Is there such a thing as unconditional love?
Who Sets the conditions?
Man or God
by T Myers Smith
Jesus said, “But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.”
It should be patently obvious by this parable that there are not only conditions to be met in our on-going relationship with God and in ‘working out our salvation with fear and trembling’ but also who it is that sets all the conditions in our walk with the Lord. It is too bad, particularly among our fellow countrymen in America, that conceding to conditional requirements is often considered submission to bondage and runs counter-intuitive to the very ideal inherent in the exalted American character. So spiritually perverse is our idea of freedom and how to carry it out, that when it comes down to it, we are more a nation of spiritual insurgents saturated with a misconception of liberty and freedom, taught from our earliest beginnings, which says that to be free we must be rebellious, stubborn individualists. This, of course, runs counter to the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the most fundamental of ways and is never what God expects or wills for us, but he expects a life of submission; submission to the Godhead, submission to the Word, and submission to one another.
America’s brand of Evangelicalism has settled into a false notion of spiritual freedom. While Christ came to set us free; he did not come to make us free to do whatever we want or to have us be free so that we may lead others into bondage; or that we should be ‘freed’ from doing the Father’s Will, which is to say, ‘freed’ from meeting the conditions of His righteousness. These conditions include hearing and doing His will. And there are, of course, conditions established for hearing God’s Word in our heart. We must listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd spoken by the Spirit to us. We must be born-again if we are to see the kingdom of God. That is born of the Spirit by the Spirit. The conditions of a righteous life which we must not resist, but must wholly submit to, are too numerous to list here. We would turn this writing into something other than what it is intended to teach. God sets parameters and conditions upon the existence and quality of our relationship with Him. The bible points out that spiritual rebellion and stubbornness is like the sin witchcraft and idolatry. And we all know how God feels about those two diabolical iniquities.
There was a man once in our fellowship, with whom we thought we had fellowship; but he was with us for many years in a stolid spiritually rebellious state, but subtle about it. Finally, after many crises and personal problems the man’s rebellion and stubborn resistance toward the body and the true submissive fellowship of God came to a head. Many of us had had enough. I was required to set some conditions upon the spirit and mind of his fellowship with us. Among the conditions of further fellowship was that he put away his lone-wolf mentality and lay down his bogus spirit of ideas of personal freedom and his resistance toward submitting one to another in love. Upon these conditions and others, which included restrictions (which is consistent with some of the Lord’s conditions whereby he restricts sin and idolatry among His people, for example), he walked out of my presence and, to my heartache, never returned. The Lord had no option with this man for his spirit of stubborn resistance, his misguided determination at free-wheeling to do whatever he wanted or thought was best, for he thought himself a righteous man, was like the leavening that Jesus spoke of concerning the Sadducees and the Pharisees. A little leavening leavens the whole lump. I anguished over his departure for we had been friends - or so I thought.
Years later I found myself directly behind the man standing in line at a store. He did not wish to talk to me or even acknowledge me, but I button-holed him anyway. I asked quite honestly if he thought it was possible that I had failed him in love. This is always an extreme possibility. I told him I wondered about that, but he said, quite frankly, “No, it’s not that simple”. I believe he was correct, because I then reminded him that I never said to him he was cast out, or no longer welcome in the fellowship. He nodded, and said, “But you set conditions”. It was then that a light went on for me. After so many years I knew where the rub really was. He would have no longer been free to do whatever he wanted with total impunity. I had known this fact at the time, but now I knew that he knew it and that was the real problem that existed in his fellowship with me and the others, all along. He does not want to be issued ultimatums, or directives, or orders from anyone, not even God.
Today’s American Evangelical experience has fallen into one of the oldest traps of religion, thinking that God’s mercy allows for them to do whatsoever they please. It is the trap of Aaron’s two sons who burnt ‘strange’ incense on the alter and were consumed in an instant by fire from heaven, so severe was the crime of thinking they were free to offer anything they wished to God, that God forbid Aaron to even cry over his sons’ deaths. It is why God rejected Cain’s sacrifice, stopped the world at the Tower of Babel and confused their language, dethroned Saul, judged Israel, struck Ananias and Sapphira dead. Their names mean Protected and Beautiful respectively, because there are conditions set even upon our protection and beauty in the eyes of God; one condition being that we must not ‘lie to the Holy Ghost’ which was their deadly mistake.
When the Lord had the children of Israel pass between the two mountains he proclaimed “if you will do this and this, you will be blessed; if you do not do these things I will curse you and drove you from your home and your families will suffer”. If this isn’t an ultimatum I don’t know what is. God was setting conditions upon all his blessings, some conditions were commands to do, some restrictions on behavior and self-will. We are to serve the Lord with gladness, not hide our god-given gifts in a napkin and bury them but invest them in the labors of the kingdom of God. There is a condition with God concerning receiving – we must not hoard His gifts, but return them to Him in the form of giving to others. We must love one another. This is not optional in the eyes of God but a condition. John said do not tell me you love God while you hate your neighbor. And I repeat, loving God is not optional, it is the first and greatest commandment, a condition of having a right relationship with God. John said, I will prove my love for God by loving my neighbor. “If a man says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar: for he that loves not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” You see, there is a condition even attached to loving god; we must love one another as a proof that we love God according to His conditions set upon loving Him.
There are conditions to all of God’s Will. We must believe in our heart and confess with our mouth if we want to live a ‘saved’ life here on this earth. We are urged to flee youthful lusts and follow after righteousness. We are advised to pray so we can receive gifts – a condition; we are warned to be ready, not found partying and committing unrighteousness, if we are to be Raptured – a condition. Even love carries with it conditions. True, repentance does demand forgiveness; but forgiveness is conditional upon repentance of the offender.LK 17:3 I had argued many times with the man cited in the example above about the expression ‘God’s unconditional love’. He used it to mean God would never stop loving us and protecting us no matter what we did. That kind of loose theology gave him license to do ‘his thing’. I countered that there was no such license intended in God’s expression of love, but that love was highly conditional in that the Bible says we must love not only in word, but in deed also.
But I promised I would not make an itemized list of the ‘conditional’ imperatives duly registered and recorded in the Holy Bible. But consider this: if we are weighed and found wanting in the scales (of the biblical conditions) what kind of judgment awaits us? I leave you with the parable cited above, giving God the final word in our instruction.
But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat?
And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?
Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not.
So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do’.LK 17:7-10
Divine Nature: Intro & Deliver us from ourselves