Is God’s Love Unconditional?

Is God's love unconditional? Our pastor asked that question in his sermon. When he later implied that God's love is conditional, I became indignant.

As a little girl, one of the first Bible verses (I John 4:8) I learned was "God is love." When I was older, I memorized another verse (John 3:16): "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son; so that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life." As an adult, I read a passage (Matt. 5:45) where Jesus told His disciples, "God sends the rain on the just and on the unjust." While our pastor preached, I remembered part of a letter in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul wrote, "But God showed His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8) That all sounds unconditional to me.

Then what was I to do with this huge condition to God's love that I know - but ignore - when I talk about God's love? In the two verses following John 3:16, Jesus said, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." The Psalmist says in Psalm 103:11, "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him…" (Emphasis is mine.) Not all of God's love is unconditional.

I sometimes wish that the English language were less ambiguous. Maybe then, I could find a word to describe God's love for the time before we confront our sinful condition and another word for our experience of God's love after we repent of our sin.

Pre-confrontation
Everyone arrives in this world a sinner from birth. Each person experiences God's love in what is often called the "common graces" of God. To varying degrees, we all have ability to "eat, drink, and (sometimes) be merry." If God placed any conditions to this love, we could not function. Even though most of us take these common graces for granted, every single one of them is an expression of God's unconditional love.

Confrontation
God's highest expression of His unconditional love is Jesus' death on the cross. Jesus bore the death penalty for all of everyone's sin. By the Spirit of God, we confront our rebellion and either accept or reject His sacrifice. How we experience God's love after this confrontation depends on whether we accept this wondrous gift or not.

Post-confrontation
For those who refuse and reject the offer of forgiveness and peace with God, "common grace" love is all they ever know. For those who repent and accept this perfect gift, an explosion of love occurs. Ephesians 3:17-19 says, "… that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge …"

Imagine that you are a fish swimming in the shallow waters of a tropical bay. Sometimes life is beautiful, sometimes stormy. One day you and another fish discover the outlet between the two arms of coral reef. You decide to leave the bay and launch out into the deep. The other fish stays in the bay. Eventually he washes up on the shore, dead. You grow to match the possibilities in the boundless ocean.

This is an analogy for humanity and God's love. His "common grace" love is unconditional, but it doesn't last forever. For those who refuse Jesus Christ, it ends at death. For those who repent of their sins and accept Christ's sacrifice, we experience God's love translated into dimensions that surpass our knowledge. I find it impossible to express the magnitude of the difference between God's unconditional love to those who continue in rebellion against Him and the unconditional, boundless, eternal love He pours out on His children. I can only join the Apostle Paul when he says, "… to him be glory … throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen."

The Halfway Point – Part 3

If you've ever built or remodeled a house, you know by experience that it always takes longer than you thought it would. That's what happened with this article on building our spiritual house. I thought I could complete it in two posts, but that just didn't happened. Today, I want to explore two more types of building material, grace and faith.

GRACE
Grace is an incredible gift. My favorite explanation of grace comes from the Amplified Bible: "The unmerited favor and merciful kindness by which God, exerting His holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, and keeps, strengthens, and increases them in Christian virtues." (From 2 Corinthians 1:12)

As I showed in part 2, God's grace is an integral part of the foundation. He pours out His grace on us at the cross. In that outpouring, we can never receive any additional grace that will affect our salvation. However, God's grace has more than one purpose. He intends for us to use grace to build our house.

If God's love is represented by the house's framework, then grace could be considered all the wiring, plumbing and air conditioning systems. We never see any of these systems, but without them, our homes would be less valuable. Like them, grace affects the way we act, something that may not be noticed. Consider some of the statements in the Bible concerning grace:

• God commands us to grow in grace. 2Peter 3:18
  
• We are to ask for grace in time of need. Hebrews 4:16
  
• According to the grace God gives us, we receive different gifts. Romans 12:6
  
• We are to be good stewards of God's varied grace. 1Peter 4:10
  
• God will give us more grace to resist temptation. James 4:6
  

All of these scripture verses suggest that grace should affect the way we respond to the events in our lives – the way we act every day.

FAITH
If love is the framework and grace is the hidden systems of the house, then faith is everything else: the doors, window, walls, roof, and furnishings. Faith represents the parts of the house that everyone sees. Faith is the raw material that we use to make our house beautiful.

