Beloved

September 26, 2021 (It was a busy day and I forgot to post this!)

God’s love is a benevolent contagion. As I grieve the loss of family and friends, His love for each of us made each of us love each other. In some of those relationships there was no other common bond, just the love of Christ in our hearts, a love so powerful that it cannot be hugged and cherished and kept for one’s self. Becoming a BELOVED child of God changes people.

The Greek word translated beloved is beyond normal love. It is “dearly loved and cherished; sometimes preferred above all others and treated with partiality.” The OT word is similar. It can be about a close male relative or friend, like the relationship between Saul and Jonathon. It describes God’s love for Solomon and David, even though they both sinned against Him. The most occurrences of this word are in Song of Songs and refer to the “beloved” man in this song.

It also describes God’s love for His people and His desire to keep them safe and give them rest from their anxieties (Psalm 127:2). He even calls them His beloved when they have sinned against Him and He is angry with them and intensely dislikes them for what they have done . . .  

Psalm 108:5–6. “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth! That your beloved ones may be delivered, give salvation by your right hand and answer me!”

Jeremiah 11:14–15. “Therefore do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer on their behalf, for I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their trouble. What right has my beloved in my house, when she has done many vile deeds? Can even sacrificial flesh avert your doom? Can you then exult?”

Jeremiah 12:7–8. “I have forsaken my house; I have abandoned my heritage; I have given the beloved of my soul into the hands of her enemies. My heritage has become to me like a lion in the forest; she has lifted up her voice against me; therefore I hate her.”

In the NT, beloved can be one who is special or describe the bond between the one who loves and the one loved. These ideas are seen in in the descriptions of God’s intimate relationship with His Son:

Matthew 3:17. And behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Matthew 12:18. “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.”

Romans 9:24–26 tells how He called the Jews and the Gentiles, quoting Hosea: “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’ ” “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ ”

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. Another use of beloved describes the attitude of God toward His church and the way we in the church consider one another because we have been chosen by God and are His dear children. In other words, because I am beloved by God, I am to consider all His children as also beloved by Him and by myself.

Just as NT authors used beloved in addressing individuals and the church, I am also to admonish and encourage God’s beloved children to “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” and to be “imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” because “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” We are, as Jude says, “Called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.”