If there’s one thing we know about God, it’s that “God is love” (1 John 4:8 & 16). That’s not the same as saying that God has love, God is loving, God’s character is based on love or God displays love at all times. To say that God is love is to say that God and love are inseparable. Take away love, and there is no God. Likewise, take away God and there is no love.
One of the problems we have with this is how we define love. We only have one word for “love” in the English language, so we use the same word for any sort of affection. That means we can say, “I love my wife,” “I love my dog,” “I love pizza,” “I love football,” and “I love God,” using the same word. But I certainly don’t love my dog like I love my wife and I don’t love God like I love pizza. Each of those types of love is different, but we use the same word for all of them.
Making matters worse, we poorly define a variety of different things as love all the time. We call infatuation love, when a couple just meets and is overtaken by the moment. Taking that a step further, we call lust love, thinking that just because someone has sexual desire for another, that it is love, rather than lust. Moving away from romantic relationships, the most common understanding of love is more about agreeing with people and giving them what they want, than anything else. But can that truly be love, if it ultimately hurts them? Conversely, in today’s society, if you disagree with someone, that’s considered to be “hate” even if you’re right and concerned about their well-being.
Amongst such confusion, it’s easy to see why people question God’s love. If they have never truly experienced love or have become confused about it, it is easy for them to think that if God is a God of love, He must not only accept their sin, but welcome them into His heaven in spite of it. Anything else would make Him a God of hate in their eyes.
Fortunately for us, God has provided us with a definition of love in the Bible:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud. 5 It is not rude, is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. – 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a NIV
Notice that there is nothing in that definition of love that is about receiving anything from another person. Nor is it really about giving to the other or fulfilling the “five love languages.” Rather, it is about how we act towards them. Even more than that, it is about the attitudes of the heart. Everything in that list is a spiritual issue, not an emotional one. It’s about being godly, in a way that cares about others and shows that care in the way that one acts towards those around them. That includes how we act in the hidden recesses of our hearts, not just our outward actions.
This is the kind of love that the Bible is talking about, when it says that “God is love.” Even so, it leaves us far short of understanding what unconditional love is. But that’s largely because we don’t really encounter unconditional love in our lives. All human love is conditional, even the highly touted love of a mother.
Let me be clear on this; love is conditional when it is dependent on the actions and words of the other person. As long as they do and say what we want, we love them. But if they do things that bother us and say things that we don’t like, it affects how we act towards them in turn. We either hold back on things that we would normally do or we act in negative ways that we would not normally act in. It doesn’t matter which of these it is, we are demonstrating that our love is conditional, based on how they act towards us.
This is prevalent in all types of relationships, including marriage. While most people would tell you that they love their spouse unconditionally, their actions speak otherwise. Rather than loving unconditionally, there is a constant undercurrent of give and take, where one partner is required to meet certain needs of the other, in order to receive what they want or need in turn.
Some would say that is necessary, to ensure that they aren’t “walked on” by the other person. But if they are concerned about being walked on, why are they getting married in the first place? For that matter, why have they selected that person to be their spouse, if they think the chances are high that they are going to be taken advantage of?
What is Unconditional Love?
Sticking with the area of marriage, what exactly is unconditional love and how is it demonstrated? Marital love is almost always conditional. For most people, it’s all about having their needs met. We say that we get married because we love that other person, but what we really love is how that person makes us feel. If we truly loved them, we would love them regardless of how they make us feel.
There was an elderly pastor I knew whose wife was dying slowly of a horrible disease. I don’t know exactly what that disease was, but it took her about three years to die. During all that time, he never left her side, becoming her caretaker, even though she hardly knew who he was. His love couldn’t be dependent on what she did for him, as she was incapable of doing anything. Rather, he loved her in spite of her inability to hardly even say thank you to him, making up for her lack of any expression of love, with his own.
Taking that idea a step further, unconditional love is not only loving them when they can’t love us in return, but also loving them in spite of how they make us feel. If you want to see unconditional love in action, look at a couple where one of the partners has changed, becoming emotionally abusive, but the other partner still loves them. Naturally, there is no reason for them to love that abuser, but they do so anyway, making up for the other’s lack of love, with the outpouring of their love.
If you don’t think that’s possible, I beg to differ with you. I’m the person who was in that relationship. Although my former wife no longer loved me and was emotionally abusive towards me, I continued to act in love towards her. Oh, I didn’t start out that way. I’ll admit that I fell out of love with her. But then I fell back in love, in spite of her actions towards me. I was committed to that relationship and towards her, so I loved her in spite of her actions.
