James Nisbet Commentary - Jeremiah 31:3 - 31:3

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James Nisbet Commentary - Jeremiah 31:3 - 31:3


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

‘
LOVED WITH EVERLASTING LOVE’

‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love.’

Jer_31:3

I. We cannot estimate the length of God’s love.—When did it begin to be? Long before I was born. Long before the Cross was raised on the brow of Calvary. Long before the world was made. Its foundations lie in His own eternity. And when will it cease to be? Neither in the hour of death, nor yet in the ageless years that stretch beyond. ‘Yea,’ He says, ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love.’

II. We cannot measure the breadth of God’s love.—I have a very many-sided nature. Body, soul, spirit; my intellect, my memory, my imagination, my conscience, my will, my heart; each has its distinct and separate demands. But He meets and satisfies them all. ‘Your soul,’ He assures me, ‘shall be as a watered garden.’

III. We cannot scale the height of God’s love.—Up to the noblest honours and joys He raises me, above the world’s wealth and victory and royalty, up to His own presence, His own home, His own heart. ‘He that scattereth Israel will gather him,’ He tells me, ‘and will keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock.’

This is love that deserves the name. When such a God is ours, when we are His, how rich is our heritage!

Illustrations

(1) ‘The whole chapter is full of promises of love and light and joy, preceded, as such blessings must ever be, by the broken heart and the contrite spirit on the part of the recipient. Its primary reference is to Israel at the restoration, when the Lord returns to bless Zion and restore Jerusalem. But, meanwhile, it is for the spiritual Israel—for those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ—the Messiah Who has come.’

(2)      ‘From no less fountain such a stream could flow,

No other root could yield so fair a flower:

Had He not loved, He had not drawn us so;

Had he not drawn, we had nor will nor power

To rise, to come;—the Saviour had passed by

Where we in blindness sat without one care or cry.’