In both the foundation and house, faith holds a unique position. Love is the essence of God and one of His attributes. Grace is also one of God's attributes. Faith is neither part of God's essence nor one of His attributes. It is a special gift from God to humanity (Ephesians 2:8). Faith allows us to believe that everything God says is true. It instills in us a conviction based on that belief so that we can respond to God in ways that are pleasing to Him.

In salvation, the gift of faith alone is part of the foundation. For the building of the house, however, what we do with the faith determines the quality and beauty of the house. James chapter two explains in detail that faith is useless unless we show it in our works. In Hebrews chapter eleven, the record of the great heroes of the faith, their actions show their faith.

Even though God assigns different measures of faith (Romans 12:3), we are to pursue faith (2Timothy 2:22) and build ourselves up in faith (Jude 20) so that it grows abundantly (2Thessalonians 1:3). Just to make sure that we are not deluding ourselves, God will test the genuineness of our faith (1Peter 1:7). The beauty of our house shows the richness of our faith.

There you have it. Half the year is gone, but the challenge is even more important than we knew. Unless our goals are focused on building a house that pleases God, our other goals have limited value. Let's both make a new list that includes using the building material God supplies for our lives.

The Halfway Point - Part 2

Last time, I challenged you to look at the plans you made for 2010. If your plans fell apart the way mine did, then that was probably something of a shock. How shaken we become when the storms and trials of life hit us depends on our foundation and upon our building material. The foundation must be Jesus Christ, our salvation, given as a gift of God through His sacrifice. (Scroll down to the previous article to read the scripture passages for these comments.)

For building our house, we would be wise to use the building materials God makes available: love, grace, and faith. It should not surprise us that God provides these materials to build our house. If you'll look closely at the foundation you can see these three materials interlock in such an intricate, self-supporting structure that nothing in creation can destroy it. John 3:16 and Ephesians 2:8 explain the way God gives us love, grace, and faith in the gift of salvation.

In Paul's first letter to Timothy, he ties not only his salvation to love, grace, and faith, but also his commission for service. First Timothy 1:12-14 says, "I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." ESV

Just as God appointed Paul to His service, He has also appointed you and me to His service. That service includes everything about us: who we are, the way we act, and the work we do. This service is the blueprint for our house. Using the material and blueprint He provides, we are to build a house that enhances the foundation on which it stands.

LOVE
Love is not only one of God's attributes; it is also an essential part of His nature. "God is love," the Bible declares in 1 John 4:8 & 16. We experience the love of God in two ways. First is the love of God for us. That love was poured out for us in Christ on the cross.

The second way we experience God's love is in us. Jesus says in John 13:34, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." In the Apostle John's first letter, he states, "And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. … but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. (1 John 2:3, 5 ESV) In these verses, we see both the building material and the use to which we are to make of it. In obeying God's command to love one another, we build up and bring to maturity God's love in us. His love changes who we are so that we become more like Jesus.

Next time, we will look more closely to the roles that grace and faith play in building our house.

The Necklace Treasure

As I've tried to explain in The Treasures series, I have strong opinions on the matter of God's emotions. I think that it is impossible to overstate how intensely God expresses His love for His people.

As I complete this series, I want to draw your attention to the ESV translation of Zephaniah 3:17: "The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing." (I added the italics.) Part of the note in the ESV Study Bible on Zephaniah 3:17 contains these thoughts: "This verse remarkably adds that God himself will rejoice over you with gladness, indicating that when God's people seek him and follow him, and rejoice in him and trust him, then God personally delights in them. This is not an aloof, emotionless contentment, but it bursts forth in joyful divine celebration: he will exult over you with loud singing."

I can hardly imagine it. God wants to sing His love song over me. Just the thought of it leaves me breathless with amazement.

No wonder we have an empty hole in our hearts before we find Jesus as our Lord and Savior. He created us to experience His pure, intense love expressed as His delight in our actions as we seek and follow Him and as love songs from His ravished heart as we rejoice in Him and trust in Him – and Him alone – to lead us. We can know nothing of that until we have repented of our sins and accepted His sacrifice on our behalf.

If you are like me, the first question that pops up in your mind is, "Why don't Christians experience these all the time?"

In order to give some of the answer to this question, I want to look at Song of Solomon 4:9 again. It says, "You have ravished my heart, My sister, My spouse; you have ravished My heart with one look of your eyes, with one link of your necklace." (NKJV) (I added the italics.)

The Bible is full of symbols. For me, this necklace symbolizes my obedience to God. Let me show you how I got there.

