Is God's Love Really Unconditional?

God’s love, as presently viewed in general culture, embraces an unconditional regard for all people, possessing only an accelerator for loving people, only moving forward to bless them no matter what they think, feel, or do, and no matter how they respond or don’t respond to him.

But this is not the God of the Bible, the God of Judeo-Christian revelation, who clearly possesses both deep expressions of love as well as discerning restraint, love that takes into account how human beings respond to him. 

God of the Bible

The Lord takes faithful care of those who trust in him and become like him, but pulls back from those who dismiss or dislike him, or deny his existence. In other words, while God in eternity loves blessing all who receive and obey him, in time he exercises discernment about whom he loves and how much he loves them.

The Bible repeats this consistent theme: 

“Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him” (Deut 7:9-10). 

Jesus further emphasizes the conditional nature of God’s love when he says, “If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love” (Jn 15:10).

And, Jesus says, "You are my friends if you do what I command" (Jn 15:14).

From a human point of view, it can sound like God is playing favorites and being picayunish about the conditions he places on his love. But from the divine point of view, God is unwilling to squander his love on foolish relationships and imprint his stamp of approval on unrighteous behavior. He really does know the secret motivations that drive behavior, discriminating between those who seek him in their heart and those who don’t.

It is true that God is love, but his love is tempered with wisdom that balances expression and restraint. He expresses more of himself and his blessings to those who enter a reciprocal relationship with him, while applying restraint to those who harden their hearts. 

The Bible shows again and again how people can break down, nullify, or destroy the love bond that God initiates by perpetuating negative patterns of behavior, patterns that also break down human relationships. The Bible also describes how God can alternate between blessing and cursing people, cherishing or abandoning them, according to whether or not they abide in him.

Christ provides expression/restraint guidelines for human love: 

Expression and Restraint

 

For the forward rhythmic swing of the arc Jesus says, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Lk 10:27). Christ wants those who love him to take on his passion for the wellbeing of humanity. 

So during the course of a day, persons are to watch out for the welfare of others, helping strangers in need, displaying kindness toward employees in stores and fellow drivers on the freeway, and expanding tenderness in one’s heart for friends and family members.

By the same token, the backward rhythmic swing of the arc represents an equally crucial teaching of Christ: “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Mt 10:16). 

Naïve love can result in a world of trouble, because many human situations call for a more objective assessment of people’s intentions and less of a subjective, heartfelt involvement with the person. Responding with an open heart to everyone who shows interest leaves a person with no defense against the manipulative patterns of a con artist or narcissist.

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Trusting in The Trinity: 

Compass Psychotheology in Action

Trusting in The Trinity

The Inner Life of The Christian Trinity

Christ’s personality both shows how human beings are called to live and provides insight into all three persons of the Trinity, who are One in creating and redeeming humanity, inviting people to develop whole personalities and loving relationships, where loneliness and hostility are diminished, and where individuals learn to express their uniqueness in as original a manner as the Lord’s.

While God may be said in a certain sense to remain inscrutable and beyond human knowing, nevertheless, in another sense, because of the Trinity’s direct appearance and involvement in human history, it is possible to house the Self Compasses of each Trinity member within the unity of one Godhead. This arrangement, for diagrammatic purposes, illustrates the unity of the Triune God, while at the same time differentiating between the personal identities of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

                                                                     

The individual Self Compasses show that Trinity members relate through rhythms of communication and communion, the same way that they call human beings to relate to one another and to the Trinity. If one only looks for it, the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation pulse with examples of God as a supremely innovative agent, brimming with creative motivation and action. Conceptualizing God’s personality as three Self Compasses within a larger circle of the divine self does not imply that God is containable, but rather implies an interpersonal selfhood that allows for infinite variations of self-expression and interpersonal exchanges among Trinity members who are nevertheless one God.

God’s inscrutability lies primarily in the fact that no one can predict what the Lord will say, think, or do next, other than in the compass sense that whatever God does will not contradict the health and wholeness of his being.

The larger circle encompassing the Trinity portrays the mystery of God’s diversity-in-unity, a circle that is not a physical barrier, but rather symbolizes the one God who is all in all. The back-and-forth arrows connecting each Trinitarian member to the others indicate how each Person exists in everlasting rhythmic presence to the other two, empowering the exchange of ideas, conversations, and emotions within an overarching essence of love, expressed through caring self-transcendence that respects, delights in, knows, and wills the highest good of one another.

Some such encounters between Trinity members are recorded for our benefit in Scripture. At Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, the Father says, communicating his own point of view and self-identity, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” He is not talking to himself the way a person might self-reflect, but actually addressing the Son with sincere words that convey the depth of his love for Jesus. At the same moment, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus, anointing him with power for ministry, and then drives him into the wilderness where Christ must stand alone for a season, firming up his identity as the Son while learning to rely completely upon the Father and Spirit in preparation for his public ministry.

 

Compass psychotheology asserts that this dynamic interplay of the three Persons who are one God has always distinguished God’s essence, and will always characterize God’s relationality (theologians call this the immanent Trinity, meaning what God is outside of human history). Most importantly from the human perspective, this interplay creates a trustworthy basis for the Trinity presence as infinitely caring and intentionally creative dialogue partners across the temporal span of human history (the economic Trinity, which means God’s self-revelation in space, time, history, and personality).

Now note how the Trinity diagram focuses on the phrase “I AM.” Of all the names attributed to God in the Bible—the Lord of Hosts, the Lord God Almighty, the Holy One of Israel—there is none more revealing than “I AM,” for when God reveals this name to Moses (Ex 3:14), and Christ applies this name to himself (Jn 8:58), God means that his existence as the “I AM” transcendent Subject is the ultimate ground of being that renders all else contingent and temporal.

Finally, notice how the “I AM” of each Trinitarian Person fully indwells the others, showing the interpenetration of freely willed devotion, each Trinity member’s identity so secure, so engaged in self-transcendent love, that there is no existence apart from being one God.

In other words, each Person of the Godhead does not consider self-identity and autonomy something to be grasped at or competitively sought, but rather as foundational to adoring, cherishing, and actualizing the uttermost fulfillment of one another.

The Trinity indwells one another non-invasively and non-competitively, generating the perpetual glory of being one God, as Jesus explains: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17: 21-23).

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TRUSTING IN THE TRINITY: COMPASS PSYCHOTHEOLOGY APPLIED