love

This morning, I was struck by two seemingly unrelated passages that, the more I thought about them, the more linked they seemed to be.

The first was a warning about the unbelievers in Deuteronomy 7:3-4 “Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.”

Those verses are pretty straightforward, a great reminder that my marriage is a key factor in my faithfulness. My wife will either help me walk with God or lure me from him; fortunately, with Dawn it’s always been the former.

Just three verses later, I read this, in verses 7-9: “The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.”

In the context of those verses on marriage, this passage struck me because, unlike the way we tend to choose people to love, God didn’t love the Israelites because they were attractive or powerful. He did it because, well, he’s God. God is love. Loving us is a defining characteristic of God.

Suddenly this part of Deuteronomy seemed to be about true love versus what the world thinks of as love. Contrasted with our tendency to love people based on physical attraction or what they can do for us, God loves because his plan since he created us was to love us, for his own sake. Because that’s how he demonstrates the true glory of who he is.

God’s love is unfailing, always there; it’s completely selfless. Human love is fickle and selfish; it ebbs and flows. That’s probably why Moses started with this warning on marriage. We need a lot of help being faithful to God, while his faithfulness to us is beyond my comprehension.

It seems that if I think more about this, there are key truths related to love and relationships and what my motivations should be. I feel I’m just scratching the surface of the deep truths revealed here.

I wonder if I’m wise enough to get it all.