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Is GOD'S Love Unconditional?
Is God's LOVE UNCONDITIONAL?
I cannot in faith say that God's love is unconditional.
I can affirm that God's love is,
"…merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding…"
I can affirm,
"…as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him…"
His love…
"…is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,…"
(Psalm 103)
And certainly there is more to God’s love than this.
I can say that the conditions which underlay the love of God are beyond my comprehension. These conditions, how infinitely high they are, and how unfathomably deep they are, is well beyond human capability to cause God to cease loving. God is love and so I could no more cause God to stop loving by my hatred toward him than I could will God to cease to exist by my refusal to believe in him.
Something which is conflated in this discussion is "favor" or "salvation". If God loves me, then he saves me regardless of my will? This isn't the picture which Jesus paints of His Father's love. He spoke of God's desire to save Jerusalem and of their refusal, and the resulting desolation of their "house"(Matthew 23:37-38). Again, after revealing the parable of the sower, he told the crowd of people, that if they would not "turn" or repent, God could not heal them spiritually (Matthew 13:14-15).
The Calvinist will put forward a strong argument upon the sovereignty of God. I say strong because it is granted that God is sovereign, above all authority (Acts 4:24;1 Timothy 6:15; Revelation 6:10). It is asserted by them that since God is sovereign over all, he is sovereign even over my own will.
The sovereignty of God is another deep well down which we could go, but even the earliest accounts of man's interactions with his Sovereign God show him to be just. If he is sovereign over man's will then how did Adam and Eve fall? Wasn't it by disobeying his will (Genesis 3)? Did he cease to be sovereign? The same question can be asked when Cain struggled with temptation (Genesis 4:7). Again with when Noah emerged from the ark (Genesis 8:21). And when the hoard of humanity purposed to defy the will of God in Babel, God overthrew their plans but he didn't take away their will (Genesis 11:6). In his sovereignty God has willed that mankind also has a will and may make a choice. Of course God's will always supersedes the will of man.
"13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13-15).
God is sovereign, but he has created man in his own image, and so man also exercises a will and makes plans and purposes. It is simply that man's will, plans and purposes are subject to God's will, plans and purposes, yet in his wisdom God has so exercised his sovereignty to grant man the opportunity to attain to his greatest good. He has done this while permitting man to choose this out of love.
"28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified." (Romans 8:28-30).
I know of no passage in any reputable translation of scripture which uses the word "unconditional" at all, let alone to describe the love of God as being unconditional.
If the Holy Spirit does not use the word unconditional, or the equivalent in the original language to express a characteristic of God's love, then I cannot have faith that this is descriptive of that divine capacity.
God's love is wonderful beyond description (See Psalm 103).
God's love is great beyond measurement or even comprehension.
God's love is eternal backward and forward.
God's love is firm and unchanging.
God's love is merciful. God's love is patient. God's love is kind.
However, I cannot say his love is "unconditional" and I can accept what his love is because it is more than enough.
In God's Love,
Michael Franklin
