The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe
"From Everlasting"
Only God has existed "from everlasting" (Psalm 90:2). All other beings and things had a beginning through the creative agency of the One, the only One, who has always been, and who "made all things" (Proverbs 16:4).
This raises a fascinating question. What was God doing in the eternity before He created angels, the universe, and human beings? The Bible does not address this question directly, with the exception of one its most beautiful statements, uttered by the Lord Jesus Christ to His Father just before He suffered and died on the cross of Calvary…
"Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24).
Loving relationship and fellowship characterized the triune God''s "doings" before anything or anyone existed. Certainly, the vibrantly active Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who "worketh all things after the counsel of His own will" did much before creation (Ephesians 1:11). Loving relationship and fellowship is that which we know without question characterized His activity "from everlasting."
As those created in God's image, this eternal occupation of personal devotion and communication with others reveals that our primary reason for being involves the same…
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.] And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:30-31).
We exist to be loved by God, and to love Him in response. This relationship leads born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to love others as the fruit of His relational presence within us. Certainly, we do much as human beings through our "fearfully and wonderfully made" capabilities (Psalm 139:14). Nothing compares, however, with the loving relationship and fellowship that has been in God "from everlasting," and which now exists in us through Christ forevermore. "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us" (Romans 5:5).
To know the love of God and to love Him and others in holy response constitutes the primary reason for our existence that proceeds directly from the eternal reality of our Lord's own being. We "walk in truth" as we "walk in love," realizing that the centrality of relationship that had no beginning in God began in us when we trusted the Lord Jesus (III John 1;4; Ephesians 5:20). It will have no end in either Him or us as the eternally ancient "from everlasting" glory of loving relationship becomes the eternal "to everlasting" destiny of God and His redeemed.
"I have loved thee with an everlasting love."
(Jeremiah 31:3)
"I will extol Thee, my God o king, and I will bless Thy name forever and ever."
(Psalm 145:1)
Weekly Memory Verse
For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting; and His truth endureth to all generations.
(Psalm 100:5)
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