When we were younger, my sister would copy various poems and quotes and pin them on a cork board in our room. I remember one quote in particular that read, “love is a choice, not a feeling”. Those words stuck with me and left me wondering if love really could be a choice.
At the time I didn’t think so. The love I knew was very emotional and very conditional. It was always, “I love you if__.”
In my mind, love was never guaranteed, and it always had to be earned. I couldn’t understand the idea that anyone would choose to love, much less choose to love unconditionally.
My perspective was born mostly from what I saw in my own home. I watched my parents, who said they loved each other, fight, argue, hurt each other, and in the end divorce over ‘irreconcilable differences.’ For me, unconditional love was a fantasy.
Much of my early life I carried a weight stemming from lies I allowed myself to believe, lies I brought into my walk as a Christian.
Lies that said no one would love me unless I was perfect.
Lies that said love always walked away in the end.
Lies that said God only loved me if___.
Love is Unconditional
We often use the word “love” the same way we would use the word “like”, to describe an emotion, an affinity towards something, or a fleeting experience.
Biblically, love is a commitment. It is an unbreakable covenant. Share on XBiblically, however, love is a commitment. It is an unbreakable covenant.
In 1 Corinthians 13, perhaps the greatest passage ever written on love, Paul tells us love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
It is unconditional, undeserved, and unrelenting.
Growing up in church, I’ve known John 3:16 and “Jesus Loves Me” for as long as I can remember, but as a young Christian, I struggled deeply with the idea that God loved me.
The only love I knew had to be earned, and I was a filthy wretch who did not deserve to be loved by a holy God.
In part, I still believe that, because truly I don’t deserve to be loved by a holy God. But how wonderful is the knowledge that despite my sin, despite my failures, God does love me. Not because I earned it, I can’t. Not because I’m worthy of it, I’m not. But because love is in the very nature of God.
“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8, emphasis mine)
Love Undeserved
It irks me tremendously when I hear Christian authors or speakers telling people that they’re worthy of God’s love. My friend, the truth is just the opposite:
We don’t deserve God’s love.
At first glance, such a statement may appear discouraging. But in truth, that should be the most freeing thing you’ve heard all day, maybe all year, or perhaps in your entire life.
I believe the Bible clearly teaches that God’s love is undeserved. Consider Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Did you catch that phrase “while we were still sinners”? God epitomized His love for us while we were still His very enemies.
Ephesians 2:4-5 says, “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”
We were dead in our sins and had done, can do, nothing to earn God’s love, “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love…” saved us. Read that again. God saved us because He loves us, He doesn’t love us because we are saved or sanctified.
We can’t earn His love because we already have it. And we can’t lose His love because we don’t deserve it in the first place.
God saved us because He loves us, He doesn’t love us because we are saved or sanctified. We can’t earn His love because we already have it. And we can’t lose His love because we don’t deserve it in the first place. Share on XRomans 8:38-39 reveals the magnitude of God’s love for us. “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
To be clear, I’m not saying God won’t punish those who reject His Son. Because of God’s holiness and justice those who reject Christ are already condemned (John 3:18). However, the idea that we can earn God’s love is extremely dangerous, and unfortunately, extremely prevalent.
The quest to earn God’s love is utterly futile, and its only accomplishment is turning those who undertake it into self-righteous hypocrites or self-loathing failures, neither of which exemplify the Christ-like servant God calls us to be.
Earning God’s favor shouldn’t be our goal as Christians. Instead, we ought to be seeking ever increasing conformation to the image of Christ, and we are made into the image of Christ by God’s power because of His love for us.
We Can Rest in Love’s Arms
Why do so many people struggle to accept God’s unmerited love?
I believe it partly has to do with the fact that we live in a broken world that so very rarely sees God’s kind of love.
Our world has come to accept conditional, inconsistent love as normal, and it truly breaks my heart. Consider marriage and its now almost inseparable companion, divorce. People cheer when a couple says they’ve been married for more than 10 years because such commitment has become a rare occurrence.
