Title: The Myth of Unconditional Love/Topic: Love of God
Today’s Reading: Joshua 23; Joshua 24; Psalm 44; 1 Corinthians 11
Scripture: Joshua 23:16, 24:20, Psalm 44:26,
16 If you violate the covenant of the LORD your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the LORD's anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you."
20 If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you."
26 Rise up and help us; redeem us because of your unfailing love.
Observation: I have heard it preached since I became a Christian that God's love is unconditional. No matter what we do, he will still love us. I just have never found support for that idea in the Bible. If God's love is unconditional, why would he ever turn his back on his kids and let them suffer as he did so often? Why would he threaten them with terrible consequences if they disobeyed? What the Word does talk about is the unfailing love of God. In other words, his love can never be exhausted. It is everlasting and will always be there for us if we meet his conditions. His conditions are quite clear: Obey! And when you don't, repent. Then you will be restored fully, forgiven fully, and received into his heart fully. His love will be yours along with a relationship with him that will be as if you had never wronged him. Unfailing love and unconditional love are two different things. With the former, a close relationship with God is always possible based on our choice to embrace his conditions for it; with the latter, he will love us no matter what we do (which isn't backed up scripturally as far as I can see).
Application: I think if we all understood the difference between these two kinds of love we would all be healthier emotionally. Unconditional love leads to dysfunctional codependent behavior that enables people to stay in a place of self-destructive behavior. Unfailing love means I draw proper boundaries for behavior and always keep a place in my heart for anyone who repents and embraces living and acting responsibly.
Prayer: Father, I want to love as you love. Help me to grow in my understanding of your love and embrace it completely. I thank you for your unfailing love that teaches me right from wrong and always receives me when I repent.
This I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
2 Comments:
This is a truly great post. What a profound thought to differentiate between unconditional love and unfailing love. The differences are so important. And the ramifications of this understanding are significant and far reaching. I love the fact that you are so brilliant and very spiritual!
Love, Michael
Thank you so much before I had just prayed earlier this evening for God to teach me how to love. I, too, have often heard that God's love is unconditional and that we should love unconditionallym however, my spirit has been pricked because I thought is a God of conditions and he has set boundaries so if we are created ihis image how can we be wrong to set boundaries in our relationships. Actually, I've learned it's UNLOVING to not set healthy boundaries in relationships. Anyway, this evening I was reading a passage in Jeremiah which talked God's unfailing love and it dawned on me I don't recall ever reading the word "unconditonal" in the Bible. I even looked the word up in a Bible concordance but did not find it. I did however find "unfailing". So then I asked why does man describe God's love as unconditional when God never described it as unconditional but that his love is unfailing. The Spirit has now enlightened me to a false teaching that is manmade and not scripturally-based. Thanks again for your blog.
Felicia
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