God's Love

If God Loved Us Like We Love People

A Reflection on Unconditional Love and the Standard We Have Forgotten

God Loved Us First — In Our Mess

God's love is unconditional. He loved us in our sins. He loved us in our ugliness, in our broken thinking, in our rebellion, and in every season we were not yet who He called us to be. He did not wait for us to get it together before He extended His hand. He loved us toward wholeness.

But we — His people — are something else entirely.

We are so self-centered and committed to our own comfort that the moment someone we claim to love fails to meet our standards, the true condition of our hearts is revealed. When people do not act the way we expect, when they do not respond the way we feel they should, the ugliness surfaces. The patience evaporates. The love — if we can still call it that — reveals itself to have been conditional all along.

If God treated us the way we treat people, I do not even want to imagine what that would look like.

Think about that for a moment. Sit with it. Because if God withheld His grace until we proved ourselves worthy, if He pulled back every time we disappointed Him, if He wrote us off the moment we failed to live up to His standard — none of us would still be here—none of us.

Understanding the Wounded

Our calling as believers is to love. That is not a suggestion buried somewhere in the fine print — it is the great commandment. But loving people means accepting that love does not always produce the response we hope for.

Some people are so wounded, so broken by the circumstances and situations life has handed them, that receiving love — real love — feels foreign and even threatening. They do not know how to open their hands to receive it because every time they have opened their hands before, something was taken from them instead.

Here is the question that should stop us in our tracks: if a person cannot fully receive love from the very Creator of love, why are we so shocked and offended when they cannot receive it from us?

If they struggle to receive from God, why are we traumatized when they cannot receive from us?

The answer is pride. We expect our love to be received because we gave it. We make the love about ourselves — our effort, our sacrifice, our feelings — rather than about the person standing in front of us who is still learning what love even is.

The Model Has Always Been Before Us

God does not force His way in. He nurtures. He draws. He pursues with kindness and with patience, meeting people where they are and walking with them toward where He is calling them to be.

Jeremiah 31:3 (KJV)

The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.

He draws with lovingkindness. Not with ultimatums. Not with conditions. Not with the threat of being cast aside if the response is not what He hoped for. He draws.

That is our model. That is how we are to do people.

1 Corinthians 13:4–5 (KJV)

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil.

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not seek its own. If what we are extending does not look like that — if it has an expiration date, if it comes with terms, if it is easily provoked when not returned — then we have to be honest enough to call it what it is, and go back to the Source.

Go to the Creator of Love

If you find yourself struggling to love unconditionally — and most of us do at some point — the answer is not to try harder in your own strength. The answer is to go back to God. He is the Creator of love. He is the original source. And He is waiting for us to come to Him and ask Him to teach us how to love His people the way He loves them.

His people. All people. Not just the ones who are easy to love. Not just the ones who look like us, think like us, or treat us well. All people.

Go to the Creator of love. He will teach you how to love the people He created.

Because the world is not looking for perfect believers. They are looking for real ones. They are looking for people who love the way Jesus loved — without strings, without conditions, and without walking away the moment it costs something.

That kind of love is what opens doors that no sermon ever could. It is what makes the gospel believable. And it is available to every one of us — if we are willing to lay down our pride, our expectations, and our conditions long enough to receive it from the One who perfected it.

— Linda McKinzie | The Disciplined Disciple

Not every disciple is disciplined.