Marriage was designed to be an earthly representation of Christ’s unfailing love for His bride the church (Ephesian 5:22-33), but our world has turned it into a twisted mockery of the unconditional, faithful love God intended.
We are now left with such a distorted view of love that we cannot fathom God’s love that sees our sinfulness, our failures, our filthiness, and says, “come anyway.”
In his first epistle, John records the sacred truth that God is love. In his gospel, John demonstrates that Jesus is God incarnate. This makes Jesus love incarnate. When Jesus said, “Come to Me”, Love was beckoning with open arms.
We can rest assured that Love is faithful, committed, unchanging, and wholly unconditionally, undeserved.
<3
beautiful
thank you so much for putting into words what many other’s can’t. I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain God’s unconditional love to my school’s bible study club (we’re currently talking about the character of God) and your article has helped tremendously! Especially when you explain that we don’t deserve God’s love and so we can’t loose it either. Isn’t God incredible beyond words?
Amen Lise!
God is so good, and I know one way in which He reveals His goodness is using our struggles to encourage others. I feel so privileged to know He was able to use my experiences to encourage you and your club!
this article is everything i want to believe and more. thank you so much for writing this. i too struggle with the idea of a love that never walks away or has conditions. exactly what i was looking for <3
Thank you Jesus for your unconditional love
You cannot not deserve Gods Love
We have used everything in the past to solve our problems except for one. Love. But no one knows what it is. It’s you love all those before those now and those to come the same as you did when first born. You didn’t know anything of them as you know even less now except they too may know love. It was there the first days months of your life. It’s still there but you now don’t belive it. I do with all my heart and soul. I will never know more than those before who also only knew love and forgot the only thing you only ever needed to know. Love.
Love is benevolence in action. Making someone inherit a sinful nature, arranging that they sin and cannot will or do otherwise, judging sin to weigh infinitely more than righteousness, and then punishing them forever because they do that they were born to do and were not lucky enough to bet their souls on the right horse is pure malice. God does not love those he punished. Love doesn’t give up, but God shuts the door if you die with the wrong beliefs. Love always endures, and God does not endure except as a means of display. Love never fails, and if God loved those in hell, they would eventually get out.
God’s love is conditional and it is earned, by being in the right group.
Sin is a non-issue because both the saved and the unsaved sin, as we were created to sin. The only issue is conversion, and conversion earns you your way to heaven.
Rebecca,
I think the disconnect I see here is the incorrect pairing of “deserve” and “earn” as though they are synonyms. They are not. Earning something is about something you’ve done. “The WAGES of sin is death.” Death is the wages sin pays for what you HAVE DONE.
Deserving something is about who you are and your intrinsic value. How do we take what God has made and belittle its value/worth by calling it unworthy or undeserving of love?
We are created to be loved by God. We cannot deserve LESS than what we are created for.
Your child does not earn your love as a parent. But they most definitely deserves your love, if for no other reason than you birthed or created them.
You, as a good parent, take on the responsibility to love and care for any child you bring into this world. God, as the Good Father, takes on the same responsibility in creating the world and humans. We are God’s masterpieces! The lost coin did not lose its value or its inscription just because it was lost! The coin, the sheep, and the son were all WORTH (worthy) of being found and all that went into the finding (redeeming/saving).
After writing my comment I noticed yours. (Below) It matches my sentiments very closely. Thank you for what you said! Blessings to you!
I understand your reasoning for stating that God’s love is undeserved. However, I believe that it should be clarified that it is only due to the sin in all of us… and many with gross sins… that God’s love is undeserved. Because, on the flip side, we were made in God’s image… which makes us highly valuable to God. All through history God has been extremely patient with us. Unbelievably so… showing our worth in His eyes. Showing His love for His creation. He never gave up on the possibility of having a people that would have a loving close relationship with Him… to the point of coming to earth Himself, clothed in human flesh to be a sacrifice in our stead. – God would not send His only Son to die for worms.