Apparently God has a secret to tell us. And it’s the best secret imaginable. If we lean in close to Him through Bible study and prayer, we’ll hear Him whispering the confidential mystery into our hearts. Be still and listen:
“The secret of the LORD is with those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant” (Psalm 25:14).
Did you catch that? The secret of the Lord is “His covenant.” That’s the thing He’s so eager to “show” us. But what is it? Does Scripture wrap language around the idea so we can grasp what it’s all about? Yes, it does. Through the prophet Isaiah, God defines His covenant like this:
“I will make an everlasting covenant with you, My faithful love promised to David” (Isaiah 55:3, NIV).
So the essence of God’s “everlasting covenant” is His “faithful love.” This is the thing—the big thing—God wants you and me to know most deeply, most clearly, most intelligently. This is the secret He’s constantly whispering for any and all to hear. He is eager for us to understand His love, and something particularly special about it: specifically, that His love is “faithful”—constant, reliable, unstoppable, trustworthy. He is filled with a quality of love for us that nothing can change or repress.
But where’s the proof?
How can we know God’s love is, in fact, faithful?
One word: Jesus!
God’s covenantal love took on flesh in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. “I will… give You as a covenant to the people” (Isaiah 42:6), the Father said to His Son before the incarnation. Jesus is God’s covenant personified. Paul explains how God’s faithful love played out in Christ when he said, “He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death” (Hebrews 9:15). Jesus proved that God’s love is faithful “by means of death.” By the supreme act of self-sacrifice! His death is the embodiment of God’s covenant because it demonstrates beyond any questionable doubt that God’s love is so faithful that He will stop at nothing to save us.
The mind opens or closes to God’s whisper in accordance with what we believe about Him.
One more question: why is God’s faithful love called a “secret”?
Certainly it’s not because He’s deliberately keeping it from us. Rather, it’s because we don’t tend to get it. The wall is in us, not in Him. God’s love is only unknown to us to the degree that we believe things about Him that block our perception. As long as we believe ill of Him our hearts can’t see what He is so eager to show us. Insightfully, Ellen White wrote:
“The whole spiritual life is molded by our conception of Him, and if we cherish erroneous views of His character, our souls will sustain injury!” (Review and Herald, January 14, 1890).
The mind opens or closes to God’s whisper in accordance with what we believe about Him. David indicates that only those who are in a particular posture of heart can know the secret of God’s covenantal love: it is only discernable by those who “fear Him”—that is, those who know God with reverential adoration. Those who are awestruck at the beauty of God’s character will be prepared to hear and understand His secret.
Are you listening for the secret of the Lord?
Ty Gibson
Ty is a speaker/director of Light Bearers. A passionate communicator with a message that opens minds and moves hearts, Ty teaches on a variety of topics, emphasizing God’s unfailing love as the central theme of the Bible. Ty and his wife Sue have three adult children and two grandsons.
