The Gospel is Important: We See God’s Eternal Love 

By: Kevin Jones

If God is love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.

C.S. Lewis

God is love. His love is perfect, personal, and permanent for those called according to His purpose. A look at The Gospel shows just how long and wide and deep the love of God is.  

The gospel is important for the Christian’s faith, because in and through the gospel, we see God’s eternal love. What does it mean that God is eternal? And what is love? In short, eternal means God has always existed, and will always exist. That is what is beautiful, amazing, and breathtaking about the gospel; it is eternal. Some mistakenly think the gospel is one act that took place when Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. Now, that is good news! But do you know what else is good news? The Father, The Son, and Holy Spirit had planned eternal security for The Saints before the foundation of the earth was set. God has always wanted humans to experience good news and eternal love.  

Ephesians 1:4-6 says, “For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him. He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One.”

God does the choosing and chooses before any action either good or bad, holy or unholy, takes place. He chose us in His eternal wisdom. He chose us before the foundation of the world was set. He chose us and it was His good pleasure. He chose us to praise Him. He chose us and through His choosing we see His eternal grace and eternal love. God is eternal in adopting us through Christ before our birth. Eternal planning does not get any better than that. 

Eternal love is important for believers because it’s God’s eternal love that keeps us safe through this life and the next. Is your life feeling hard? Kids ministry feeling difficult at times? Feeling like things seem as though they may not get better? Reset in God’s eternal love. Marianne Howard says in her book, Rest, “In our most difficult moments of ministry we need to know the heart of Jesus towards us.” Knowing comes from both learning and experiencing God. Jesus wore His heart on His sleeve. He tells us repeatedly, He shows us by dying for us. He will show us again upon His return. Jesus loves us.  

Love is complex and is often misunderstood. As humans we are familiar with temporal love but cannot fathom eternal love. For example, we may love a pet until it breaks the rules one too many times and then the pet must go. We may love a car until it breaks down and costs more for repair than what the car is worth, so that once beloved automobile will find itself in a junkyard. We may have even loved another person, but distance, hurt, time, and circumstances have made that impossible. That love is temporal and circumstantial. That is not how God loves; His love is not fleeting, fickle, or failing.

When you have experienced the love of God, tasted and seen that the LORD is good, you know there is no comparison between His love and anything else. God’s love compared to all else is as mistakable as a killer whale to a minnow. You do not see a killer whale and think it is a minnow, and you sure don’t taste and experience God’s love and compare it or mistake it with anything else. Ever.  

I offer another example of love. Perhaps the closest way to explain this in an earthly sense is the love and preparation that an expecting mother and family has for an expected child. A mother and father will make the necessary housing arrangements for a new baby, carefully and thoughtfully selecting items for the nursery. A mother may pick up exercising or eat more healthily so that the baby can continue to grow inside of her body. Love, preparation, and care are present as they anticipate this baby. However, this still does not compare to the eternal preparation God made for us.  

Before I was born, before you were born, before what we know as the creation story was ever spoken into existence, God had a plan. So, for always, God has had a plan for you. And for forever, we can be His. We can be His because of His eternal love which is clearly seen in the gospel.   

Kevin M. Jones serves as the Dean of the School of Education and Social Work at Cedarville University. He also serves as the Managing Editor for The Gospel Project with Lifeway. He is a lay pastor at St John’s Missionary Baptist Church in Springfield, Ohio. He began his career as a first-grade teacher and has taught in various K–12 and post-secondary settings. Some of his recent publications are a chapter in, “Growing With One Another: Social and Emotional Learning in Christian Perspectives”, “Jesse Owens: A Life in American History”, and “Perspectives on Family Ministry, Second Edition”. He and his high school sweetheart, Demica, have three children: Kennedi, Kevin Jr, and Karsynn.