1John 3:16
We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.
Finding a LOVE -- a true love, a real love, a love we rely on in a relationship we can trust -- is something that occupies most of us for a great portion of our lives. But most of us have no idea that we are loved more deeply than we ever dared to hope for by One who didn't wait for us to say we needed it. He offered it unconditionally to us, once and for all, in the person of Jesus. Getting our minds around what that unconditional love means is an enormous challenge to our finite minds. What follows are some of the things -- and not an exhaustive list, certainly -- that is meant by the phrase, "the unconditional love of God for you":
(1) Unconditional love is not contingent, not determined or even influenced by someone or something else. That means that nothing you do, nothing you say, nothing you sign, nothing you sacrifice, nothing you promise to do or to stop doing, nothing you embrace, nothing in your past, nothing in your present, nothing in your future, nothing in this physical world, nothing beyond this physical world, nothing in hell, nothing in the spirit world (not angels or devils or satan himself), nothing and no one at all can ever, under any circumstances separate you from God's love in Christ Jesus. HE Himself has chosen you as HIS love, and HE has purchased you as a bride for Himself by HIS own choice and of HIS own eternal will. HIS is the final Word on the matter. What you do or think or say or feel or believe or choose can ever make HIM love you any less (or cause HIM to love you any more) than HE does already. That lovely passage at the end of Romans 8 about the nature of the Love from which we can never be separated puts to rest all our fears that we might be able (or something or someone else might be able) to constrain that Love or control that Love in some way.
(2) God's unconditional love for us is absolute, unlimited, infinite and perfect in nature. Because HIS love is perfect -- as all HIS acts are -- there is no way your choices or mine, our pasts, etc., have any power to modify or change HIS decision to love us. The perfection of HIS love for us is so intrinsically bound in HIS own nature that John, the disciple who seemed to understand so much about that Love, said he could only properly represent it with these words: "God is Love." God is God; if you or I could condition or control HIS Love for us in any way (by what we did or didn't do or by what we did in the past or will do in the future), then we would be God and not HIM. HE will not have that so. HIS Love is self-defining and functions independently of us or any other controlling force. If that is not so, then it is not unconditional love.
(3) The unconditional love of God is pure, not mixed or tainted with anything else (like fear or guilt or shame or blame or condemnation). HIS love leads and guides and woos and embraces and strengthens and sustains and upholds and nurtures. HIS love for us is so embracing and so absolutely irresistible that HE will draw each particle of us(especially any bits that hold back in fear that we cannot "deserve" HIS love) into that embrace. "Our God is a consuming fire," we are told. Locked in the embrace of HIS Love, everything that is not really you (only the dying shadow of your old flesh) will be burned away. If you could see the real You, you would be astounded by the beauty of the Face your own reflects. That You, the true you, is the one that only the unconditional love of the Father can call into being. And HE has done so already, for each of us, by HIS own will and for HIS own purposes, praise HIS Name.
(4) The unconditional love of God is not liable to modification at any time for any reason. It can't be added to, and it cannot be reduced. When Jesus said, "It is finished" at the end of HIS suffering on the Cross, HE at least meant that -- and I think HE also meant a great deal more. What Jesus gave us in HIS death is the blood-oath of the Father that HIS Love is the final Word. Part of giving ourselves into the hands of the Living and Loving God, my friend, has to do with believing -- with Jesus! -- that there is no Other we can trust to love us with that unconditional, perfect, divinely unconditional love (not spouse, not children, not family, not friends, not country, not the messy institution we call the church) to guide us safely Home. It is only into HIS Hands of Love that we commit our spirits.
(5) The unconditional Love of God will lead us into strange, wonder-full, challenging, painful places as HE works in us the perfecting of the life of Jesus HE has planted in our souls. When Jesus was baptized, the words of the Father thundered out of heaven and came to rest on HIM by the power of the Holy Spirit (made visible as a dove for the benefit of the watchers, I think). The words told Jesus and those watching that HE was God's own child, a delight to HIM in every way, before HE had done any public ministry at all. And then, right then, Jesus was led by God's own Spirit into 40 days of fasting (to the point of near death) and prayer and torment by devils, small and great, and -- finally, as He neared death -- the nurturing ministry of the angels. Really, can you or I expect anything else or different to happen to us as we are led by HIS Holy Spirit to seek out this deeper understanding of the unconditional love of the Father?
I think, in fact, that most of us have been in that wilderness and known some of those bedevilling temptations to trust something other than that we have been made God's beloved, delightful children. Don't be dismayed by this happening to you. John also says (I John 4) that "in this world, we are like Him," so, really, what else can we expect? At the end, I think that, like Jesus -- whose own life infuses ours by faith -- you will be able to say with HIM (Matthew 4) that you refuse to be tempted by the needs of your physical body to serve any but God, that you will live trusting in God to protect and preserve your life no matter how dire things might look until HE calls you Home, and that you will choose the God who loves you and HIM only, no matter how great the promise of privilege and power of a life lived another way.
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After 30+ years in public ministry as missionary, pastoral counselor, homeschooling mentor, writer and editor, Georgia Ana Larson now focuses
on an internet-based ministry and business founded in grace and expressed
through mentoring others who have a similar desire to work from home,
nurture a family, build a business and stay faithful to a deep interior Call
to have a life of devotion expressed in service, no matter what context.
You can read more of her articles at her home site: www.aBrighterCandle.com
Copyright © 2005 Georgia Ana Larson, All rights reserved
