It largely depends on what we put the emphasis on. His love is unconditional for sure in that anyone,
absolutely anyone, who genuinely calls on the name of the Lord will be saved
(John 3:16; Romans 10:13). Further,
there is no sin that is unforgiveable other than willfully rejecting God (Matthew
12:31). Perhaps the blending of these two truths may
be where we formulate this phrase/concept, “God loves you unconditionally.”
That’s not the big picture though. Sin does have a role in introducing the
conditional aspect of His love in that God is demanding one thing of us: He is
looking for the truly repentant sinner.
He wants us to come to Him with a broken contrite heart, aware of sin in
our life, aware of being hopeless in terms of saving ourselves, and desperately
in need of and wanting a cure. This is
clearly exemplified in the parable of the searching father with the prodigal
son. (Luke 15)
God does love everyone but his gift of mercy and grace is
conditional to our acknowledgement that we have sinned against a most holy God,
and we no longer want to be in that state, AND that Jesus is the only cure for
that condition. it’s imperative to
understand that we can do nothing on our own to address these shortcomings and
that it has been all taken care of by Jesus as He died on the cross for us.
And yet . . . there is also a sense that he loves us
unconditionally because He does not require us to change into a holy and
perfect person first before we are lavished with His love. Again, a lesson from Luke 15, the prodigal
son was all ready to go through earning His father’s love expecting to spend a
lifetime of servitude to achieve reconciliation and restitution. Instead,
the father smothered his son with scandalous love making things right between
them. Why? Because there had been a change, a change of
condition. The father intuitively knew the
state of the son’s heart. The son was
seeking the father’s forgiveness knowing full well he had sinned against him
and against God. The father immediately
demonstrated unmerited mercy (forgiveness) and unmerited grace (placement in an
undeserved reconciled position of honor).
So, it may seem ambiguous at first, but God’s love is
unconditional in some aspects and conditional in others as we view all that is
contained in the message of the Gospel.
Are we the church teaching this today? Or, are we leading people to a false gospel
by painting a picture of God loving them unconditionally without acknowledging
that sin is what separates them from God to begin with?
If we ignore sin, it WILL run rampant in the church. If the church is not teaching what sin is,
then the church is also not teaching repentance, therefore, it is not teaching
a true gospel. The grace and mercy of a
false gospel conveys an unconditional love that requires no responsibility on
the part of the individual. It teaches
that the law does not matter. It seduces
us into believing that there is nothing about us that needs to change. It ignores the truth of Isaiah 64:6 that even
the good that we do is turned into filthy rags by the sinfulness of the rest of
our lives. Moral law ends up having no
role in the process of conversion to being a follower of Jesus because it is
subtly taken out of the picture.
This convoluted perception of unconditional love leads to no
distinction between the church and the world.
It is the promotion of an individualism that rejects any notion that God
wants to see transformation in our hearts.
As long as the church does not teach what sin is, the church has no
power to preach about true unconditional love.
Without awareness, acknowledgement, and acceptance of what
God’s word says in regards to what sin is, people within the church turn to
accepting what is popular in culture rather than answering the call of
scripture to live a holy life. That
lines up well with the entirety of Proverbs 29:18.
To ignore the role that sin plays in the bigger picture of
receiving God’s unconditional love (borrowing a phrase I’ve used before), leaves
Jesus rotting in a ditch somewhere on the outskirts of Jerusalem. If it
continues, eventually no one will understand why He died.
Know who you are,
whose you are, where you have come from and what your destiny is.
