His Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes, a series of statements describing the blessed life. The fifth Beatitude states, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7).

First, the word translated “blessed” is one that has the general meaning of “happy” or “joyful.” It is a spiritual blessedness, a divine satisfaction that comes from a right relationship with God.

To be merciful is to show forgiveness and compassion to those in need. Jesus frequently spoke of this trait. In the Lord’s Prayer, He says, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). In Matthew 9:13 Jesus instructs the Pharisees, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

We are blessed if we are merciful because mercy is something God Himself displays. God’s mercy is the withholding of a just punishment; it is His compassion on the miserable. Deuteronomy 30:3 says, “The LORD your God will restore your fortunes. He will have mercy on you” (NLT). The psalmist writes, “Praise be to the LORD, for he has heard my cry for mercy” (Psalm 28:6). Jesus Himself often showed mercy, as we see in His healing of the man freed from demons: “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (Mark 5:19).

We have received God’s mercy. Romans 11:30 notes, “You who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy.” Paul shared that his ministry was given to him by God’s mercy (2 Corinthians 4:1). He also saw his salvation as an act of God’s mercy: “I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13). Our salvation is also called an act of God’s mercy: “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:5). As Peter expressed it, “In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).

God’s children reflect His mercy and are therefore merciful themselves. The merciful in this world are blessed in the sense that they know God’s joy. The person who is merciful will be eternally happy because he knows God’s mercy. From Got?

 

[Grace ambassador]

Yes indeed his love never fails.

Precious friend, A Very Warm Welcome to the forum.

 

[Gloria]

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Romans 8:35

According to Paul in his Letter to the Romans, once we are joined in self-sacrificial love to Christ, nothing can separate us from him. Paul’s understanding is that God offered people a second opportunity to respond to him; the first opportunity in Adam failed. Knowing that people are not able to approach God, Paul states that God approached people with himself, commonly called grace, and, thus, gave them the ability to respond to his offer of love. The man who demonstrated the perfect acceptance of God’s grace was Christ Jesus, the new Adam, the anointed one, the person chosen by God to demonstrate how to respond to God’s offer of grace-love.

God justifies people; God declares people acceptable to himself. Thus, in Pauline thought, God has withheld nothing from people. God’s self-sacrificial love is so strong that no one or nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. This is what the author of the Second Letter to Timothy means when he tells his readers, “Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard . . . in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” ( Tim 1:13). For us, sound teaching is found in the plurality of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. Only God can withdraw his love; nothing outside of God can separate us from God’s love in Christ.

Once we are joined to Christ Jesus in God’s love, there is nothing that can separate us from God. This is true because it is God who made the first move toward us. It is God who desires to love us self-sacrificially, and Jesus demonstrates how that is done. God loves his Son all the way to the cross, and their love is so strong that God raises him from the dead! Being in the love of Christ is as strong as a bear sow which will do anything to protect her cubs. If you want to see how this works, stand in between the sow and her cubs! God’s agape love manifested in Jesus protects us from anything that even attempts to get between us and the love of Christ. Like a bear cub grows into an adult bear, we, too, grow from “those who love us in the faith” (Titus 3:15a), that is, from relationships with others, to agape, knowing that we cannot be excommunicated, separated, or cut off from the love of Christ Jesus.

Meditation: What feeling is engendered in you by your understanding that nothing can separate you from the love of Christ?

Prayer: God, you justify me in your sight with your grace and love. You give me a model of how to respond in faith to your grace and love in your Son, Christ Jesus. Strengthen me in your service as I know that neither hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword can separate me from the love of Christ through you forever. Amen.

From Love Addict