The neck can represent a person's will. The term "stiff necked" speaks of a resistant will, someone who will not submit. Isaiah 48:4 speaks of this: "…I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew…" (ESV) When someone bows in submission to a king, the most vulnerable part of the body is exposed – the back of the neck.

So, for me, this necklace represents the activity of my will. When I willingly, eagerly, and lovingly obey God's guidance, I add a link to this spiritual necklace. Sometimes the link is fashioned in the heat of heartache, other times in the sparkle of joy, but always in the absolute trust that my Master knows best. In order to experience the reality of God's love and delight, we must know God's ways and obey His will.

In my jewelry box, I have a necklace made of small oval links. In the center of each link is a tiny precious or semi-precious stone: sapphire, ruby, topaz, emerald, citrine and others. When I waver in my willingness to obey God in all things, I look at that necklace and remind myself that God and I are creating a spiritual necklace much more beautiful than the one I have now. Each link of that necklace is a remembrance of a time when I ravished the heart of God with my loving obedience. I hope to wear that priceless necklace on my wedding day, at the wedding feast of The Lamb of God. I want it to be a sparkling witness to the glory of my Lord.

Now you know the treasures of my heart and the way I experience them: God's powerfully passionate love for me, His delight in me as I turn away from sinful ways, my desire to ravish God's heart as I keep my life focused on Him, the protection I have from the Holy Spirit, and the necklace I'm designing with my joyful, loving obedience. My prayer is that you will find these treasures as valuable as I have. I pray that God would always fill your heart with the joy and peace that comes from loving Him, the source of all treasure.

Treasure #4: Secure in His Love

Have you tired of gazing at my treasures: God's pure, encompassing love, His delight in my fumbling attempts to be like Him, His ravished heart when I look only to Him? These treasures make my dark days brighter and my bright days indescribably lovely. You have undoubtedly turned them into your treasures, too, so let me share another one with you.

My fourth treasure: The Holy Spirit is jealously guarding me.

Fear and insecurity can deprive me of sleep at night and of joy in the morning, but God desires me to live my life secure in His love. He has gone to extremes to see that I am secure. James 4:5 says, "Or do you think it's without reason the Scripture says that the Spirit He has caused to live in us yearns jealously?" (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

Normally, jealousy would be considered a negative emotion. It usually indicates a lack of trust one person has of another person. However, in one relationship, jealousy can be appropriate: marriage. Suppose a man discovers that his wife is being romantically pursued by another man. This husband truly loves his wife and is committed to the relationship, so he does not ignore the situation and let this thief steal his wife's heart. He does everything in his power to keep his wife's love and to eliminate this thief permanently.

The New Testament speaks often of the church being the bride of Christ.

The best way to understand this relationship is to look at the Jewish practice of betrothal and marriage. The betrothal lasted for about a year, but was much more than our engagement is, today. The betrothal was as binding as the marriage. A betrothed woman could be executed for adultery if she became pregnant, because the marriage was not consummated during the betrothal. (This almost happened to Jesus' mother.) Traditionally, the woman received a gift from her husband at the betrothal.

From the perspective of betrothal and marriage, I have been betrothed to Jesus Christ and am now waiting for Him to come and claim me as His own bride. I have received the Holy Spirit as a type of betrothal gift. He is a seal that guarantees that I am Christ's, but He is also here to defend me from temptation and to rescue me from the world.

According to Rick Renner in Sparkling Gems for the Greek, one scholar expands James 4:5 to it's full meaning this way: "The Spirit takes it very personally when we share our lives with the world. He wants us so entirely for Himself that if the world tries to take us away, it infuriates Him. You need to know that in these cases, the Holy Spirit will not sit idly by and watch it happen. He'll do something to change the situation."

With the Holy Spirit completely committed to protecting me and to holding me safely in my betrothal to Jesus Christ, I have nothing to fear. I am secure in His love. Absolutely.

Treasure #3: Ravishing God’s Heart

I trust that, by now, you have meditated on how God's love for you is His infinite, all encompassing, enveloping love that can never be destroyed. I hope you have experienced the feeling of God delighting in you as you work in the power of the Holy Spirit to remove sinful actions and attitudes from your life. Now I want to share with you another special treasure.

My third treasure: I have the ability to ravish God's heart.

"What!" you say, "Does the Bible say that?"

Yes. In the beautiful love song called the Song of Solomon, chapter 4 verse 9 says, "You have ravished my heart, My sister, My spouse; you have ravished My heart with one look of your eyes, with one link of your necklace." (NKJV)

Ravish is not often used in today's vocabulary. In the few times that modern translations of the Bible include the word, it has the general sense of doing violence, humiliating, and oppressing another. Most often, it refers to a man forcing a woman to have intercourse.

