Jeremiah 31:3 “The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.”
From a human perspective, God would be perfectly justified in forgetting His love for us and casting us away because of our sins. But, He told Jeremiah that His “love” is “an everlasting love”. Paul tells us that, essentially, nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). The “LORD” tells Malachi that “I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” (Malachi 3:6). However, we must never forget that “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Hebrews 12:6) and “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.” (Revelation 3:19). King David found this to be true after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed. The Prophet Nathan told him “the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.” (II Samuel 12:10); yet, the Lord declared “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart” (Acts 13:22). Then there was Peter, who “began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man” (Matthew 26:74), denying that he even knew the Lord; yet, when the Lord rose on the third day He told the women at His tomb to “go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him” (Mark 16:7). Surely the Lord knew that Peter’s heart was broken, for after he denied knowing the Lord, “he went out, and wept bitterly” (Matthew 26:75). What comfort it must have been to Peter to receive a personal message from the Lord that He had risen from the dead. Paul writes that “the love of Christ constraineth us” (II Corinthians 5:14); that is, we are guided and motivated by the most precious “love of Christ”. Let us daily meditate upon this “great love wherewith he loved us” (Ephesians 2:4) and strive with all diligence to show our love to our Lord by our obedience to Him (John 14:15).