Unconditional Love

If you’ve ever owned a dog, you know how much your pet loves you.

When you come home your dog likely rushes to meet you in joyful abandon.

Your dog loves you when you’re sad, grumpy, or sick.

People may hold you to expectations that you can never achieve, but your dog is lovingly content just to be with you.

Are you blessed with a dog that loves you unconditionally?

 

Most mothers love their children unconditionally. When I was a child, my mother told me a story of a friend whose mother had sacrificed herself to save her son. The young child stepped into the path of a car and his mother rushed to push him out of harm’s way. She saved her son, but was killed by the car.

I didn’t understand that kind of love until I became a mother.

When I was a teenager, I made a mistake that was really painful for my parents. I confessed my sin to my mother and begged for her forgiveness.

I cried, “I’m afraid you won’t love me anymore!”

She assured me that she would always love me. I knew that was true, and my parents didn’t hold my sin against me. But I’ve always carried the burden of disappointing my mother.

Have you ever disappointed someone you loved? How did you cope with their pain? And yours?

God doesn’t hold our sins against us if we confess, ask His forgiveness, and turn to Him–away from the path of sin.

God loves us unconditionally.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16-17.

That doesn’t mean that He doesn’t have expectations for us. When we accept Jesus as our Savior and acknowledge the sacrifice He made by taking the burden of our sins upon himself, we also accept the responsibility for living as a child of God.

The Apostle Paul writes:

For I am convinced that neither death not life, neither angels not demons, neither the present not the future, not any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

God loves us unconditionally. What is our response?

You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed. It’s not something you did that you can be proud of. Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives. Ephesians 2:8-10

Praying for you, my friends–and for me–that we might do “good things” for God.