Here is Love
by Peter F. Whyte, 15 Feb 2009
“Love is in the air”, or so the song says.* One could be forgiven for thinking love was just another virus to be picked up as easily as the common cold, and discarded in as short a time. More pleasurable, but no more enduring. But is love just a fleeting feeling, an insane dream, or an illusory state of mind? Can love endure? Or is the love bug just that?
The Bible records many loving relationships like Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, and Abraham and Sarah who were married for over 100 years. Interestingly all three of these couples endured lengthy periods of childlessness, but yet their marriages survived and even flourished in spite of the difficulty. Ruth and Boaz is the second great romance in the pages of the Bible, after Jacob and Rachel.
But love in the Bible is not confined to marriage. Ruth also had a strong, abiding love for her mother-in-law, Naomi. Such was the strength of that bond that she willingly left her native land to go with Naomi to a place where she was more likely to suffer intimidation and discrimination, and be hated and despised because of her race.
The other prominent human bond of love in the Old Testament was between Ruth's great-grandson, David, and Jonathan, the son of the reigning king who had come to be David's sworn enemy.
Both these loves endured through hardships and difficulties, both physical and emotional. Their inclusion in the Bible gives us hope that love is far from elusive. It may endure, and such abiding love is truly praiseworthy.
Towards the end of the Old Testament we read a strange incident where God told the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute (Hosea 1:2). Though they had children of their own, Gomer, his wife, continued to ply her trade, abandoning Hosea for her 'lovers'.
Despite the heartache and trauma of such circumstances, Hosea is instructed by God to take her back. Indeed, she had become a sex slave, so Hosea had to buy her back (Hosea 3:1-3).
As we read Hosea's journal we see clearly that his troubled marriage was not some bizarre request on God's part. Hosea's genuine heartache, and evident continuing love for his unfaithful wife were a vivid, living parable of God's love for his equally unfaithful people, Israel. God still loved them, and wanted them to continue to live in a faithful relationship with him.
The circumstances of Hosea's marriage not only illustrate Israel's relationship with God, but also our own broken relationship with God. God's love for Israel does not preclude his love for all his other rebellious, sinful creatures. The best known verse in the Bible shows that God's love for us, though we have spurned it often, is in deadly earnest.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes on him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
Like Gomer, Hosea's sex-slave-wife, each one of us is enslaved by sin. And like Gomer, we all seem to love the very things than bind us.
But God is prepared to buy us back. The price he paid was much greater than the knock-down, bargain price Hosea paid for Gomer. Several hundred years earlier female slaves cost 30 silver shekels (Exodus 21:32). Hosea bought his wife for half that price plus a sack of cheap grain and a jug of plonk. But the price God paid to free us from our slavery to sin was the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18-19). The Good News the Bible announces is that Jesus Christ has died in our place.
If you find such a price morally repugnant and offensive, you should. The price God was prepared to pay aptly mirrors the moral degradation and offensiveness of our sin.
But rather than be outraged with the seeming crudity of God's salvation, we should be unashamedly sorry, contrite and repentant for our sin that required him to pay such a price. And rather than despise such a payment we should be eternally thankful to him that we meant so much to him that he was prepared to pay such a terrible price.
Have you considered your sin and confessed it to Almighty God?
Have you repented of it, forsaken it utterly, and accepted God's offer of release from it?
If not, then consider the lasting consequences of failing to deal with it in this life. Listen to words that were spoken almost two millennia ago to educated, sophisticated Athenians:
“The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed . . .” (Acts 17:30-31) That man is no other than Jesus Christ, who not only died for our sins, but was raised from the dead by God, and appointed to be the final judge of everyone.
All who will be condemned at that final judgment will face the terrifying prospect of eternal punishment that the Bible calls “the second death, the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:14). Whatever that phrase means, it will not be a pleasant experience. Since the language is clearly figurative, the reality will be much worse than the figure. But it is an avoidable punishment.
Three thousand years ago one man asked the question, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3). He wrestled with the problem of certain judgment for sin, and the fearful and certain prospect that he would be condemned at that final judgement, as justly he should.
But he recognized that he could equally justly obtain a favourable verdict: “But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared.” (Psalm 130:4)
God is not willing that any man, woman or child should perish at that final day. The psalmist continued,
“O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.”
(Psalm 130:7-8)
God loves you, with all your sin and iniquity, every bit as much as he loved Israel of old. Christ died for you, to redeem you, to buy you back from your slavery to sin. Like the ancient Israelite psalmist, place your hope in God, not yourself. Nothing you can do can release you from the bondage you are in.
Confess your sin now and receive God's forgiveness now and for all eternity.
Join the psalmist's initial cry,
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!”
(Psalm 130:1-2)
Cry to God. Confess your sin. Trust in God's mercy. Rely on the redeeming death of Jesus Christ. The you can enjoy the psalmist's confident hope of God's forgiveness and know God's faithful, abiding love here and hereafter.
Here is Love
by William Rees
[1] Here is love vast as the ocean, Loving kindness as the flood, When the Prince of life, our ransom Shed for us His precious blood. Who His love will not remember? Who can cease to sing His praise? He can never be forgotten Throughout heaven's eternal days. [2] On the Mount of Crucifixion Fountains opened deep and wide; Through the floodgates of God's mercy Flowed a vast and gracious tide. Grace and love, like mighty rivers, Poured incessant from above, And heaven's peace and perfect justice Kissed a guilty world in love.
__________
* “O Amor Está no Ar” was a Portuguese song written by Agostinho dos Santos and João Teixeira, sung by John Paul Jones as “Love Is in the Air” (1977)
Peter F. Whyte, “Here is Love”, 15 Feb 2009, Gilnahirk Baptist Church Web site. http://www.gilnahirkbaptist.org.uk/resources/christianity/hereislove.php (accessed 4 Sep 2010).
