A Life Invested in the Labor Of Love

Boaz formalizes the transaction.  His devotion leads to a formal, public commitment. So the transaction Mr. So & So wouldn’t risk is the transaction Boaz can’t wait to perform. 

Throughout the Old Testament there are types, prototypes, types of Christ.  Sometimes they are women and sometimes they are men.  Boaz is a type of Christ as he displays the qualities of God, made in God’s image as he is, that ultimately point to Christ. 

Someone once raised a question with me about Boaz’s motives.  Was Boaz’s compassion somehow less noble because he was falling in love with Ruth?  I suggest Boaz’s act of compassion was noble precisely because it involved his heart. 

Does God’s sending his Son to save us not involve his love for us?  “For God so loved the world…”    

Giving your life to material comforts and thrills is like throwing your money down a rat hole.  But a life invested in the labor of love yields dividends of joy unsurpassed and unending – even if it costs you your property and your life on this earth. 

John Piper, Dangerous Duty of Delight

Once again, we have the faithfulness, the loyal devotion, the steadfast love, the hesed, of one person, in this case Boaz, an example to us, set in contrast to someone else.  It was the same Boaz, who lavished kindness on Ruth in the harvest field, when she meant nothing to him, now he is ready to marry her in order to provide an offspring for Naomi and ensure her inheritance. 

This is God’s grace.  God shows his faithfulness, his kindness, his steadfast love to us in what he does, just as Boaz did.  And a right response is acceptance of his love for us – for you, reciprocity and devotion. And it leads to peace. 

It is not wrong to love; in fact love is what drives compassion best, out of a response to God’s love for us.  Doing it because we want to, because we have seen the cross, and are overwhelmed by the hesed, the love, God has demonstrated to us.  We have seen the way Boaz reached out to Ruth.  It’s simply an analogy to the greater love shown to us by God through Jesus Christ. 

In our suffering, God meets us with grace.  We are changed, and we can worship. 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.

2 Corinthians 1:3-6