Stephen
Terry, Director
Covenantal
Love
Commentary
for the January 11, 2025, Sabbath School Lesson
The Lord appeared to us
in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn
you with unfailing kindness." Jeremiah
31:3, NIV
At times, it seems like we live
in a world devoid of love. This can seem especially true on social media where
anonymity incites people to be extremely cruel to one another, believing there
will be no consequences for such actions. They do not realize that what one
puts out into the world whether done anonymously or not will eventually come
back to them in spades. Nature itself teaches this lesson for if we plant a
single, shriveled corn kernel in fertile soil, it will produce more kernels of
corn than we can hold in both our hands. So, it is with the good or the evil we
do, even though we consider it inconsequential or "just joking."
Years ago, I worked in social
services and interacted with people who had experienced only dysfunction in
their lives before they came to our agency for benefits. Unwed mothers often
told a similar story of growing up without experiencing real love in their
families. When a young man came along promising the love they had never known,
they were drawn by that promise only to find that his commitment only lasted
until she became pregnant. Heartbroken, but still seeking love, she looked
forward to the birth of her child so she would have someone to love and who
would love her in return. However, since she did not have a loving home
herself, she did not understand how to love her child and as the child grew and
became an independent person capable of choosing whom to love, dysfunction
reared its head for another generation. Since the young mother had not learned
how to properly love another, her child, like the mother, had little concept of
how to love and be loved.
The dysfunction can be extreme.
If the person equates sex as a substitute for love and they have become accustomed
to seeking love in that way, they can be vulnerable even though married.
Marriage is not never-ending bliss. Every married couple faces challenges in
life. When someone comes along, promising a pathway out of those challenges in a
new relationship, temptation to walk away from the marriage rather than facing
the challenges together with one's spouse can seem like a way out, a path to
love that may have been put on the back burner while facing the stresses that
arise during marriage. But that path can be a dead end. Running from one's
problems rarely provides the peace one thinks it might. A better idea is to
draw closer to one's spouse and encourage and support one another while working
out a solution to the current challenge. If it is something beyond the ability
of the two to deal with on their own, it is far better to seek outside help as
a team committed to solutions instead of walking away from the marriage. In
time, the committed couple will discover that working together through the various
issues that arise will make their bond stronger and their love deeper than they
thought possible.
For this reason, the Bible's portrayal
of the relationship between Christ and his people as a marriage relationship
with Jesus as groom and his followers as his brideis apt. This relationship
goes back to the very beginning where we are told humanity was made in God's
image. (Genesis
1:27) While some might place mankind above womankind with man having the
superior image of God, it is not what the text says. It tells us that both
shared equally in that image. They might point to Eve eating the poisonous
fruit as proof of her lesser status, but she was deceived into doing so while
Adam ate willingly and with intention. Once it happened, the relationship
between Adam and Eve and God crumbled into dysfunction. Adam blamed both Eve
and God for what had happened. Eve blamed the serpent. Although they had
enjoyed walking with God in Eden, they had chosen to walk away from that
relationship, walk away from love. Their creation in God's image meant they
were created to love as God loves (1
John 4:8), but now knowledge of evil came into their lives with tragic consequences
when their first born son, Cain, murdered their second born, Abel, blaming him
for Cain's severed relationship with God. As Adam and Eve did not accept responsibility
for their walking away from the love of God, so Cain did not accept responsibility
for his actions, and evil, more than love grew to dominate the world much as we
see today and worse.
As I have mentioned, what we put
into the world grows and returns to us magnified. Over thousands of generations
there have been far more Cains putting out selfishness, greed, and unadulterated
evil than those who are remaining committed to putting love into the world. The
Bible tells us that as evil grows, love will grow cold with only those who remain
committed to love despite the overwhelming evil able to find salvation. (Matthew
24:12-13) Belonging to a church, a synagogue, a mosque, or a temple will
not save us. Only God's love can do that, and his everlasting love came before
any of those things came into being and will exist long after they are gone.
All too often those entities try to drive humanity into compliance with their
dogma with a stick, threatening a fearsome outcome if they do not obey and
commit to supporting the institution. But the institution is not God and when
motivating by fear to drive the flock, they betray a failure to understand the
character of God and to live out that character in their own lives. Jesus
stated to those who succeed in making such converts to their religion that they
end up making them "twice as much a child of hell" as them. (Matthew
23:15) Like the young unwed mother, those converts never learned about
love, only dysfunction, so they also could only invoke fear as they carry
forward the proselytizing their mentors taught them.
Love is difficult to maintain in
an atmosphere of fear. To genuinely love, we must have the option to choose to
love or not. God knew that, and out of love, he allowed humanity the
opportunity to choose in the Garden of Eden. When we chose to walk away from
that love, since his love is everlasting, it must have broken his heart to see
our choice. His heart was still tender when Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus,
knowing that the only reason Lazarus had to die was because we had walked away
in Eden. It is the only reason that death visits us all. But it was us and not
God who walked away from the relationship. He has continued to love us despite
that betrayal. He continues to send blessings into our lives if they do not
compromise our free will because he wants us to love by choice, not by being
driven to him or because we think he is a big vending machine in the sky, but because
we are drawn by his love to love him in return.
An elderly couple were driving
to town for their weekly shopping trip. While sitting at a red light, waiting
for it to change to green, the wife saw a young couple in the car next to them
and the two were snuggled together on the front seat while he was driving to wherever
they might be headed. This caused the older woman to remark to her husband that
he did not seem so amorous and willing to snuggle like the young couple as he
did when they were young. The old man thought about what she said and replied, "Honey,
the steering wheel has not moved." Like the old man who has continued to love
his wife through the years, God has not moved. He continues to love us and is
only waiting for us to come close to him for he misses what we had before. We
let the cares of life and the challenges we face cause us to forget what is
possible and settle for less than we might have. But settling for less is
dangerous because it can allow love to slowly seep out of our lives to be replaced
with dealing with life on our own. To succeed, we need to commit to a relationship
so we can face the challenges together with humanity and God as a team founded
in love, not blame as has been in the past.
If we wish to find the greatest
love, God's love, he is not far from any one of us. (Acts
17:26-28) But we need to believe that he is. "Without faith it is
impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he
exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." (Hebrews 11:6) Once
again, as in the Garden of Eden, the choice remains. Will we walk in loving relationship
with God, or will we walk away?