In the eloquent declaration of His bride's affect on Him, the Bridegroom (Jesus) twice says that she "ravishes my heart." This is violence, all right, but not violence committed against another. It is the expression of such an overwhelmingly intensely loving emotion that all other emotions seem colorless by comparison.

A strongly intense emotion of the heart is seldom described in the Bible. Proverbs 5:19 gives one example. It states that a husband should be intoxicated with the love of his wife. A second example can be found in Luke 24:32, where the two disciples stated that their hearts burned within them while Jesus walked with them.

Two other examples include God in text. Genesis 6:5-6 show God looking at the continuous evil of man's life and the end of verse six states, "…and it grieved him to his heart." How the sinfulness of man pierced the heart of God!

The last example comes from Ephesians 5:25, where Paul commands husbands to love their wives. This love is not just the insipid love we associate with modern-day romance. Paul told the husbands to love their lives as much as Jesus loves the church.

How much does Jesus love the church? This overwhelmingly intense emotion caused Jesus to give up equality with God, to become a human being, to take on all the sins of the world and to die a shameful death on the cross. Here is a Heart that is waiting to be ravished.    

I, who have never ravished anyone's heart, am able to fill God's heart with overwhelming love. That is so amazing to me.

God tells us what causes His heart to be ravished. The verse says that I ravish His heart when I look at Him with my eyes. As the old hymn says,

            "Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
             Look full in His wonderful face,
             And the things of earth
              Will grow strangely dim,
             In the light of His glory and grace."

When I turn my eyes toward Jesus, He is already looking towards me, wanting me to see the love in His eyes. With one look from my eye, God's heart is filled with an overwhelmingly intensely loving emotion, His heart is ravished. How awesome is that?

Treasure #2: God’s Delight

Before you read about the next treasure, would you please review the first treasure? Has the knowledge that God sets your value in the amazing measure of His love penetrated your heart? Unless you are anchored in the richness of God's unsurpassed love, the rest of the treasures in my box will be as meaningless as the toy in a child's fast-food meal.

So, here is my second treasure: God delights in me, even though I am not perfect.

When I accepted Jesus as the One who redeemed me from my slavery to sin, I became a member of His family and nothing – nothing! – will ever separate me from His powerfully passionate love. However, receiving God's love and knowing His delight are two different experiences.

Think about how you experience love and delight in your family. You love your family because they are family, but you delight in them for what they do. I have wonderful daughters and adorable grandchildren whom I will always love, but when they do things that display the values by which I live, I delight in them. The same is true with God. He loves me because I am in His family, but He delights in me when I obey Him.

Consider a time when He alerts me to something that I have been doing – say exaggerating the truth. When He shows me that exaggerating the truth is lying, I delight Him as I begin the process of removing that sin. Proverbs 12:22 states, "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight."

Now here is the most precious part of this treasure: God does not wait until I am completely free of this sin to delight in me. As soon as He sees the sincere change in my heart, He delights in me. I may battle that sinful habit for years, but God is delighting in me all the way, because He sees my heart. He knows that even if my sincere repentance, obedience and love for Him are flawed, they are real and He delights in them.

The Bible has two beautiful examples of this truth. The first example is from the Old Testament: In 2Chronicles 12, God sent word to the kingdom of Judah that He was abandoning them to the Egyptian army. King Rehoboam and the leaders, however, humbled themselves before God and God changed His mind. The Pulpit Commentary describes God's reaction this way: "So God delights to meet the first advances of returning penitents with such foretastes of mercy as will lure them on to desire its full fruition."

You are probably more familiar with the example from the New Testament. In Luke 15, the prodigal son repents of deserting his father and returns home. Here is what Luke 15:20 says about his return, "And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him." The son had done or said nothing – just shown up – and the father delighted in him.

I love the idea of delighting God. When I feel discouraged or too weak to resist the sinful habit I am removing from my life, I take out this treasure and let God's delight give me the confidence to resist the temptation and to draw nearer to God so that I might experience more of His love and delight.

Now what do you think, treasure or trinket?

Treasure #1: God's Love

Most people welcome a special day to celebrate love in the middle of the coldest and most depressing part of winter, but not everyone. For some people, last Sunday, Valentine's Day, was another holiday that makes them feel alone and depressed.

