Jeremiah 31:3b (NIV) “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”

One of  the most awesome and overwhelming characteristics about God is not just His awesome power and majesty, but His incomprehensible love for us. It's understandable to love someone when that person is upright and doing good things, but the Bible tells us that God loved us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). While some people may think that some vile sinners don’t qualify for His love, the Lord does not make that distinction. While we may believe that it is only sinners like you and me who qualify for His love because in our own mind, we have not done things that are that terrible, the truth is that we are as tarnished as everyone else. A good example would be poison. A lethal dose of potassium cyanide is 7/1000 of an ounce. That's a tiny amount. But whether you drink the minimum lethal dose or ingest a full ounce of it, you will die just the same. So it is with sin. Just a little sin will kill you and that's why God hates it like He does. God loves us even while we are contaminated with the poison of sin.

In the passage of scripture above, the word of the Lord came through the Prophet Jeremiah while the Israelites were exiled in Babylon because of their great many and vile sins that they were committing in the land that God had given them. Even though He warned them through countless prophets, they refused to listen and turn away from their sin because they loved it so much. But even while they were in exile, God's heart of love still came shining forth through this declaration of love. God's love cannot be suppressed as it breaks through all of our sinfulness and vile actions. That amazing and unfathomable love came bursting from heaven when God sent His son, Jesus, to come to rescue us. Even though we treated Him with great cruelty and gross irreverence while He was here physically among us, His love for us never waned. His love drew Him to the Cross of Calvary so that we, the object of His love, could be pardoned, forgiven and set free from the sin that separates us from Him. God not only loves us with an everlasting love, but His love sprang into action as He made the way for us to be able to be in His presence. What amazing grace and what an astonishing display of love is shone to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. While our love cannot match the everlasting love of Jesus, let us at the very least love Him with all of our faulty hearts, souls, minds and strength. God's love is everlasting, so now let our love for him last forevermore as well.

Pastor Joey Vazquez