- John 14:15 (NKJV) “If you love Me, keep My commandments.”
The goal of unconditional love is conditions.
That God loves us unconditionally brings great comfort to me. Yet today’s verse stumped me the other day. How can Jesus love us unconditionally and at the same time add conditions to it?
Then I thought about my own children. The moment I knew that God had blessed Sonja and me to be able to conceive a child – I loved that child. Back in the dark ages when my children were born you didn’t know what you were going to get until they were born, but that didn’t matter – male or female – that little child growing in my wife’s womb had unconditionally captured my heart.
Since that time there has never been a moment that I didn’t love my children, I love them unconditionally – no matter what they do or don’t do. However, because I love them I do have expectations of them. I love them so much that I want them to have a good life. Because I loved them, early on I insisted that they learn how to bath and practice good hygiene. I insisted that they get enough sleep and eat healthily. Later I made them go to church and school. And truth be known, to this day I have expectations and conditions that I place upon them; not – get this – so they can earn my love, but because I love them and want what is best for them.
Dear friend, how much more will a perfect God who loves you with perfect unconditional love insist that you obey His conditions and commandments?
And here’s one more thought…
I know a great many young men and women but none of them want to please me like my own two children. My two children will do things for me that no other man or woman would ever do. They do not do those things to win my love – they know I love them unconditionally; they obey me because they are my children; that’s how they show they love me; that I am theirs and they are mine.
Dear friend, if you have no desire to obey and please God that should alarm you. It is never a question of whether God love us, the question is: Do we love God? The answer to that question is revealed in our daily choices.
The ONE THING 