God’s Unconditional Love
The author of love and especially of unconditional love is God Himself. We only know of it, because He first demonstrated it to us and He demonstrated it through His Son, Jesus Christ.
But God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8
This is the ultimate act of unconditional love and explains just what unconditional love is. First, the price that God paid, to show us His love, is the highest price that can be paid, giving up the life of His Son for us. Since Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30), this is the same as Him giving up His own life for us. As Jesus said in John’s Gospel: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” God has literally done this for us, showing His unconditional love.
But it goes further than this, as we look at the timing of Jesus laying down His life, for He did so while we were still sinners. In other words, since by definition sin is doing something to break God’s holy law or doing something against God, He laid down our life, while we were in the midst of doing something against Him. To even think of Him doing that, at such a time, is amazing.
This was no surprise to God, that He would have to do this. Before He began the work of creation, He knew that He would have to send Jesus to the cross for us. Not only that, but Jesus Himself knew that. Since everything was created through Him (John 1:3), that means He created us, with the certain knowledge that He would have to die for us… and He created us anyway. Wow!
It has been said that every time we commit a sin, it is as if we were hitting the nails going through Jesus’ hands with a hammer once again. While that’s not literally true, it was our sin that caused Him to suffer that pain, so it may as well have been true.
In this, we see a central pat of unconditional love, in that unconditional love, especially God’s unconditional love, makes whatever sacrifice is necessary. God is love and as such, He needs to give that love to someone; hence, His creation of us. He could not more stop Himself from giving that sacrifice, than the sun can stop itself from rising in the morning.
The Greek word that’s used to describe God’s love in the New Testament is the word “agape.” This is often described as “the God kind of love” or even “unconditional love.” But the truth of the matter is that we don’t truly understand that word; nor did the people in the time of Jesus. Although it was part of the Greek language, they had never seen agape in action. It was nothing more than a translation of the Hebrew word “haceed.”
If we look for the word haceed in the Old Testament, we find it used extensively, always in regard to God’s attitude towards us. It might be translated as “love,” “loving-kindness,” “mercy,” or “compassion.” In all these cases, especially in the book of Psalms, the word is “haceed.”
But just what does haceed mean? Like agape, it’s a word that really only has a vague meaning in our minds, mostly because we don’t see it in action. We understand intellectually that it is God’s love, as demonstrated by Jesus going to the cross; but that’s not quite enough. As I studied this out, the Holy Spirit gave me a definition for the word haceed. It is: “An overwhelming desire to give of yourself, for the other person, no matter what it costs you.” That’s the unconditional love that God has for us.
- It is an overwhelming desire – so strong that He can’t stop Himself from acting in love
- It always involves giving of Himself – it’s not enough to God that He give us thinks, He wants to give us Himself
- It’s for our benefit – God doesn’t just give to us in order to get something from us; He always does so I order that He might bless us in some way
- No matter what it costs Him – God counted the cost before He created the world, knowing that He would have to give His Son; but He did it anyway
This is the kind of love that God has for us. I can find no better definition. The truly great thing, is that His unconditional love never runs out. God doesn’t wake up one morning, saying, “I don’t have any more love to give those people down there.” Rather, as King David put it:
Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy (haceed) endures forever. – 1 Chronicles 16:34
God’s Unconditional Love Forgives
It is this characteristic of God’s unconditional love that allows God to forgive us for anything we do; regardless of what it is. He does not focus on our sin, but rather on our repentance and on the redemptive work that Jesus performed on the cross. Whenever we go to God, repenting of our sins, He is quick to forgive.
God’s forgiveness is quite different from our own. For when He forgives something, He casts it into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19). What that means, is that if any one of us commits the same sin again, after receiving forgiveness for it and going to God to ask forgiveness again, His response to us saying, “I sinned again God” would be “Again?” He has forgotten that sin and doesn’t hold it against us. Perhaps if we could learn to forget like He does, we would be much quicker to forgive as well.
God has no desire to hold our sins against us. That’s why He sent His Son to the cross. The very fact that Adam and Eve sinned, eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, made it necessary for there to be some means to pay for those sins and restore our relationship with Him. Forgiveness wasn’t an afterthought, it was part of His plan all along!
God never tires of forgiving and never holds our previous sins against us. When we are forgiven, it becomes as if we had never sinned at all. We might not forget it; but He does. It is our choice whether we allow that sin to become something that holds us back and holds us down.
