“But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth…”
brethren beloved by the Lord,
The Thessalonians possess an undying, unadulterated, undiminished love from God. They did not earn or deserve this love because God chose them from eternity. The Greek tense of the word “beloved” indicates that God loved them in the past with the result that He persists in loving them (Romans 5:8; 8:39). He never gives up loving His own.
Principle:
God loves us with an undying, unadulterated, undiminished love.
Application:
Many people find it difficult to believe that anyone could love them. We hide our sin from ourselves and others. “How could God love me since I do not even respect myself?” This misses the point that God loves me because of who He is, not because of who I am (John 3:16).
Would you rather be loved by God more than the apostle Paul? Would you rather be loved by God above fellow Christians? No human being can love us as well, as persistently, and as indefatigably as God can. You cannot be better loved or more extensively loved than you are. No one on planet earth can love you this much.
“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you” (Jeremiah 31:3).
”Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (John 13:1).
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:
“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by “faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
“…to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19).
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her…” (Ephesians 5:25).
“…and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood…” (Revelation 1:5).
