Is God’s Love for Us Unconditional?
David W Palmer
(John 15:9 NET) “Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; remain in my love.”
In this passage, Jesus says that he loves us in the same way the Father loved him. This is one of the amazing truths of the new covenant, which God set up for us in Jesus.
Some time ago, I wanted to grow my understanding of, and faith in, God’s love for me. So I was looking for some scriptures about God’s love to meditate and feed on. I had always been taught that God’s love for us is unconditional. However, when I found the following scriptures, I noted the words, “if,” and, “because,” or other phrases that indicated that maybe it wasn’t as unconditional as I had assumed. If Jesus and the Father love us the way Father loved Jesus, then there are conditions. Let’s read them:
(John 10:17 EMTV) “Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it up again.”
We note that Jesus said his father loves him “because ….” This is a condition. Let’s look at another passage that seems to agree that there are conditions regarding God’s love for us:
(John 14:21 NET) “The person who has my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him.”
Jesus said that it is the person who loves him that “will be loved by my Father”; what’s more, Jesus said that to this person he will “reveal” himself. But again, this is conditional: Father will love us “if” we love Jesus. Thankfully, in this same passage, Jesus also explained what it takes for us to love him: it is the person who has and obeys his commandments that loves him. Again, this is also a condition. So, this passage clearly lays out conditions for us to fulfill before we are loved by Father the way he loved Jesus. Let’s try another passage:
(John 14:23 NET) Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up residence with him.”
Here, the condition for being loved by Father is similar: “if … he will obey my word.” However, here Jesus adds to the benefit of being loved by Father; he said that if we meet this condition, both he and his Father will come to us and take up residence with us. Wow! This is an astounding promise; but it also is conditional on obedience.
Below is another statement by Jesus revealing a condition regarding God’s love and the benefit for keeping it:
(John 15:10 NKJV) “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”
Here it is again, “if you ….” This is clearly a condition for us to “keep.” To abide in Jesus’s love, we simply must “keep” his commandments.
Yes, we know that Jesus also said, “for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” This certainly sounds unconditional—and his sending Jesus to die for us all certainly is without condition; he has already done it. Everyone—good, bad, or indifferent—is included in the potential benefits of Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection.
However, according to what we have seen above—and it is all the word of God—to abide in Jesus’s love, and to have his Father love us as he loved Jesus, does seem to be conditional; it depends on whether we love Jesus and keep his word and his commandments. Furthermore, if Father is to love us the way he loved Jesus, this will require the same condition of us that Jesus had to fulfill to receive it: he laid down his life (See: John 10:17 above).
I encourage you today: love Jesus; show it by laying down your independent “self-life” and by obeying him. Why? Because when we meet the conditions Jesus delineated for—being loved by Father, abiding in his love, and having him abide with us—the following promises kick in:
(1 John 3:1 BSB) “Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God! …”