There’s So Much More to Our Salvation
It’s hard to grasp the fullness of what all Jesus going to the cross gave us. We tend to think of salvation as Jesus paying the price for our sins, so that we can go to heaven. That understanding is okay, as far as it goes, but it is incomplete. The word translated in our Bibles as “salvation” is the Greek word “sozo” and it is much broader than just salvation for our sins. While that is important; there is much more that God’s unconditional love provides for us through sozo.
The word “sozo” literally means salvation from whatever we might need salvation from. Depending on our circumstances and the problems we are dealing with, that can mean salvation from sickness, disease, poverty, oppression, depression, a nasty neighbor or our mother-in-law. There are no limits to the salvation that God’s unconditional love has given us. Whatever God has, is ours.
Limiting our understanding of God’s love to merely saving us from our sins is limiting the blessings we are able to receive from Him. He desires to bless us, as David tells us in the Psalms:
Let them shout for joy and be glad, who favor my righteous cause; and let them say continually, “Let the Lord be magnified, Who has pleasure in the prosperity of His servant.” – Psalm 35:27
God takes delight in our prosperity, as long as we are able to call ourselves His servant. But this isn’t limited to material or financial prosperity. The word “prosperity” is an interesting one in the Bible. More literally translated, it means “to have a good road.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that we have lots of money, a fancy car and a big house. We only think that it does, because we live in a very materialistic society.
A wealthy man, who is dying of cancer, doesn’t have prosperity. He would give up all his money, just to get his health back. In this, we see an excellent example of just what that “good road” is. Yes, God can bless us materially; but He can also bless us in many other ways. His unconditional love takes into account everything we need, especially our spiritual needs.
God’s Unconditional Love Holds Back
There are many times when our spiritual needs may make it necessary for God to hold back on blessing us materially, because that material blessing would turn into a curse. Let’s say, for example, that someone was praying that God give them a luxury car. That might seem like a true blessing to just about anyone. But what’s going to happen to that person, when they receive that car? Isn’t it likely to boost their ego, putting more pride in their hearts? Won’t that hurt them spiritually, more than help them?
God knows the end result of anything He might do for us and will hold back on doing things that will do us harm. He will always hold back. It doesn’t matter how much we pray or beg. God will never give us something that will do us harm.
That’s not to say that God won’t give us something that seems like it creates difficulties in our lives, especially if those difficulties are going to teach us an important lesson. God’s goal is always our spiritual growth, so that we can become more like Jesus. Some of the lessons along the way might hurt a bit and like a good daddy who is letting his toddler take a few steps by themselves, He will allow us to go that way, knowing that we’ll fall and it will hurt; while making sure that it doesn’t bring us any real harm.
God’s Unconditional Love Manifests in Strange Ways
When we truly understand God as being a God of unconditional love, it starts to explain some of the other things that He does. Some things, like the creation of Hell, don’t seem like acts of love. However, Hell is nothing more than a place without any of the presence of God. He has created it for Satan and the third of the angels that followed him. They didn’t want to serve Jehovah God, so He created them a place where they didn’t have to. Those who follow Satan there won’t have to serve God either.
For that matter, Satan himself is a provision of God’s love towards us. He knew that we could not grow without some struggle in our lives. Therefore, He created Satan (who was originally the archangel Lucifer), knowing he would turn to evil. That provides an enemy for us, so that we can fight that enemy. Satan is never supposed to win, as we are “more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).
God takes credit for creating Satan in the book of Isaiah, as well as everything that Satan uses against us. In the same place, He tells us that Satan won’t win.
“Behold, I have created the blacksmith Who blows the coals in the fire, Who brings forth an instrument (or weapon)2 for his work; and I have created the spoiler (Satan)2 to destroy. 17 No weapon formed against you shall prosper; and every tongue which rises up against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from Me.” Says the Lord. – Isaiah 54:16-17
It may be hard to grasp the idea of this being part of God’s unconditional love; but we must take the whole passage together. Yes, God says that He created Satan and everything that the devil uses against us. Much of that was created for our benefit; but has had its purpose twisted by the devil himself. But God doesn’t stop there; He also tells us that nothing Satan throws against us shall prosper. In other words, his attacks won’t work. Not only that, but he shall be condemned for speaking out against us. That sounds like God’s got it under control and that He’s taking care of us.
We must get to a place in our understanding of God, where we understand everything He does and everything that He allows to happen in our lives, is a provision of His unconditional love for us. Regardless of how it looks, God is showing His love, in that He is working out all things out for our good (Romans 8:28). In other words, even what looks like bad, will ultimately be turned to good.