Faithful Love

Exodus 34:6 NLT
“The Lord passed in front of Moses, calling out,
‘Yahweh! The Lord!
The God of compassion and mercy!
I am slow to anger
and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.’”

While there are so many different things I could focus on when trying to write about the love of God, two aspects stick out in my mind especially as I read through the Old Testament—God’s love is faithful and just. There are so many passages and psalms of praise to go to for those two characteristics of the love of God! However, I want to take some of the most vivid images from the Old Testament to highlight God’s loving faithfulness and God’s loving justice. To do so, I’ll be focusing this post on how His love is faithful, and in my next post I’ll move on to how His love is just.

God repeatedly demonstrates His faithful love to His people in the Old Testament, yet too often God in the Old Testament can be depicted as harsh, judgmental, or even cruel. Many people who study the Bible (whether believers or not) can’t equate the “judgmental” God they see in the Old Testament with the compassionate God who sent His Son to die for our sins in the New Testament. I think focusing on God’s faithfulness before His justice helps bridge the gaps in our understanding of what the true love of God looks like.

I also think studying the faithfulness of God’s love is important because it’s very unlike the love we show one another. Because of sin, we can never be 100% truly faithful when we love. Yet because God is without sin, He is 100% faithful all the time in His love. But what does it even mean “to be faithful?” When I consider the quality of faithfulness (or being faithful), I think of never giving up, never failing, never ending, and remaining true or steadfast. When we read the Old Testament, we are blessed with so many wonderful examples of God’s perfectly faithful love.

Photo by Stainless Images on Unsplash

First, let’s look at God’s faithful love towards His creation. Starting in Genesis 1 and 2, we see God’s careful work in all of creation as we repeatedly read the words, “And God saw that it was good.” Not only did He create plants, animals, and people, but He created everything that this world needed to survive: air, water, the earth. And once sin entered the world, He faithfully continued to sustain His creation. He demonstrates this faithful love towards the whole world in the story of Noah, where He purposely saves a remnant of people and all other living creatures:

Genesis 9:12-17
And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

I love how God promises to be faithful by remembering His covenant with “the earth,” “all living creatures of every kind,” and “all life on the earth.” It’s hard for me to imagine wanting to faithfully sustain the people who chose sin over following me, let alone caring for the rest of the world so that those same people could continue living! But that’s the kind of faithful love God has which is so beyond our understanding. The Psalmist was also taken aback by the beauty of God’s faithfulness:

Psalm 36:5-7
Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the skies.
Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,
your justice like the great deep.
You, Lord, preserve both people and animals.
How priceless is your unfailing love, O God!
People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

We also have the story of Job, where God allows much pain and suffering into Job’s life, yet Job continues to trust in the faithful love of His God:

Job 12:7-10
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you.
Which of all these does not know
that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every creature
and the breath of all mankind.”

In the midst of losing all his earthly treasures and people he loved, Job still pointed his heart back to the faithful God who cares for all of creation.

Now to end this post, I want to reflect more specifically on God’s faithful love towards His people. Here I’m going to just going to give a high level overview of the faithfulness God demonstrated towards His people in the Old Testament:

• God’s love in creating mankind in His image, even when they would sin (Genesis 1:26-28)

• God’s covenant to Abraham to bless him and the whole earth through his family (Genesis 12:1-3; 17:1-8)

• God’s love in protecting Israel through Joseph in Egypt (Genesis 45:1-11)

• God’s love in rescuing His multitude of people from slavery through the Exodus (Exodus 12:31-42; 19:1-6)

• God's love in giving Israel the Promised Land (Joshua 3:9-17)

• God’s love in promising the Messiah (Isaiah 9:6-7; 11:1-4; Micah 5:2-4; Psalm 2:7-8)

• God’s love in rescuing His people again and again throughout the Old Testament, each time after they had turned away from Him

When I think of all these stories, all these examples, all I can do is praise God for His undeserved faithful love towards us. Time after time, even though we have failed in our purposes to be image-bearers of God, to give glory to Him, to obey and love Him—He still remains faithful. He never takes His love away forever, and His promises towards His people always remain.

1 Corinthians 1:20
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.

Praise Him who has been faithful since the beginning, and who proved His faithful love to us once and for all through Jesus Christ!

I look forward to diving into the justice of God’s love with you next time, especially when you consider that so many passages about God’s love include the descriptors “faithful” and “just” together. I pray this series helps you see and realize more of God’s great love for you! Until next time, thank you for choosing to read or listen to Speaking Truth.