Is God's Love Really Unconditional ? ---

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This discussion might get at some hidden key issues if "unconditional" were first defined. Once this is defined, the next question is where you think the Bible claims that God's love is "unconditional" by your definition. Consider this analogy: a married son murders his wife and 4 children. The son's father loves him unconditionally. So what fate should the father approve for his guilty son?
 
Mystic said:
This discussion might get at some hidden key issues if "unconditional" were first defined. Once this is defined, the next question is where you think the Bible claims that God's love is "unconditional" by your definition.
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Thanks professor. Maybe we should get into groups of three or four to discuss it for awhile.
 
BetteTheRed said:
If God's love is NOT unconditional, then God isn't even as moral as most parents, who instinctively offer unconditional love to their infants.

If you have been a parent, and loved unconditionally, how/why would you expect less from the god you purport to worship?

What I really, really don't get? This particular brand of orthodox Christianity is all about the "parent" metaphor for god (there's a couple of churches I find myself in rather regularly where the phrase "Father God" is ubiquitous), but then the parent appears to be an abusive one.
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--This is only because you don't know good from evil. Father GOD is ubiquitous Red. So He also knows how bad you are.
 
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And exactly how bad do you think I am, ac? I'm going to sleep with your wife? Make off with your pension? Throw trash on your lawn?
 
Pr. Jae said:
Thanks professor. Maybe we should get into groups of three or four to discuss it for awhile.
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And we'll reconvene in 20 minutes to share our deliberations with the larger group. Now, stay on topic! *Bette, stop snapping your gum and flirting with that old guy in the corner*
 
Jae, your failure to address any of my questions just demonstrates that you don't know what you're talking about. Are you typical of Tyndale seminarians, really? Intellectual Discussion 101 assumes that we can define our terms and use analogies to clarify ambiguities. Sheesh!
 


Love

http://www.theopedia.com/love

Christianity is a religion of love because the Christian God is love (2 Cor 13:11; 1 John 4:8). God loved the world to the extent that he gave his onlySonfor it (John 3:16). Christians are called to love God above all, and to love their neighbors as themselves (Matthew 22:37-39). Nor does God leave Christians to try to work up this love by themselves – he sends theHoly Spirit with gifts (1 Cor 13) and fruits (Gal 5:22) of love.
"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."(1 John 4:10)

Biblical love

Biblical love is multi-faceted; it:
  • embraces self-sacrifice (Jn 15:13; 1 Jn 3:16)
  • leads one to esteem others higher than oneself (Phil 2:3; Rom 12:10)
  • encompasses heart, soul, and mind (Matt 22:37)
  • increases in proportion to how much you realize you have been forgiven (Lk 7:42)
  • is faithful to the commandments of Christ (Jn 14:15; Rom 13:10; 1 Jn 2:5; 2 Jn 1:6)
  • leads you to "feed" the people of God (Jn 21:15-17; 1 Jn 3:17)
  • is a work of God (Rom 5:5; Gal 5:22; 1 Jn 3:1, 4:7)
  • is not concealed or feigned (Rom 12:9)
  • can be proven (2 Cor 8:8, 24; 1 Jn 3:18)
  • is the means by which our faith works, and by which we serve one another (Gal 5:6, 14)
  • leads us to speak the truth (Eph 4:15)
  • gives knowledge and discernment (Phil 1:9)
  • binds us together (Col 2:2)
  • is part of our spiritual armor (1 Th 5:8)
  • gives others joy and consolation (Phm 1:7)
  • is in direct opposition to loving the world (1 Jn 2:15)
  • brings boldness, casts out fear (1 Jn 4:17, 18)
  • rebukes and chastens (Rev 3:19)

Christian love

The Christian's love for God
"And he said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'" Matthew 22:37.

The Christian's love for other Christians
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." 1 John 4:7-8

The Christian's love for the world
"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil." - Luke 6:35

The love of God

  1. Intra-Trinitarian love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father
  2. "God's providential love over all that he has made"
  3. "God's salvific stance toward his fallen world"
  4. "God's particular, effective, selecting love toward his elect"
  5. God's provisional or conditional love for his people - conditioned upon obedience


Agape(^[Strong's\#26]^) is the Greek word for unconditional love, such as a parent has for a child. This is the love that God has for His people (Romans 8:35 "who will separate us from the agape of Christ?") and it is the greatest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:31 - 13:13 "now faith, hope, and agape abide, and the greatest of these is agape"). Jesus calls his people to agape their enemies (Luke 6:27). When Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:4 in Matthew 22:37 the gospel writers use the Greek word agape.
 
