“Because you are equating showing unconditional love with doing whatever you want to do and getting away with it! That only shows God as unprincipled and undisciplined. If God were to take away your free will and choice would that really qualify as you loving him? Wouldn’t you have called Him a dictator and a tyrant? God loves us unconditionally, your inability to understand it does not make His love less unconditional or conditional. Because if He didn’t love us unconditionally, you would have been stoned to death just cos of this statement, because our every action would have been counted, and because no amount of doing good would have been enough to build the bridge between God and man! You don’t go to heaven because you are sinless or because since you gave your life to Jesus Christ, you have not committed any sin, you go to heaven simply because you believe that God sent His son to die for each and every one of us and that there is forgiveness and grace in the blood of the lamb!! John 3:18 did not add any clause, it simply said that we are not judged because we believe; it is only when we don’t believe that we are judged.
And yes there is a heaven and a hell! If God is going to love even the person that kills another here on earth, because He does. Just because you don’t believe in God that doesn’t mean He wouldn’t love you, it’s just not possible, He created you so He loves you even when you don’t believe in Him or the saving grace of His son! But because only a principled God can show unconditional love, you have to pay for all your sins since you didn’t believe in Jesus so He could pay the price for you with His death. Either Jesus pays the price for your sins or you do…,someone has gotta pay for it!!”
That was my reply to a post I saw on Facebook which said that God doesn’t show us unconditional love. At first I was irritated because of the outright support that people showed for the post and also because of the feeble attempts made by the christians who commented in showing that God actually did love us unconditionally.
However as I typed that response, I had calmed down by then and the truth actually began to dawn on me. It was sad really, because these people were not experiencing the unconditional love of God. The thing is that you cannot enjoy or benefit from the good news of the cross without first understanding the bad news of the cross!
I’m sure you are wondering, “what is she talking about? The bad news? There’s nothing bad about the cross”
But you see there is and I will explain it you.
The bad news of the cross is that you and I sent Jesus Christ to the cross; our sins made it a matter of necessity, a life and death issue that something had to be done about our sins.
You see, the thing is that when God created us, it was so that at the end of the day, at the end of our lives we could return home to heaven after doing what we were created to do but something went terribly wrong. Sin came into the world and we became tainted, we couldn’t enter into heaven without having to be cleansed of all our sins. God still loved us so much, He searched desperately for a way to bring us home. He knew what had to be done, but could He really do it??
If you look at the Old Testament you would see that God had a well known and established character. He did what He said He would do and He didn’t go back on it no matter what we as humans did and oh we did a lot and out of a 100%, 99.5 of our actions were sins. Inspite of all of these, He still kept His promises.
Are you now seeing the consistency of His character??
Then entered Jesus…He went to His father and said “we all know what needs to be done for your creation to come home, it needs to be done and someone needs to do it, let me do it, let my innocence be given in exchange for their guilt, let my purity be given in exchange for their impurity so that even when you are so angry with them, when you think of me, you would forgive, when you think of my sacrifices, you would let it go”
God looked at His son, knowing Him fully well, knowing that the decision didn’t come lightly, that Jesus had also stood with Him and watched as mankind sinned for thousands of years and that He understood the magnitude of what He was going to do! So He didn’t try to convince Him out of it, He didn’t try to change His mind, He said okay.
In order that it might be possible, Jesus had to be born into the world just like we all did! He had to be like us so that it would all make sense, so that it will not be said that because He was in His heavenly form, He didn’t feel pain, that He had somehow found a way to not feel the pain. He had to be able to take on all our sins and He couldn’t do that without first being like us.
He came into the world and took all our sins upon Himself and He suffered for us, He died in our places. God had to watch as His only son was sacrificed as an animal and for what? For a people who may not even accept it? He couldn’t so He turned away, He looked away, He couldn’t watch His son suffer and at the same time He couldn’t save Him! Are you seeing this? Are you feeling His pain? There is a difference between seeing your loved one suffer and not being able to help them because you don’t have the power to but when you can actually do something about it but choose not to? Now it had to be because of some really important thing right?
You also have to understand that God had to respect Jesus’s decision to save us, to die for us so that for the first time and for the last time after that, God looked away. He turned His back on His son so that He would never turn His back on us, so that forever and ever, no matter what we did, no matter our sin, God would never ever turn His back on us!!
Praise God somebody!! 👯👯
So now you see, that without first understanding that bad news of the cross, you cannot fully enjoy the benefits of His unconditional love.
People often ask why there is a hell if God loves us unconditionally. I think it’s a common misunderstanding, people thinking that because God loves us, we don’t have to pay for not believing.
So let me understand this, God ( 👆🏽👆🏽), sent His son to die for us and even after all of that, you don’t still believe in Him?? Yet, He loves you unconditionally, He blesses us and still looks out for us. He expects you to willingly follow Him, because there’s nothing as sweet as loving and following someone without being forced to.
- So Jesus paid the price for our sins..
- He took it all and died..
- Which means someone had to pay..
- Now you don’t believe in Him..
- Even after all that..
- And you don’t want to pay..
- You say there shouldn’t be hell..
- But is it fair??..😐
Really though….is it right? That after God had to endure all of that, and you don’t see it as anything, you should be allowed in? Unless you accept His saving grace, which makes you pure you cannot enter heaven.
We NEED God to be consistent in His character, we NEED God to keep being God. Don’t ask Him to change His mind, this is who God has been since the beginning of time, God being God allows us to enjoy the benefits of the cross. Because if I understand you correctly, you are asking God to forget everything His son went through 👀👀, because if that is it?
then we are FINISHED, like COMPLETELY FINISHED.
Graced for a Purpose 