Love Has Come
How do you know somebody loves you? They go out of their way for you. They sacrifice for you. That’s what advent shows us. God loves us. It doesn’t just tell us that. It demonstrates it. It enters into our mess. Our weariness. God has drawn near. “Oh holy night, the weary world rejoices.” The world rejoices because God’s love has come. First-century Jews longed for God to “come down.”[1] Christmas proclaims He did.
With that in mind, let’s read two passages of Scripture—one from the Old Testament and one from the New—to see what the love of God really looks like and what it really does, both now and for eternity.
Galatians 4:4-7; Jeremiah 31:31-34
God’s love comes at the perfect time. (Gal 4:4 and Jer 31:31–32)
Paul says in Galatians 4:4 that “when the fullness of time had come” God sent forth His Son. Think about that. “The fullness of time” means God wasn’t reacting to the world. God was directing the world toward the moment when His Son would step into it. Rome’s roads. A shared trade language (Greek). Prophetic silence. It was perfect for the gospel to spread across the empire. God’s timing is never random. And it’s always shaped by His love.
To understand how perfect His timing was, we need to remember what God’s people had lived through. Jeremiah spoke to a nation that had broken its covenant with God. They had rejected His commands. They had chased after idols. They had ignored His warnings. The Babylonians swept in and wiped them out.[2] The temple burned. The land was ruined. The people were carried into exile. Then Jeremiah 31:31 says that God promised a “new covenant.” But He spoke those words to a people who felt like they had no future left at all. They were a people in exile who had broken His covenant. Jeremiah 31:32 reminds them that they broke His covenant even though He had been their faithful husband (which is covenant LOVE terminology).[3]
Yet this is where the love of God shows itself. God doesn’t walk away from His people. He makes a promise. He says the days are coming when He will do something new. Something better. Something they couldn’t create for themselves. A new covenant not written on stone but written on their hearts. God made that promise in the middle of their failure and He kept that promise “in the fullness of time,” at the perfect time.
When Jesus was born, the world had gone four hundred years without a prophet. Rome controlled everything. Israel longed for deliverance. The Law had made the weight of sin clear but hadn’t removed the weight. The weight of sin makes people weary. People were waiting. Some ancient hymns call this period “the time of visitation.”[4] And at that exact moment God came.
This is the heart of Advent. God’s love steps in at the right time. Not our time. The right time. Some of you know what it means to wait for God to move. You know what it feels like to wonder where He is. You know what it feels like to question His timing. Jeremiah knew that feeling. Israel knew it. And we know it too. But the Scriptures tell us God has never been late. When God the Son took on flesh, He was telling the world that His love always arrives at the right moment. And if that was true then it is true now. He has not forgotten you. He has not abandoned you. He is not ignoring you. The God who kept His promise through Jeremiah and fulfilled it in Christ will keep His promises to you. Advent is a calendar-shaped reminder that waiting is not wasting when God is in control. If you’re not yet trusting Him, His timely love is reaching for you this very moment. Turn from self-rule and believe the good news today.
God’s love turns slaves into sons. (Gal 4:5–7; Jer 31:33–34)
Paul says in Galatians 4:5 that God sent His Son “to redeem those who were under the Law so that we might receive adoption as sons.” That means God didn’t simply come to free us from something. He came to bring us into something. He came to give us a new identity and a new status and a new relationship with Him. Christ came not only to rescue us from our slavery but to bring us into His family.
When Paul uses the word “redeem,” he is drawing from the language of the marketplace. Redeem means to buy something back. To pay the price required to set it free. Humanity was enslaved to sin and helpless under the judgment of the Law. The Law was holy and good, but it exposed our unholiness and our guilt. So, in love God sent His Son to stand in our place and bear our condemnation. Christ came to purchase our redemption with His own blood. Redemption is the cost of love. Roman receipts from freeing slaves used the verb “redeem” for a slave’s freedom price.[5]
But Paul doesn’t stop with redemption. He goes further. He says we receive adoption as sons. Roman adoption was legal and permanent and powerful. An adopted child gained the full rights of inheritance. An adopted child took on the name of the father. An adopted child would no longer be viewed as a former outsider or slave. Adoption meant belonging, identity, security. Even the emperor Augustus was an adopted son.[6] Paul’s audience knew adoption changed destinies.
And this is what God’s love does. It takes people who were spiritually orphaned and gives them a home. It takes people who were bound by sin and calls them beloved sons and daughters. Galatians 4:6 says that “because we are sons God sends the Spirit of His Son into our hearts so that we cry out Abba Father.” This is the intimate cry of a child who knows they are safe in the arms of their Father. It is a cry born out of love.
I’ve seen this kind of love lived out first hand. My grandmother and grandfather adopted two and fostered 48 kids over the years. I have a lot of crazy uncles. If you ask me which ones are my real uncles? I will look at you like, “What kind of question is that?” They all are. It doesn’t matter if they arrived at her house at sixteen, as a baby, were adopted or not, or are biological. There is literally no difference. And what ties them all together is the love of their mother and father. They all call her Mama or Mama San. I call her Memaw. And I wouldn’t have my two adopted children and I wouldn’t be the Christian man I am today if it wasn’t for her. It is her love for Jesus, the love within her heart that has come out in her life that has changed me and has changed so many people.
