The Inseparable Love of God (1) [ Romans 8:38-39 ] Why can nothing separate us from the love of God? 1. Because God’s love is eternal. Romans 8:29a says: “For those whom He foreknew…” The word “foreknew” refers to before eternity began —before the creation of heaven and earth . The phrase “those whom He foreknew” does not simply mean knowing about someone intellectually, but rather loving them. In other words, it refers to “those whom God loved from eternity past.” Amos 3:2a says: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth.” If “known” merely meant intellectual knowledge, that would imply that God only knew Israel and did not know the other nations—which cannot be true, because the all-knowing God lacks knowledge of nothing. Therefore, “I have known you only” means “I have loved you only.” God loved Israel among all the nations of the earth. Hosea 13:5 says: “I knew you in the wilderness , in the land of great drought.” The “wilderness” was where the Israelite...
A servant of God who did
not imitate God’s loving heart.
The
prophet Jonah, who had been disobedient,
received
salvation from God twice.
The
first salvation occurred when the unbelieving sailors,
at
Jonah's suggestion, threw him into the sea.
God
had already prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, thus saving him
(Jonah
1:12, 16, 17).
The
second salvation happened when God
commanded
the great fish to vomit Jonah onto dry land,
thus
saving him from being in the belly of the fish (2:10).
However,
even after experiencing God's salvation twice,
the
prophet Jonah, who proclaimed God's word, believed it,
proclaimed
a fast (3:1-5), and turned from evil ways, genuinely repenting.
Yet,
when God relented from bringing the disaster He had threatened
against
the people of Nineveh who also repented (v. 10),
Jonah
became exceedingly displeased and angry,
even saying, "It is better for me to die
than to live" (4:1, 3).
How
could Jonah, the servant of God
who
received salvation twice
at
the crossroads of life and death due to his disobedience,
be so
displeased and angry when the Ninevites,
who
lived in disobedience and committed evil deeds,
repented
and received salvation?
It is
because he did not imitate the heart of God,
who
cherishes those who cannot distinguish between good and evil (v. 11).
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