The phrase His love endures forever is repeated 26 times in Psalm 136 (NIV) alone. Other translations use phrases like his mercy endures forever (NKJV); his faithful love endures forever (NLT); his steadfast love endures forever (ESV); his lovingkindness is everlasting (NASB); his faithfulness is everlasting (NASB). I think this passage is trying to tell us that God’s faithful, kind, and merciful love, endures and endures and endures and endures. It endures this life and the age to come.
The word ‘eternal’ in the Bible often refers to the realm of God, the realm of the spiritual or supernatural. It refers to the kind of relationship we have with God: a loving, reconciled, intimate relationship. John says, Now this is eternal life: that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. This is a quality of life: knowing God intimately.
We believe that God is immortal (1 Tim 1:17) and that this includes endless time, or being outside of time, sometimes described as timelessness. God’s love is of an intimate, other-worldly quality. God’s intimate love endures across all ages, throughout all times or timelessness. Because God actually is love, 1 John 4:8&16.
Perhaps this phrase repeated so often in the Psalms about God’s persistent, merciful, loving-kindness is whispering the most powerful truth of all time and timelessness. God never changes and God is always love.
It’s not simply that God’s love endures forever, but that God is love forever.
God’s love is just as immortal as God is.
God’s love never dies.
God loves you unconditionally and enduringly, while you are in the womb; the very moment you steal your first cookie from the cookie jar, or engage in sexual activity; at the time of your death and on into the afterlife.
God always loves you.
This verse is talking about how amazing God’s love is because of the very fact that the emphasis is not on time. The point of this phrase—God’s love endures forever—is not endless-time. The point is that the quality of this love is such that nothing can thwart it, overcome it, conquer it, change it, cancel it, waylay it, destroy it, take-it-back, or remove it. It is enduring in quality.
God will never cease to love you.
Love never ceases to love.
There is no hell outside of this enduring quality of love. I promise you. Swear to God.
The Western Evangelical Church accepts that God’s love endures forever. And somehow simultaneously accepts (in large majority) that most people will burn in hell [as separation and torment away from that love, or in the presence of some other schizophrenic version of God that I cannot comprehend] for all eternity. Trying to marry these two concepts is near impossible because, as I just said, it makes God schizophrenic. It does not make any sense (call it logic, reason, or even Biblical-literality) that God would love a person and at the same time abandon that person to endless torture.
God’s love endures forever + human race rebels against love = traditional hell: what a contradiction! Rebellion against love cannot change love because love is of enduring quality.
Love always loves always loves always loves.
Love endures and endures and endures.
Don’t give me that shit about love losing its temper and locking people away from itself. It simply cannot happen. That’s not what the love of God is.
For Love is as strong as death
Its jealousy as unyielding as the grave
It burns like blazing fire
The brightest kind of flame
Many waters cannot quench love
Nor can rivers drown it
If one were to give all their wealth for love
It would be utterly scorned
Song of Solomon 8:6-7.
Our God’s hellfire-love is priceless. It burns for you.
God is not going to abandon you. Not ever.
His Love Endures Forever!
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