Jeremiah foresaw this long before Paul ever wrote it. In Jeremiah 31:33, God says He will write His Law on the hearts of His people. That means the new covenant wouldn’t simply change their behavior. It would change their nature. It would give them new desires and new affections. They would love God because their hearts had been made new by God. It also says that “God will be their God and they will be His people.” That’s the language of covenant family. That’s the heartbeat of adoption. Love like this never excuses sin. It calls us to leave the old slave-masters (idolatry, self-salvation) and run to the Father.[7]
Jeremiah 31:34 takes it further. God promises to “forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” That doesn’t mean God forgets facts. He’s omniscient. It means He no longer holds their sins against them.
The already/not-yet tension here is what makes Advent precious. We belong to God now, yet we await the public unveiling of all that means.[8] Adoption is a present gift and a future glory. We’re living in the foyer of our Father’s house. We are welcomed in. Home. The feast is coming.
And this is where the weary world rejoices. Because nothing speaks to the weary heart like belonging. Nothing calms your fears like knowing your Father is near. Nothing heals the wounds of sin and shame like the embrace of adoption. You are loved. You are wanted. You are His. Not because you earned it. Not because you proved yourself. But because the love of God chose you and redeemed you and brought you home.
God’s love lasts forever. (Jer 31:34)
Jeremiah brings the promise of the new covenant to its climax, I think, when he speaks the words found in Jeremiah 31:34. God says “He will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”
When Jeremiah first delivered these words, Judah was living under the weight of judgment. The nation had fallen. The exile had begun. The consequences of their sin were all around them. They were a people who had broken the covenant at every point and had no power to fix what they had destroyed. Yet in that place of ruin God spoke a promise. He said the sin that brought them to this moment would not define their future. He said a day was coming when He would forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.
When we come to God through Christ we are not partially forgiven. We are fully forgiven. We are not temporarily cleansed. We are permanently cleansed. Christ has removed our sin as far as the east is from the west.[9] He has taken what once condemned us and buried it in a tomb and walked out over it alive.
This is why God’s love lasts forever. It is grounded in His character, not our perfection. It flows from His mercy not our performance. It remains steady when we are weary because it doesn’t depend on our strength. God doesn’t withdraw His love when we struggle. He doesn’t reconsider His promises when we fail. His love endures because He is faithful and He has bound His people to Himself through the blood of His Son. His love is a covenantal love purchased with the blood of Jesus.
If your faith is in Christ your eternity is secure.
Friend, if you’ve never trusted Jesus, He invites you now. Admit the rebellion He already sees, turn from it, receive the gift of forgiveness and adoption. It is a free gift, but it must be received.
If God remembers your sin no more then there is nothing left to condemn you.[10] Your eternity is not held together by your ability to obey or your ability to feel strong or your ability to stay faithful. Your eternity is held together by the faithfulness of Christ. The new covenant doesn’t depend on you. It depends on Christ. The God who forgave you will not abandon you. The God who adopted you will not revoke His love. The God who wrote His Law on your heart will finish the work He began in you.
Every believer needs to hear this. You may feel unstable. You may feel weary. You may feel like your failures have left your faith useless. But if your faith is in Christ then your eternity is secure because your salvation rests on His promise not your perfection. You are held secure by a love that lasts forever.
All the redeemed will forever comprehend the greatest of loves.
This is the point that deserves our deepest attention because it carries the weight of eternity. Jeremiah is pointing us toward the future God has prepared for His people. A future where all who have received the grace of Jesus through faith will forever and fully see and feel the fullness of God’s love. Heaven isn’t a static reward. It’s an endless revelation of God’s love.
It was prophesied in Jeremiah that the Messiah would take away their sin. He even references bringing them out of the land of Egypt. In Egypt, they killed a lamb and spread its blood over the doorposts of their homes.[11] They were then passed over and spared from death. When Jesus came on the scene, his cousin John the Baptist said, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Then Jesus goes to the cross, and His blood is spread over our lives to take away our sins. The new covenant is fulfilled in Him. Our sins are forgiven in Him.
This is what makes the new covenant so glorious. It promises not only a forgiven past but an eternal future. Every believer will forever comprehend the greatest of loves and rejoice in it without end.
When the Apostle John gets a glimpse of Jesus in His splendor in heaven, he sees Him still bearing those marks of that earthly sacrifice.
Revelation 5:1-6a – 1 Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. 2 And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” 3 And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, 4 and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. 5 And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” 6 And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
John 15:13 – Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
1 John 3:16 – By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
There is no greater love than the love of Jesus that sacrificed His life for your forgiveness. The same Christ who entered the world in the fullness of time will return in the fullness of His glory. He will gather His people. He will wipe away every tear. He will make all things new. And we will stand in that greatest of loves that never fades.
This is why the weary world rejoices. The love of God has arrived in Christ. It has reached us in our sin. It has adopted us into His family. It has secured our eternity. And we will fully recognize that love forever and ever.
[1] Isa 64:1-3; Ps 18:9; 68:8; Ex 19:16-20
[2] 2 Kgs 25:8-11; 2 Chr 36:15-21 – fall of Jerusalem & exile
[4] https://africame.factsanddetails.com/article/entry-733.html
[5] https://biblehub.com/greek/3084.htm; cf; Gal 3:13; 4:5; 1 Pet 1:18-19
[6] https://www.gotquestions.org/Augustus-Caesar.html
[8] Romans 8:23 – “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
