Commissioned: Real Love: Discovering God's Heart for YouSample

Unconditional Love

God loves us unconditionally. We do not earn His love by our good behavior. We cannot lose His love by our bad behavior. We sometimes feel that we are not deserving of God’s love—and that is certainly true! We are “helpless” and “ungodly;” but that does not change the fact that God loves us! We may feel that we are less deserving of God’s love than others, but God does not compare. He just loves us.

God “proves” His love for us by his amazing generosity. It is as if he says, “Now people will see that I love them; I’ll give them such an astounding instance that they will not be able to deny it. I’ll die for them when they are sinners when they are my enemies!”

The Apostle Paul rightly points out that this is not how we human beings would think. We might be willing to die for a good person. We might carefully calculate whether the person’s life was worth enough to the world that we should die for them, and if we decided that the person was worthy, we might “with difficulty” summon the courage to do it. But God showed his love for us by dying for us, knowing that we were sinners. Jesus died for us, sinners. The Apostle goes even further and says that we were God’s enemies. What person dies for their enemies? We kill our enemies! And yet God would rather die for His enemies than kill them.

Through the blood of Jesus, we have been “justified.” This means that at our baptism, when we were united with Jesus Christ, we were set free from enslavement to sin and we were healed. Faith, hope, and love were poured into our hearts, and we were given the ability to do God’s will. We were “reconciled” to God. This means that the barrier of sin and guilt that separated us from God has been taken away and we have been granted free access to Him so that we can pray to Him and grow in loving relationship with Him. We will be “saved” by His life. This means that Christ’s life at work in us ensures that we will be saved from punishment on the day of judgment and that we will be granted eternal life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that “through the power of the Holy Spirit we take part in Christ’s passion by dying to sin, and in His Resurrection by being born to a new life; we are members of his Body, which is the Church, branches grafted into the vine, which is himself.” (#1988, see also 1991, 1992)

God did all of this for us out of unconditional love. We do not earn it. We do not deserve it. This is God’s heart toward us, every moment of every day. He loves us. He is for us. Amazing love! We can only give thanks!

Stop, think and pray:

• Let’s take some time to humble ourselves before the Lord: Let’s clear our minds of any thought that we deserve His love and let’s also clear our minds of any thought that we are LESS deserving of God’s love than others. God loves us without condition. Let’s give Him thanks and praise for this glorious truth.
• God wants us to live each day in the reality of what His love has done for us. Let’s commit to doing that today.