"What Kind of Love is This?"
Copyright 2005 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
That God’s love for us is not dependant on us is one of the most vital truths that we need to understand and embrace. In human relationships love is rarely unconditional. A popular song during the 1980’s by Janet Jackson was entitled "What Have You Done for Me Lately?" Its context is a romantic relationship in which the woman is telling her man that he has not done enough to enhance her life recently and he can expect her to leave if he does not give her what she expects from him. The message is that the love a person has for someone will only last as long as that someone merits it. Such is love between fallen and finite beings. God’s love is not like this and for that we can be eternally thankful.
God loves the unlovable. He loves people even though he knows they will fail to return that love in kind. In fact He loves even those who do not love Him at all. The Bible is very clear that God’s love for humankind is not dependant on humankind’s response. We are told that our Creator cared enough for this race of rank sinners to die for us when we were still living the kind of lives that made it very clear that love for Him was nonexistent. This is love of a very different kind than we experience between each other in this world. As another song by Christian singer Margaret Becker is entitled, "What Kind of Love is This?"
It is the love of a long-suffering, patient God. What too many of us do not yet understand is that He does not cease to love us when we do the kind of wrong that might cause other human beings to stop loving us. To most people this seems not only illogical but somehow wrong as well. We are so steeped in the fallen concept of love being earned that the glory of agape love is often lost on us. Beyond that we sometimes do not like the idea even when we have a better grasp of it. How could the Lord love a Jeffrey Dahmer or a Saddam Hussein? How indeed.
The answer lies in the nature of the divine. Unconditional love flows out of God to all of us because it is His nature to love. He does not need our love. He has an infinite supply of it within Himself. Further, God does not just have love; He is love. We need this love to live. It comes from outside of us. We do not inherently and perfectly love others out of the depths of who we are because we are not limitless. But He is. God’s infinite love, one not requiring a loving response or loving behavior, can be directed towards even the most evil members of the human race. It is not directed at that evil but at the persons who continue to commit the evil in the hopes that this unconditional love will bring them to repentance. We may reject this love but that does not mean it was not there, wooing us to the Lover of our souls.
The deepest freedom and joy of the Christian life comes as we progressively learn to receive the unique, unconditional love of the one true God. This love was most perfectly made manifest on the cross of Calvary and it is only the One who died on that cross who makes it at all possible for us to receive it. To know Jesus is to know the Father and to become partakers of a love so powerful that it finally saves us from our own slavery to conditional love, which, in the ultimate sense, is not real love at all.