God's Everlasting Love | Jeremiah 31:3

In 2020, I purchased an e-version of bell hooks’ book, All About Love. Honestly, I?haven’t read the entire book, but I have a good understanding of her main ideas:

1. Love is a?verb, not a noun. In other words, love is something we do. It’s also a choice. We must choose to?love others even when we don’t feel like it, even when they’re difficult to love, even when they?seem unworthy of love.
2. Love is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing?one’s own or another’s spiritual growth” (M. Scott Peck).?

Unfortunately, too many people believe something else about love. That’s why they?speak of love as a sentimental feeling (“I know I love you because I feel it in my heart”), about?them falling out of love with someone (“I’m not in love with you anymore”), and so on. Before?reading hooks’ book, I had never heard of someone connecting love with spiritual growth. It’s?probably because I believed love and spiritual well-being were unrelated. However, the two are?one and the same. For this reason, the apostle John exhorts believers to “love one another, for?love is from God” (1 John 4:7).

While I commend hooks for challenging modern notions of love, it’s bothersome that?God isn’t mentioned until page 77. I suppose I shouldn’t be too troubled since she identifies as a?Buddhist Christian. However, I am Christian. Period. Therefore, my definition of love comes not?from M. Scott Peck, or any other human, but from the Bible and my relationship with a Triune?God. Christians know love because “God is love” (1 John 4:8). That’s true for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are all God. Therefore, they are all love.

Human love is imperfect and pales in comparison to God’s agape or unconditional love. Not even a mother’s love for her child(ren), or a love between husband and wife, comes close to the love that God has for those who are His own. God doesn’t love us because He feels it in His heart. He loves us because it’s who He is. His very nature is to demonstrate love. What’s remarkable about God’s love is that He extends it even to sinners – that is, those who haven’t been redeemed by the blood of Christ: "but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8, emphasis added).

As He told the prophet Jeremiah: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (31:3). Note the intentionality of God’s love here: ‘I have loved you…’ For how long? Eternity. ‘therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.’ The continuation of God’s faithfulness to Jeremiah isn’t based on Jeremiah’s faithfulness to God; rather, it’s based on God’s love for Jeremiah. Is God’s love and faithfulness only for Jeremiah? No, it’s for everyone; especially those who are children of His.