What is “Everlasting Love”?

"The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." Jeremiah 31:3 This question (if looked at in a proper way) will simply cause fuses to blow in your brain. What is everlasting? Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words says it means – perpetuity - which means – without an end – however when we look at it from Gods point it means without beginning or without end. When we truly look at it from a secular or from a natural standpoint we will never understand this word exactly as it is meant from a Deity stand point. Sometimes I hear two young people in love say “our love is eternal or forever” but is it really? Well the answer is most certainly “no” because our love for one another could never be forever or even eternal in this flesh, because everything with man is temporal. The only thing that is truly eternal is the love we share with God and the love He has given to us. Just as God is the giver of life (because life does not exist outside of God) He is also the giver of love. Two people may marry and live together in marriage for 75 or more years but their love is not eternal because there is no evidence that our earthly relationships exist in eternity. Besides most eternal relationships only last a few months or maybe a few years and then the love has been exhausted. But in our text we see God tell the nation of Israel that He “…loved thee with an everlasting love…”, however this is God talking and not man. When God says something He means it because God never lies or even stretches the truth. Now when we look at Deity everything comes from a different view, for example God only says what He means and everything with God is eternal. Therefore if God told Israel that He loved them with an eternal love then that is exactly what He meant. However looking at this love from Deity’s standpoint it tells us that God eternally loved, does love, and will eternality love Israel. God is immutable or He never changes: that’s right God has never changed in even one tiny way. So when God said “For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect..." Isaiah 45:4 does it mean that God actually sit down and chose from the entire people one the earth Jacob and from all the nations of the earth Israel? No! While the word means chosen God never simply made a decision because that would violate who God truly is. God is immutable which means He cannot change; God is Omniscient which means He has all knowledge, so if both of these are truly attributes of God then He never actually chose anything. Now don’t misunderstood, I believe in election but not as we know it to be election. Gods love for Israel did not, ever not exists, or there was never a second in eternity past when God did not love Israel. God did not actually choose them He has always loved them. It is just like the love God has for His chosen Gentile believers; as John puts it “We love him, because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19 He had to because He could have never come to love us because God does not change. Paul went on to ask this question "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ..." Romans 8:35 well we cannot be separated because his love is the same as the Fathers, "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you..."John 15:9 Christ loves us exactly as the Father did, He did not come to love us He eternally loves us, therefore this explains why nothing created can separate us from the love of Christ. In conclusion think about this, if you are saved it is because God loved you and chose you to be His beloved in eternity past, but there was really no choosing just as there was never a time in all eternity that He did not love you nor want you to be His. How wonderful is that!