Daily Java: Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13: 6-7)
The Bible Gateway page has had 1 Corinthians 13 on for the past few days and I have used it on my Facebook church pages. For the past couple of days. But this one struck me.
It is the old ploy a guy gives a girl, if you loved me you would go to bed with me. Or a parent with a child: if you loved me you would clean your room. It is easy to put conditions on our love. That is how we are made. If you loved me, you would … whatever.
But the Bible tells us that God has loved us with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3). His love is everlasting. That means that even if we turn from him, he will still love us.
However, that love, even with God has limits. Let’s say a man has a wife who he dearly loves but who has decided for some reason to not return the love. She leaves him, he waits for her. She starts dating other men, he still waits. She gets engaged to another man, he still waits for her. He would take her back any time, because he loves her. She gets married and has children and she and her new husband grow old together and die. Even though her first husband loved her and would take her back anytime, he has to acknowledge sooner or later that she is not coming back and get on with his life. The fact that he still loves her does no good in the face of her absolute rejection.
The difference in his and God’s love, of course, is that at any time we can come back to him. He always waits. The only thing that can separate us from God is death. Even then, he still loves us, but he has to acknowledge that we do not love him, not do we want anything to do with him.
That is why John says in 1 John 5 that we don’t pray for those who have died outside of God. It does no good. There is not recourse for them now that they have turned their backs on him. Yes, he still loves them, but he allows them to make the choice.
This is a little far afield from the scripture, but it was on my mind. And the coffee is good this morning.
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