Daily Lesson for Tuesday 7th of January 2025
God calls and invites every person into an intimate love relationship with Him (see Matthew 22:1-14). Responding appropriately to this call involves obeying God’s command to love God and to love others (see Matthew 22:37-39). Whether one enjoys the benefits of this relationship with God depends on whether one freely decides to accept or reject His love.
Read Hosea 9:15, Jeremiah 16:5, Romans 11:22, and Jude 1:21. What do these texts teach about whether the benefits of God’s love can be rejected—even forfeited?
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In these and other texts, enjoying the benefits of a love relationship with God is repeatedly depicted as conditional upon the human response to His love. Yet, we should not make the mistake of thinking that God ever actually stops loving anyone. As we have seen, God’s love is everlasting. And, although Hosea 9:15 includes God saying of His people, “ ‘I will love them no more,’ ” it is important to remember that later in the same book God declares of His people, “ ‘I will love them freely’ ” (Hosea 14:4, NKJV). Hosea 9:15 cannot mean that God entirely ceases to love His people. It must refer, instead, to the conditionality of some particular aspect or benefit of a love relationship with God. And how we respond to His love is crucial for this relationship to continue.
“ ‘He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him’ ” (John 14:21, NKJV). Likewise, Jesus proclaims to His disciples, “ ‘The Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father’ ” (John 16:27, NASB).
These and other texts teach that maintaining the benefits of a saving relationship with God depends upon whether we will accept God’s love (which involves willingness to be vehicles of that love, as well). Again, this does not mean that God’s love ever ceases. Rather, just as we cannot stop the sun from shining but can cut ourselves off from the rays of the sun, we cannot do anything to stop God’s everlasting love, but we can finally reject a relationship with God and, thus, cut ourselves off from what it offers, especially the promise of eternal life.
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What are ways that people can see and experience the reality of God’s love, whether or not they return it? For example, how does the natural world, even after sin, reveal His love? |
(0)Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25a-02-conditional-relationship/
