Sometimes a Scripture passage just leaps off the page. That was the recent impact of reading Lamentations 3:22–23. There the writer declares, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.”
The writer of Lamentations was not the first to celebrate God’s steadfast love. In Psalm 51:1 the Psalmist writes, “The Lord has mercies on us in our sin according to His steadfast love and abundant mercy.”
What a profound insight. It is not humankind’s merit that causes God to value us. Rather, it is God’s “steadfast love and abundant mercy” that is our hope, our only hope.
The Bible teaches it was God’s love that called mankind into being. After Adam and Eve swallowed Satan’s lies about God and after they willfully disobeyed God’s direction concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it was God’s abundant mercy that offered the first hope of One who would “crush” Satan’s head (Gen. 3:15).
Later God’s steadfast love caused Him to reach toward humanity again. Genesis 12 tells of a new covenant between God and Abram. God promised to make Abram a great nation and that through Abram, “all the people on earth will be blessed.” For his part, Abram was to “be a blessing” to others in the name of his God.
Over time Abram’s descendants focused more on what God was to do for them and forgot about the responsibility to “be a blessing” in God’s name.
Again it was God’s abundant mercies that caused God to reach out to the disobedient seed of Abram (now called Abraham). Through mighty deeds God demonstrated His steadfast love by delivering a slave people from Egyptian captivity and making a mighty nation from a people who were not a people.
It was abundant mercy that caused God to reach out yet again to His chosen people at Mount Sinai. History calls this the giving of the Ten Commandments. Theologians describe it as God establishing another covenant with His people; another example that the “steadfast love of the Lord never ceases and that His mercy never comes to an end.”
At the time of Adam and Eve, at the time of Abram, at the time of Moses it was God’s love and mercy that “blots out all our iniquities” (Ps. 51:1). In Psalm 136:1, the writer affirms that God’s love “is sufficient for us,” and in Psalm 52:1, the writer says as believers we have confidence in “the steadfast love of the Lord.”
God’s love and mercy have always been purposeful. They have always been the source of hope that men and women, boys and girls might live in relationship with God as intended at creation.
Throughout a checkered history of faithfulness and disobedience, Israel’s relationship with God rested on God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy. It is no wonder that Psalm 36:7 confesses, “How precious is your steadfast love, O God. All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.”
Isn’t that a wonderful picture? Like a baby bird nestles safely under the wing of its mother, believers rest under the steadfast love and abundant mercy of God.
The Old Testament story of Israel’s reliance on God’s love and mercy also is a forerunner of our individual stories. It was God’s steadfast love that caused Him to send His one and only Son “not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17).
Jesus came into the world to seek and to save those who are lost (Luke 19:10). That includes you and me, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).
And like Israel of old, we can take refuge under the shadow of God’s wing by trusting in God’s one and only Son. First John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Forgiveness is still based on God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy just as it always has been. God makes reconciliation possible. Ours is to respond to God’s initiative.
Like Abraham, Moses and all the other heroes of the faith, those who have been reconciled by God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy live in those same graces. The Psalmist expressed this truth in Psalm 118 when he wrote that all those who fear the Lord have confidence in the steadfast love of the Lord — every day, all day.
The apostle Paul phrased the same truth in different words. He asked, rhetorically, “Who can separate us from the love of Christ” (Rom. 8:35). Answering his own question, Paul declared nothing in this world or any other world can come between a believer and God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy: not trouble; not hardship; not persecution or famine; neither nakedness nor danger nor sword.
Not even death or demons, angels or powers nor anything else in all creation is able to separate the believer from the steadfast love and abundant mercy of God that is expressed in Christ Jesus. Nothing today, tomorrow or forever.
Is it any wonder that the apostle Paul would later write, “We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed” (2 Cor. 4:8).
That same confidence proclaimed in the apostle’s words belongs to every believer no matter the circumstances of life because “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.”
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