Unconditional Love
What is “unconditional love” and can humans actually practice it?
I think this is a struggle because we as humans are fallen and sinful and our perceptions of things like love are skewed and don’t always line up with God’s definitions. I’ve heard many people and even Christian songs on the radio talk about how God loves us “just as we are” and He loves “people like us” and I agree. To a point.
Discernment alert!
This is where Jesus Followers need to have discerning ears and minds to understand what people really mean when they use the term “unconditional love.”
It’s true that the Bible says God loves unworthy sinners (which is obviously ALL of us!). Jesus fellowshipped often with those who the religious leaders would deem unworthy and “less than” because their lifestyles were different and they weren’t following the law well enough. But a closer look at scripture reveals that Jesus met those unworthy people where they were, loved them, spoke truth to them and invited them to change… “go and sin no more.” That’s not a popular statement these days as our world wants to take offense at being called out and called to something better. It’s “hurtful” for someone to say your behavior is a sin, especially if it’s one that you really enjoy and make a habit! And why do we need to change when “God loves us just the way we are”?
Unconditional love means that no matter what you do it can’t change the fact that God loves you. Simple. But God’s definition of love goes far beyond warm fuzzies. It includes “not delighting in evil but rejoicing with the truth” (1 Cor 13:6). God’s love is strong enough that He doesn’t actually want anything evil to happen to us and He knows our sin is destructive and harmful to us and others. So He doesn’t stop loving us when we sin, but also loves us enough to call us to repentance and want to change us to conform to His likeness.
Warning Signs
If you went to the lake and saw warning signs posted around saying “closed” and “no swimming allowed. Violators will be fined” because the lake contained brain-eating amoebas, would you find those warning signs loving or unloving, kind or unkind? Would you be thankful or indignant because no one should be able to tell you where to swim? Of course you still have free will and could go swimming if you chose. But your chances of harm greatly increase the second you put your foot in the water and the consequences you could reap go far beyond paying a fine.
In John 14:15 Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Often those commandments go against our fleshly will and desires and we’re tempted to rebel against God’s rightful authority as our very Creator. But why do we see His “warning signs” to avoid harmful sins and behaviors as unloving? And why do we spurn His consequences for our disobedience? If we were to show unconditional love toward God that means we wouldn’t stop loving Him or love Him less when He rebukes us and we would actually obey Him faithfully. How many of us Christians actually do THAT? I’ll be the first to say I find myself falling short at times.
So what does receiving unconditional love look like (because He really IS offering it continually)? It’s accepting His care and provision along with His correction and conviction. It’s receiving guidance and direction from our Good Shepherd as we navigate this fallen world, without expecting handouts of whatever our little hearts desire as if He were some genii here to grant our every wish. It’s resting in His goodness no matter what difficulty life throws at us.
And reciprocating that unconditional love back to Him is obeying Him no matter the cost to us…to our pride, our reputations, or what we consider our rights, and so much more. I agree this is hard to do and often unpleasant to our sinful flesh, but it’s what the Bible says to do. “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’” Matthew 16:24-25
Practicing unconditional love toward others
What does practicing unconditional love toward others look like? I think it means exactly what I said earlier…not allowing their actions/behaviors to make me love them less or keep me from loving them at all. But it’s also loving them enough to not support them staying in sinful patterns.
The LGBTQ+ community, Progressive “Christians” and others want us to “love” in a way that embraces, affirms, and celebrates sinful, destructive behaviors and lifestyles. They want to say God loves us “just as we are” so there is no need to change… as if He was NOT calling us all to stop sinning. They want to lump their sin in with their “identity” so that to say their behavior is bad is to say that they themselves are bad and that’s mean. It’s real easy to not call something a sin when we choose to believe it’s “just how we’re made” or part of who we are. This is a lie from the pit of hell and one of the most UN-loving things to do is to embrace our own sin and others sin and smile with them all the way to destruction!
But rejecting the sin nature of someone else can be done in very unloving ways and this is what we Jesus Followers should NOT do. Instead we should actively seek the Lord about how to speak the truth in love, call our friends and family out of their sinful patterns while humbly acknowledging our own weaknesses and propensities to sin, and go to Jesus together in prayer. Love doesn’t elevate one person above another, including ourselves. We’re all sinners in need of grace.
Thankfully we do have a God who loves us unconditionally and there’s no sin too bad for Him to forgive. Thankfully He offers a way to be free from the power of sin so we don’t have to be slaves to sin anymore. Thankfully He loves us enough to show us a better way to live that will bring abundant life. Thankfully He has patience with us when we all fail to love others well. And thankfully He’s still working on us… including me!