Have you ever made a commitment to something, and then struggled to keep that commitment? I have, and I’d say that most people probably have as well. After all, we are human, and humans definitely aren’t perfect.
The great thing is, of course, that God isn’t like that. Even the pagan prophet Baalam understood that, when he uttered an Oracle in Numbers 23:
“God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” (Numbers 23:19)
As all those listening to that Oracle would have understood, the answer to those questions is ‘No.’ God is holy, and perfect, and as such cannot allow the slightest imperfection or untruth to be anywhere in his character, and therefore he cannot lie.
This is very reassuring, as God has promised us amazing things, and will never (be able to) fail to deliver. Even when the promises may take a while to eventuate, if God has promised them, we know they will come to pass. Take Abraham for example. God promised him countless descendants, and he had to wait until he was 100 and his wife 99 to even have their own child! He must have been getting a bit worried by then that there was something wrong with that prophecy, but God promised it, and so it happened.
The greatest commitment that God ever made, however, was his commitment to save us if we falled away, to give us eternal life through whatever means necessary if we failed to hold on to it in the Garden of Eden. Many people have debated over why God would create the world like he did if (seeing the future) he knew that people would turn away from him. I don’t know the answer to that, and we may never fully be able to understand his reasoning on this side of eternity, but the most important thing is that he loved us enough to plan a way back to him if he did.
The bible explains that before the world was even created, God had prepared his master plan (Jesus) to redeem us. Take a moment to understand that: before we were even created, God decided that he loved us so much, that it was worth dying the most hideous death imaginable - death on a cross - just to give us the choice of whether we wanted to love him back or not. That is incredible. If you can get a hold of that concept, it can be life changing. It was for Paul. Listen to how he introduces himself in the letter to Titus.
Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God’s elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness - a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time… (Titus 1.1-2)
God’s commitment to love us limitlessly was enough to turn Paul’s life around. I’m sure that in his life Paul made many commitments that he did not live up to (luckily he didn't live up to his earlier commitment to exterminate the Christians), but in Jesus he found something worth betting his life on. Even though Paul never even saw Jesus in the flesh (except maybe in a blinding light on the road to Damascus), he was able to commit himself fully to his cause, following him faithfully even to a martyr’s death.
That same commitment to God is one I will strive to keep.
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