‘“I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob”‘ (Malachi 1:2 ESV).
Do you ever question God’s love? The exiled Jews that had returned to Jerusalem did. They were happy to be home again, yet they were still under Persian rule and the former glory of their city was a mere memory. They wondered, how has God “loved us?”
God’s reply through His prophet Malachi is both startling and mysterious: “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother, yet I have loved Jacob.” In other words, God chose to love them with an exclusive love long before they were even born. For Jacob, whom God renamed Israel, was the father of the twelve tribes.
Like a groom who chooses his bride, rejecting all others, so God chose Jacob and rejected Esau. It is God’s choosing to love us that makes it possible for us to respond. God’s love initiates. As Jesus told His disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16).
When Paul explained how God has loved us to the Romans, he wrote, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). How has God loved us? By choosing to love us when we were unlovable.
If we are able to love, it is because God first chose to love us. As John wrote in his first epistle, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
PRAYER: Dear Father, we love You with the love You have poured out in us by the Spirit of Christ. You have loved us not because of who we are, but because of who You are. For You are love. Fill us with Your love to overflowing, so that we may show the world the wonder of Your love. In Jesus’ name, amen.