Love endures all things

"Paul was never more the wordsmith than when he crafted this sentence: Panta stegei, panta pisteuei, panta elpigei, panta upomenei... Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…Panta means 'all things.' When we love something, we take the entire package. No picking and choosing. No large helpings of the good and passing on the bad. Love is a package deal. But how can we love those we find difficult to love?” – Max Lucado, A Love Worth Giving

When Paul spoke of love here, he used the Greek word for Godly love, which is agape. What is agape? One thing I’m sure that agape is not is an emotion. Emotions are fickle, and emotions certainly don’t endure all things. If that were the case, I'd still be mad that for Christmas of 1991 my brothers got the Ninja Turtles that I wanted (in retrospect, I got Raphael,the coolest of the group. But let's get back on track here) Agape is the all encompassing love of God the Father. It isn’t naïve. It doesn’t pretend that wrong is right, but it remains constant regardless of circumstances. Agape is the steady overflow of God’s undying, everlasting love for us. Before creation God loved us, and it has never ceased, plain and simple. God sees to our very core, yet His affection for us never ends.

You know how God showed His love for us? Romans 5:8 tells us, “ But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

That’s agape love. A perfect and just God providing a way for us to be reconciled to Him.

God wants us to be one with Him. “It is not God’s will that any should perish ( 2 Peter 3:9) For you see, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins ( Hebrews 9:22 )

Colossians 1:19-22 describes for us that it was God’s pleasure to offer His son as a blameless sacrifice for us: “For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death, to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”

God loves you with an unfailing, undying, everlasting love. But God also must judge. A perfect and holy God can not be in the presence of sin. Love endures all things. Christ endured the cross. He went all the way. He bore it all for us, so that we can be reconciled to God, holy and blameless through His redemptive blood. I’ve never been under the Old Testament law, so it’s difficult sometimes for me to comprehend exactly what Christ did for me when he took my sins upon himself and died on the cross. In the hymn How Deep the Father’s Love For Us, the author ponders a similar question when he sings:

Why should I gain from His reward?

I cannot give an answer

But this I know with all my heart

His wounds have paid my ransom