John 15:9-17
“An unconditional love”
J. J.
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in Thy sight,
O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
“An unconditional love”
It’s Mother’s Day today. It’s a time we show our thanks and appreciation for our mothers. Wives, grandmothers, aunts, girlfriends, too. All women. They do so much. And we are grateful. Mothers love their children. At least most mothers love their children most of the time. It’s instinctive. Mom holds that little one, and there is nothing that she won’t do for that baby. She loves that baby fully, completely, unconditionally. And she keeps loving as that baby grows to a toddler, a child, an adolescent, a young man or woman. And during those years, that little one leaves its mothers arms, and goes out into the world. There, however, love is not the same. Love is not full, complete, or unconditional.
In this life, in this world, we are constantly being accepted and rejected. We are valued, and the we are ignored. We feel that others don’t care about us. Maybe they do, and they don’t express it, or maybe we just don’t understand it. Or maybe it’s true, that they don’t care about us, value us, or cherish us. That they don’t love us. Regardless of what is actually happening we feel that they don’t care. That they don’t love us. And that hurts. Deeply so, doesn’t it? More than we often admit.
And so because we are immersed every day in these experiences with our fellow human beings, experiences less than perfect, and at times rather unpleasant, we start to think, believe, and feel that God must act and behave as people do. We think, “In the same way that people have loved and not loved me, so too God must love and not love me.”
Jesus tells us that that is not so. God does not love us as others love us. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.” Imagine for a moment that love within the Trinity. That love between God the Father and His Son. As the Father loves the Son. How is that? Eternally. God the Father has loved His Son from before time began. He loves Him now, and He will love in throughout eternity. The Father’s love for the Son is eternal. And the Father loves His Son completely. There is nothing lacking in the Father’s love, for God is love. His love is complete.
And the Father’s love is unconditional. Perhaps for us, this is the most important. For as the Father loves the Son, the Son, Christ has loved and does love us. Eternally. Completely. Unconditionally. We do not have to gain Christ’s favor. He loves us. “You did not choose Me, but I chose You.” “And while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ does not love us most of the time. He love us all the time.
His love for us does not turn on and turn off. He does not withhold His love from us. He loves us unconditionally. His love for us, does not depend on our living the Christian Life. He has redeemed us. We are his children. He loves us. Day in, day out. Good day. Bad day. When we are behaving, and when we are sinning. Yes, God loves us even when we are sinning. Now, He does not love it that we are sinning. But He still loves us. “Those whom He loves, He chastens.” God would not be tracking us down, and correcting us, pulling us back out of sin, if He did not love us.
But Vicar. It sounds like God’s love is conditional. Jesus says, “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.” Isn’t that conditional? That Jesus loves us if and when we keep His commandments? No. It’s an “if’ sentence, a conditional sentence, but Christ’s love is not conditional. Let’s look at it closely. If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love. It does not say, if you keep my commandments I will love you. Christ loves us. Fully, completely, unconditionally, and nonstop. So what is conditional here? Our abiding in His love. His love is not conditional but our abiding in it is.
Remember the prodigal son. How the father loved him. Loved him enough to give him at inheritance now. Loved him unconditionally when he came home? The father’s love did not stop. But the prodigal was not living in that love. He was living out in the wiles of the world, and then in the sty of the pigs. He was abiding in mayhem and abiding in mud. But he was not abiding in the Father’s love. The father was still loving him, but he was not receiving all the good the father had for him and wanted to give him, because he was living outside of the loving plan of his father.
Christ loves us nonstop. He tells us to abide in His love. That remains to living, remain, and stand in it. His love is there. We can wander away from it. He doesn’t want that to happen to us. So He tells us to obey His commandments, because when we obey Him, we live and dwell and remain where He wants in. Within His perfect plan for us.
Having reassured us that His love for us is eternal and unconditional, what does Jesus say? “Love one another as I have loved you.” How do we do that? Love in Christ is kind and caring. As when our mother’s do all the many things they do for us. Because we deserve them? No. Because she loves us, and cares for us. Not just cares for us as an emotion, but takes care of us. Day in, day out. With a love that is unconditional and safe.
Love in Christ is selfless. Like when we agree to do what our spouse wants to do. Because we put others before ourselves. Love in Christ is strong. Like when you father and husbands stand up for your families, and protect them. Or when you rescue them out of the trouble they have gotten themselves into, as Christ rescued us. For love in Christ is strong.
Love in Christ unites our faith and our heart and our life. Our faith is not just a belief in the abstract. The love of Christ in us in not just a warm feeling. No, love in Christ is faith and heart in action. Love in Christ is forgiving. Because the other deserves to be forgiven? No. First, because the essence of forgiveness is that which we do not deserve. If you deserve it, it is no longer forgiveness. Second, and more importantly, because the love of Christ is unconditional, so too, by that love, we forgive unconditionally. Oh, there may be consequences in this life for what was done. But forgiveness, the letting go of the hurt. It’s not saying that what happened or what they did was right. It wasn’t. That’s why it’s called forgiveness. If what they did was right, then it wouldn’t need to be forgiven. Forgiveness is not a declaration that no wrong was done. It is not saying that it was right. Rather, it is the decision and acknowledgment that that person no longer owes you, is no longer emotional and spiritually indebted to you. That forgiveness is unconditional.
As the Father loves Christ, eternally and unconditionally, so too, Christ loves us, eternally and unconditionally. We live in His love, and His love lives in and through us. By His love we love one another. Oh, not perfectly. But we love eternally and unconditionally. For it is not our love, but His. For we are branches in His kingdom, bearing fruit of faith and righteousness, awaiting His return.
For Christ has died. Christ is risen. And Christ shall come again. Amen.
S. D. G.
