God's Love Never Fails

GOD’S LOVE THAT NEVER FAILS (1 Cor. 13:8) Because God is sovereign and because God also being the Creator of all things; we can also says that God is supreme and is in authority and control over all things including angels and sinful humankind. This means that God also knows everything in advance and nothing caught Him by surprise because God knows 100% what will happen before it happens. Therefore nothing and no humans and angelic beings can hinder, disappoint and thwart God in accomplishing His plan and purpose according to the good pleasure of His will. To say that His plan and purpose can be hindered or thwarted by any human being is to say that God (and His love) can fail and that God can experiences disappointment. When we talk of God’s love (and we know too that God is love) we can also say that God’s love never fails (1 Cor. 13:8) and God’s love or God Himself will never experience disappointment because He is sovereign. “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Romans 8:37)”. Because if God experiences disappointment then His love fails. It is very important for us to remember this aspect or quality o God’s unfailing love. To say that God’s love never fails is also to say and declare that God’s love is always 100% successful. And of course God’s love is not passive but always an active one. God’s love always act and it is always accompanied by an action. God’s love always act by giving something valuable. Therefore if God decided to make us the object or recipient of His love we will experience it although there were those time when we are not aware of that experience or that love shown to us by God. There will always be that especial moments when God is embracing us and yet for a wonderful purpose only known by God we are not aware of that embrace. When God says to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31:3 “Yes I have loved you with an everlasting love” God is not only telling Jeremiah that His love for Jeremiah is eternal but God is also assuring him of His love that never fails. This eternal and love that never fails is also the same kind of love that was expressed by Jesus Himself to His disciples that night when Jesus was also talking to Nicodemus who later became also the follower of Jesus. Remember when Jesus says “God so loved the world” we have to understand it in the context of God’s everlasting love in Jer. 31:3 (it occurred before the creation of the world) and God’s love that never fails in 1 Cor. 13 :8. Remember too that God never changes therefore His love never changes too. To say that each time we sin against God; He became angry with us and became disappointed is to say that God always changes His mind and His love for us also changes. Who is the object of God’s love in John 3:16? Is it al humankind or is it everybody? Therefore if it all humankind it includes Cain who was of the wicked one (1 John 3:12). Pharaoh of Egypt, Hitler, Saddam Hussein and other like Judas Iscariot. But if it includes everybody then God’s love fails and God was very disappointed because many has rejected Jesus Christ.

Some will say, yes God’s love never fails. But God created us a free moral agent. God has given us the ability or the power to choose or reject God or Christ. If God’s love never fails and yet we are a free moral agent who can chose to reject God’s love then the Scripture is contradicting itself because when we reject God’s love we are actually disappointing God and His love is not successful. Therefore God’s love is failing. To resolve this contradiction we have to show or offer biblical proofs that human is not truly a free moral agent. And there many scriptural proofs that humans are not a free moral agent. The major proof is what happened at the Garden of Eden describes by many theologians as ‘The Fall of Man”. After Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit they both died spiritually. They both became blind spiritually. They became God’s enemies and Satan begin to have rule over them. In other words because of the “Fall” all humankind became the slaves of sin and they are no longer free they were slaves of Satan who is the present ruler of this world That is the reason why regeneration or being born again is necessary because it is only after we are born again or we have receive the Holy that our spiritual life will return. For as long as human has not experience new heavenly birth he is not free. That is why Jesus has to die on the cross so that God can adopt us and redeem us and free us from spiritual slavery. After the sin of Adam we become slaves and no longer free moral agent. We are dead spiritually. We are spiritually blind and cannot see Christ and have faith in Him. When we accept this teaching on “The Fall of Man (Adam) we can reconcile this teaching on the biblical teaching that God’s love never fails. And perhaps, we can also see and appreciate the “difficult and yet comforting” teaching on election. As we embrace the biblical doctrine of election we will see that God’s love is primarily directed to the elect-bride of Christ and that is the church composed of people all over the world from all tribes and nation. God’s love is covenantal love. This is a hard statement but God’s love is indeed selective. The Bible is a story of God’s covenantal love with His chosen people. In the Old Testament God chose the murmuring Israelites as the object of His covenant love based on physical promises while the true Christian today is God’s covenant people in the New Testament. Why God decided to love us? It is not because of us because of all us are rotten sinners. There is nothing in us that God can love. But God decided to make us His temple and His instrument in displaying His glory and His majesty. And God “according to the good pleasure of His will” want us to be the object of His everlasting love through His Son Jesus Christ. TO JESUS CHRIST BE ALL THE GLORY!