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Jeremiah 31:3

The Pulpit Commentary on Jeremiah 31:3

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

The everlasting love of God.

God appeared "from afar" to Jeremiah. When he seems to have forsaken us he is not loving us the less. In these dark hours he may give to us, as to Jeremiah, the richest assurance of his everlasting love.

I. CONSIDER THE WONDER OF THE FACT THAT GOD'S LOVE IS EVERLASTING. There is a wonder about this fact, since there are so many things that might well be thought likely to limit and stay the love of God to such beings as we are, viz.:

1. Our unworthiness. God is holy, and must delight only in holiness; he is great, and can create innumerable beings of far higher powers than ours. Why, then, should he love such imperfect creatures as men?—why love those who are corrupt and sinful?

2. Our indifference. Love looks for a return of love; but men have treated God's love with neglect. Through the long ages during which God has been visiting his children with ceaseless loving kindness they have been coldly turning aside to their own ways, deaf to the entreaties of an infinite condescension.

3. Our unfaithfulness. For love to remain unbroken it is expected that it should be honoured by fidelity. Unfaithfulness is naturally regarded as a reason for withdrawing the privileges of affection. But God's children have been untrue to him. They have forsaken his ways, abused his blessings, flung insult on his mercy. How, then, can he continue to love them? It is, indeed, a marvel that, through these long ages of the world's wild wanderings, God should still follow his unworthy children with ceaseless love, never refusing to bless them, always entreating them to return to him. And it must be a marvel to us that, through all the years of our unworthy lives, he has shown the same long suffering, forbearing mercy to each of us. It is wonderful that God should ever love such unworthy creatures as we are, but it is "passing strange" that he should not cease to love us after all our provocations of his wrath, that he should love us with "an everlasting love," and should "have continued his loving kindness unto" us.

II. INQUIRE INTO SOME OF THE REASONS WHY GOD'S LOVE IS EVERLASTING. We must not look for these in any hidden merits of our own, which our modesty has passed over while God's favour has been won by them. The secret of the love of God and of its eternal endurance is to be sought in his nature and in his relations to us.

1. The nature of God. "God is love." He loves because he cannot but love, because he delights to love, because his love must be ever flowing and is so vast that it must needs flow out eternally in all directions. It is not the attraction of the object, but the character of the love, that accounts for its perpetual endurance. The earth is bathed in summer sunlight without having any peculiar attractions for light—only because the vast stores of the sun must ever empty themselves by radiating out into space. The stream fertilizes the valley through no influence of the plants drawing it thither, but just because abundant springs pour forth their waters. And God radiates love, pours forth floods of blessing, because he is full of love, because love has its laws of diffusion. Such love is not destroyed by the unworthiness of the object. Closed shutters do not prevent the sunshine from playing about the house. Sandy deserts, in which the waters of the stream are lost, do not stay the torrents from flowing down the mountain-sides. It is the nature of true and perfect love to be eternal. "Charity endureth all things," and "never faileth." "Love is love forevermore."

2. God's relations with us. God is our Father. We are his children by nature, and can never cease to be so. The prodigal son was an unworthy child, yet in his degradation he could still think of his father (). A parent's love is not caused nor limited by the merits of his children. It has a deeper, a more unselfish source. It survives all the destruction of just claims. God's love is the perfect parent's love. A mother whose daughter had left the home years back always kept her door on the latch at night, that, if her poor child returned at any hour, she should never find it barred against her. Human nature is weak. A mother's love may fail, but God's never ( : ).

III. NOTE THE PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES THAT FLOW FROM THE EVERLASTING LOVE OF GOD.

1. God will do all that is possible for our highest good. We may believe with William Law "that no creature can suffer from any evil from which infinite goodness can deliver it." God has gone so far as to give his only begotten Son to die for us (). We may be sure that he will do all else that is ever possible for the salvation and blessing of his children. May we not, then, well hope that an everlasting love will outlast and wear down all opposition of the stubborn but finite natures even of the worst of us, though it take vast ages to accomplish the result? At all events, he is a rash man who would set limits to the future triumphs of the "ceaseless, unexhausted grace" of God.

2. We should return to him with trust and love. The worst man living, if he repent, need not dread a harsh reception, for God's love has outlived his sins. Here is infinite encouragement for penitence; here is hope for the lowest. God loves even him. Surely, therefore, God will welcome his unworthy child when he returns home. We have in this everlasting love of God inducements to urge us

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