Mystic said:
Jae, your failure to address any of my questions just demonstrates that you don't know what you're talking about. Are you typical of Tyndale seminarians, really? Intellectual Discussion 101 assumes that we can define our terms and use analogies to clarify ambiguities. Sheesh!
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Answer you or else I don't know nothin'? There's logic 101 :D
 
unsafe said:

Love

http://www.theopedia.com/love

God's provisional or CONDITIONAL love for his people - conditioned upon obedience


Agape(^[Strong's\#26]^) is the Greek word for UNCONDITIONAL love, such as a parent has for a child. This is the love that God has for His people (Romans 8:35 "who will separate us from the agape of Christ?")...
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Unsafe, at least you try to reply to the question and draw attention to important aspects of God's love. But don't you contradict yourself here? But you're overall reply is far superior to jae's. He has no clue.
 
Pr. Jae said:
Apparently nothin', which I'm really quite fine with. I'll be a fool for Christ :)
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When I was a teenager, an uneducated but very wise layman, Gord Edmunds, once told me, "You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, but sometimes I think it sure helps." Jae is a perfect example of what Gord had in mind. Jae, don't presume to contribute to the most basic of all questions about God when your ideas get so lonely. To qualify as a Sunday school teacher of young children, you need to be capable of answering the most basic question, "What is the nature of God's love?" And You haven't even begun to answer that question unless you can explain whether God's love is -conditional or unconditional--and what that means.
 
airclean33 said:
--This is only because you don't know good from evil. Father GOD is ubiquitous Red. So He also knows how bad you are.
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Judgmental much?

And how bad are you Airclean? Maybe it's time you took a good look at yourself before you judge others on not knowing good from evil. You and Unsafe share an archaic and out-dated doctrine that says that God can and does send any one to hell at any time, and all because he has total sovereignty over us, like some evil overlord demanding praise and glory and threatening us if he doesn't get it. You are so wrong.

The only real hell that exists is right here on Earth, and the more you don't get that, the more you will keep returning here, over and over again. The law of cycles applies to ignorance as well as to sin.
 
God=Love ... emotions leave on a bit disarranged ... well 'eLL there you goes ... chaos of the other kind and we didn't knead to be confused in the dust up of all those strange words --- King James --- who hated all alien linguistics ... and thus on that we goes ... wiggoles?

Good god is it not just a word to transmute intellect and sometimes emotions ... if the emotional portion doesn't garble the whole thing? The mental vortex as the words go down ... oppressed?
 
Mystic said:
When I was a teenager, an uneducated but very wise layman, Gord Edmunds, once told me, "You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, but sometimes I think it sure helps." Jae is a perfect example of what Gord had in mind. Jae, don't presume to contribute to the most basic of all questions about God when your ideas get so lonely. To qualify as a Sunday school teacher of young children, you need to be capable of answering the most basic question, "What is the nature of God's love?" And You haven't even begun to answer that question unless you can explain whether God's love is -conditional or unconditional--and what that means.
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So essentially you are saying you are in agreement that it helps to be stupid if you are a Christian? Wow I wouldn't have thought you felt that way. So where does that leave you on the Christian scale Mystic? I mean with all those Phd's and such would that put you in the elite company of Christian geniuses?
 
BetteTheRed said:
And exactly how bad do you think I am, ac? I'm going to sleep with your wife? Make off with your pension? Throw trash on your lawn?
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Well I don't know how bad you are Bette or any other person on this forum is but I want to tell you honey that I am bad to the bone.;) I think George was talking about me when he wrote that song.
 
dreamerman said:
Well I don't know how bad you are Bette or any other person on this forum is but I want to tell you honey that I am bad to the bone.;) I think George was talking about me when he wrote that song.
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I also rise to declare that not only am I stupid, I am also wicked, wicked, wicked.
 
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