I know just how true this is because I often felt that way when I was married. (If you want to learn why I say that, read my essay on Kim Hess' blog: Divorce Guru.) By the grace of God, I no longer battle those feelings. Now, I have a treasure box I open when I am tempted to believe nobody loves me and I am alone. I want to share my treasures with you. I want to show you why I have the confidence of a well-loved woman.

My first treasure: God the Father loves me just as He loves Jesus.
         Jesus loves me just as He loves God the Father.

That statement does not say God the Father loves me just as much as He loves Jesus. It does not say Jesus loves me just as much as He loves God the Father. This same
love that God the Father and Jesus give each other, they also each give to me!

Jesus explained this to the disciples in John 15:9, "As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you…" Jesus also prayed about this in John chapter 17. In verse 23 He said, "That the world may know that You… have loved them as You have loved Me." In verse 26, Jesus said that one of the reasons He declared God's name was so that "the love with which You loved Me may be in them." Think about that: God's love for me, in me.

Not "pie-in-the-sky" love, this love is for here, for now. The apostle Paul asks us this question in Romans chapter 8: "Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble or hardship or persecution or hunger or nakedness or danger or sword?"

He answers the question by saying, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any power, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord." Can any love be more powerful than that? That love is for me, for you!

For years, I wrestled with the concept that God loves me. Forget that He loves me with this all surpassing, all encompassing love. I just could not see how God could love me with even the weakest kind of love, something like a lukewarm affection. Who was I for God to love me?

I felt that way because I misunderstood God. I saw Him as emotionally cold, frozen in eternity, wearing a happy face when seen from one perspective and a disapproving face from another. If I thought of God as having emotions, I thought they were more distant, like what we experience when we hear about a stranger dying in a car accident instead of the powerful emotions that would be magnified had our child died in an accident.

With the help of the Holy Spirit, I realized eventually that what the Bible said was true. God's love for me is the same as the powerfully passionate love the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have for each other. Fully accepting God's love for me helped me to understand why Jesus dedicated Himself to die for me and why He continues to intercede for me in Heaven; I could see why the Holy Spirit is willing to live in my far-from-perfect heart. It is all because God loves me!

What a priceless treasure it is to know His love. If I begin to feel rejected or lonely, I take out this treasure and remember that God set my value in this amazing measure of His love and I cherish the knowledge that I am a well-loved woman.

Learning How to Love

Have you ever heard of the term "divine appointment?" No, it is NOT the day God decides if you can go to heaven, but that was a good guess. Usually God connects you with a stranger or puts you in an unusual situation. Without your prior knowledge, He has plans for you to meet that person's needs or to change the situation by your actions. It is a little like having a small part in a movie. Your scene is shot and then you go about your business, making no other contribution to the story line. I wrote about a divine appointment I had with a Muslim taxi driver on the way to an airport in the last post.

I enjoy my divine appointments. Being able to bless someone else gives me a high that no alcohol or drug could match. I show up, get to be the hero, and just know they wonder if I am an angel as I leave. Promise not to tell anyone, but taking part in a divine appointment always leaves me feeling a little giddy. God has usually prepared me in advance – without me knowing it, of course, so most divine appointments are fun.

God has another way for me to make a difference in someone else's life that is much more difficult and demanding: loving a person the way Jesus loves me. Just to make this clear, the person God wants me to love is not especially lovable and has been in my life for some time. This person can be rude or tactless, push my buttons, or take advantage of me. When I talk to them, my frustration level often gets very high because the things I say or do offends them. Sometimes their image of me bewilders me. Am I as horrible as they describe? How can I love them when the ways they act cause me such pain?

Mary DeMuth wrote a novel, A Slow Burn, which tells the story of a woman - a mother - whose life was so broken that she sliced to ribbons everyone who loved her with her razor-sharp self-hatred. This is one of those books where the story is fiction, but it carries the truth. The plot has a divine appointment or two, but God reaches out to her, most often, through people who continue to love her even if it costs them everything.

Just like Hixon in Mary DeMuth's novel, loving someone with the same love that put Jesus on the cross can be very costly to us. We have a choice; we can love them in spite of our pain or we can bring relief to ourselves and leave them unloved.

As for the unlovable person God put in my life, I have more than a small part in that person's story; we are in this for the long haul. God is using this person to teach me how to love someone the same way He loves me. He lets me see how He feels when I act unloving toward Him. The process is painful, but I am stubborn. I guess I AM getting a little more like my Heavenly Father. After all, He refuses to give up on me, too!