Loved
In my study of the book of Galatians, I came across a scripture that stopped me mid-reading and sparked something in my heart I couldn't let go of. Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, "The life I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who LOVED me and gave Himself for me."
The keyword is LOVED. Not simply “loves.” LOVED!
Let that sit for a moment, because it sat with me.
In one of the commentaries I was reading, the author referenced William Newell's perspective on the significance of that past tense. Newell wrote that "it is this past tense gospel the devil hates." He went on to say that a preacher who continually says "God loves you, Christ loves you" risks causing both himself and his congregation to gradually lose sight of their own sinfulness and of the substitutionary atonement of the cross, where the love of God was once for all, supremely and finally set forth.
That thought had my head spinning.
Because here is what the past tense actually means. John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world." Not loves. Loved. And before anyone misreads that, this is not saying God has stopped loving us. It is saying something far more powerful. It is saying His love for us is settled. Final. Permanent. It was established before we arrived, secured before we could earn it or destroy it, written into the fabric of creation itself.
This is why the Bible says in Romans 8: 38-39 nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not because He keeps choosing us day by day, the way a feeling rises and falls, but because He loved us from before the foundation of time. And because He loved us, He decided to redeem us. Despite everything that happened from Genesis forward, despite the disobedience, the wandering, the rejection, His love remained. And then He did the unimaginable. Jesus died so that love could be written in history, sealed in blood, never to be recalled.
This is not a small thing. This is the flex.
God does not just love me. He loved me. And that single shift in tense reshapes everything. It reshapes my identity. It reshapes how I come to Him, no longer performing, no longer trying to earn what has already been given. It reshapes my rest, because I am not waiting to be loved. I am already loved. Completely. Permanently. By the One who matters most.
I hope this truth finds a resting place in you today. You are not simply liked by a person who might change their mind. You are loved, past tense and permanent, by the Creator of the Universe. That love was decided before you were born, demonstrated at the cross, and nothing you do or don't do will ever undo it.
Rest in that.