If, like me, you grew up as a teenager in the decade of the 1950s, you would likely remember
or sang by heart the song titled “Devoted to You,” popularized by the American singing duo, The Everly Brothers.
Like many other syrupy love sings, this one promises the loved one:
Darling, you can count on me
Till the sun dries up the sea;
Until then I’ll always be
Devoted to you.
I’ll be yours through endless time;
I’ll adore your charm sublime.
It can’t die because I’m so
Devoted to you.
I’ll never leave you; I’ll never lie.
I’ll never be untrue.
I’ll never give you a reason to cry;
I’d be unhappy if you were blue.
Through the years my love will grow;
Like a river it will flow.
It can’t die because I’m so
Devoted to you.
The songwriter talks about “endless time” and a love that “can’t die.” But if we do a reality check, we know there really is no such thing as a human “endless love,” as a more recent song promotes. Another, a vintage love song from the 1960s, picturesquely describes this one’s love that would last “until the twelfth of [the imaginary month] Never.” Yet another song or movie waxes confident about his love for his sweetheart that’s “From Here to Eternity” or “I’ll Be Loving you Eternally.”
However, the Holy Scriptures (The Holy Bible) expressly says: “…it is appointed for [all] men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). And that is because “…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). And “…the wages [consequence] of sin is death” (Romans 6:23, echoing Ezekiel 18:4).
Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 reveals the truth about the fate of man’s love: “For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing. And they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten, also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished; nevermore will they have a share in anything done under the sun.” [See: “What Happens to Man After Death?”]
This being the case, a man who claims to have an “endless love” or a love that “can’t die” is actually claiming to be like God, or be God, who alone has love without end. God alone is eternal, having neither beginning nor end of life, immortal and invisible (Hebrews 7:3; 1 Timothy 1:17).
1 John 4:16 famously says, “God is love.” And the apostle Paul affirms that this kind of love [Greek, agape] abides and “never fails” (|1 Corinthians 13:13, 8). The word “fails” is related to the Spanish “fallecir” (meaning to “fade away” or die). God’s love alone never fades away — never dies! As Psalm 136 repeatedly affirms, God’s mercy [a basic aspect of God’s love] “endures for ever.” [See: “The Four Dimensions of Christ’s Love.”]
Because of God’s unfailing, enduring love and mercy – His reversal of the death penalty that our sin justly deserves, through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice of His blood on Calvary’s cross as our ransom or redemption – we have the promise of everlasting life at Christ’s soon return (John 3:16; 1 Corinthians 15:22-23, 51-55; Romans 6:22, latter half). [See: “The Ransomed of the LORD.”]
This is the “endless love” of God that we should celebrate in joyful songs of praise and thanksgiving – not the love that humans claim for themselves as endless. Elevating human love to God’s level of endless love is actually a form of idolatry!
It is that kind of idolatrous human love as portrayed in the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s love song “Ich Liebe Dich” [English, “I Love You”]:
Light of my life whose image my heart holdeth,
Thou at whose feet I worship and adore….
I love thee, dear; I love thee, dear.
I love thee now, and through eternity!
I am not saying that we can’t rightly sing love songs! There are valid love songs; we just need to be selective and discerning. After all, the Bible preserves Israel’s King Solomon’s love song [“canticle”], in the Old Testament. As someone said, it’s just as wrong to sing a lie as to tell a lie!
Yes, we can tell our loved one that we are “devoted to you,” but as the wedding vow says, it’s a love that lasts only “till death do us part” (Romans 7:1-3).
And although as Christians we have the promise of everlasting life through the resurrection [or change, as in the case of living saints of God (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17)], Christ declared that “…in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven (Matthew 22:30).
Thus, God’s word clearly tells us that no human [marital or romantic] love is endless. But we are certainly exhorted to love others as ourselves while our earthly lives remain (Matthew 24:39; Ephesians 5:25-33).
When we are made perfect through our resurrection to immortality (1 John 3:9), we can truly and faultlessly sing to God that we are “Devoted to You” through endless time – through all eternity! Revelation 21 and 22 describe the wonderful endless, everlasting love and marriage between the “Bridegroom,” Jesus Christ [the “Lamb of God”], and the “Bride” – the glorified, immortal members of the Church of God – in the perfect “Holy City,” the “New Jerusalem” of the new Heaven and new Earth – forever and ever. Amen!
Pedro R. Meléndez, Jr.
21052024/31052025