Unconditional Love

I was at work the other day and I saw this picture on IHasAHotdog.com. It occurred to me that when things get rough, it is comforting to have the unconditional love of some other individual. A lot of times it doesn’t even matter if that one can help the situation or not, the love makes things feel better. I will leave it to others to debate whether animals are truly capable of love. I know that often animals will act as if they love someone, but I also know that there are some who say that isn’t really love, that we just tend to ascribe emotions to other things as though they were people (not just animals, but inanimate objects as well). It has been suggested that if you really want a measure of the love that those closest to you feel, try locking your dog and your wife in the trunk of your car for a couple of hours, and then see which one is happy to see you when you release them (I don’t recommend actually trying that).

On my way home, I heard an old Twila Paris song called Every Heart That Is Breaking. In this song, she lays out all manner of grievous circumstances, and then in the chorus, tells the unfortunate victims that she has a message for them. That message is, quite simply, He loves you. That is an unconditional love that cannot be matched by any pet.

The Ancient Greek word for unconditional love is agape. In the King James Version, the word agape is sometimes translated as ‘charity.’ Unfortunately, charity has come to mean an organization devoted to helping other people. Some of the more modern translations use the term love for agape, to avoid confusion. Unfortunately, they don’t do anything to distinguish between agape-love and phileo -love (phileo being the Ancient Greek word for—well, I don’t want to say conditional love, but love that isn’t necessarily unconditional). Of course, when I say that, I am aware that most of the time that the word ‘love’ appears in the New Testament, it is translated from agape, rather than phileo.

Scripture makes it clear that our God understands everything that may befall us. When He took the form of man, He was tempted in all the same ways that we are. Scripture also tells us that there is no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. Taken together, it becomes clear that none of us has ever been subjected to anything that Jesus didn’t endure Himself. Whatever you are going through, He has been through the same, if not worse. Whatever it is, He understands.

In Romans, we are told that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nobody can take that love away from us. No matter how little we may deserve His love, He still loves us. Don’t misunderstand me, that doesn’t mean that you can just disregard Him, there are still consequences for our actions (or inaction). It does mean that He will always love us, even when He is severely disappointed in us. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son… Of course, He gave the world Noah, too, but of all the people in the world in Noah’s day, only eight souls were saved. I worry that the ratio may not be too much better in our day…