The love we all want

3. Eternal

So, having seen that God's new covenant of love reconciles him to his enemies and that it involved him sacrificing of himself, we turn to its third feature: it is eternal. You might remember that God's love, his hesed was characteristically long-lasting, to the thousandth generation if need be. In Hosea we heard him saying "how can I hand you over, O Israel"? because he was bound to them with bonds of love. His commitment is unbreakable, his covenant indestructible.

And what we see in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead makes good on this. Even death is not an obstacle to God's continuing love for his people in his Son. We could spend a good deal of time here, but Paul captured it best, in Romans 8:

What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This kind of love we all want: a passionate love that lasts. We long to know that we are loved in exactly the way that God shows he loves us in Jesus.