No Longer Unconditional

Love has become corrupted through sin, because man's spirit has become corrupted through sin.

That pure love that God built into the human spirit which was meant to be God's unconditional love, became corrupted, warped and twisted.

It became conditional love. It was no longer the kind of love that says,

For God so loved the world that He gave…

It became a love that says,

"I will love if..."

It starts right from childbirth. We learn that we have to perform in order to get love. It doesn't take long for a child to get a message from the parents that says,

"If you are naughty I don't love you."

But if you are good your mother says,

"Nice Johnny; you're a good boy. Mommy really loves you."

When you are naughty, mommy finds it very difficult to love you and she gets angry with you.

We begin to communicate to children that in order to obtain love they must pay for it. There is a price to pay and they start to learn how to pay the price.

It begins to mold our way of life with others. We begin to move out into the world, and begin to get involved in public places and interact with other human beings.

Performing for Love

As this starts to happen we find there comes a peer pressure; a pressure to conform.

It is that soul love. There comes an expression of soulical love where the people we are mixing with begin to communicate to us their soul, their desires and their emotions.

They begin to impose on you that in order to be loved and accepted you must fit in. You must conform. You have to be part of the peer group otherwise you are out. So the child learns to perform for his peers.

Then as we grow up it becomes a bit more sophisticated. We begin to move into the marriage relationship and we realize that the same thing applies. In order to obtain love from our spouse we have to perform.

Women soon learn that in order to get the love they so desire they must give physical favors. Men put up a big false front to get what they want.

It just becomes a big performance. Each one tries to become what they think they are supposed to become, in order to get the love that they are looking for.

But most of the time they don't even know what they are looking for. This is because the only part they know is the love of the passions and the love of the emotions. They don't know that true spiritual love.

Striving for the Lord's Love

And so as we grow up and get involved in every relationship in life we begin to relate to the Lord. We see him just like we see every other human being and we begin to think,

"Yes I need His love, but in order to get His love I will have to conform. I am going to have to perform for Him."

So people begin to strive. They begin to work hard to try and earn the Lord's favor. They get into works, into self-effort and legalistic efforts, to somehow gain the Lord's approval so that He will love them.

It starts right from the beginning. It is born and bred and programmed into us, and we come to this wrong understanding of what true love is.

The Scripture teaches us that the love of God is unconditional; that only God is able to love in that unconditional way.

Only God is able to love that way, because we in our spirits have become contaminated by sin. We have become wrapped up in ourselves. Because of that we find that we can't love unconditionally.

The Mother's Responsibility

So God places firstly upon the parents, the responsibility to be the image of Christ to their children.

Your kids are going to see the Lord by looking at you. How are they going to see this?

You will have to show them unconditional love. Only as you show them that unconditional love are they going to see the Lord in you.

It therefore begins in early childhood where the mother plays the major role in the child's life.

The mother molds the character of the child and portrays to him or her the love of the Lord. If the mother fails to do this she creates a wrong image in the child of what the Lord is.

Because God is portrayed as a father, the mother begins to portray to the child her attitude to manhood. She portrays her attitude to her husband and to the child's father, and she communicates a wrong image of what the Lord is.

Because she does not understand love, she begins to communicate a wrong image of what true love is to the child. This love now becomes conditional, and conditional love violates the whole principle that God has built into us.

The Husband's Role

Well let's not be too hard on the mother. Perhaps the reason she doesn't understand love is because her husband, who should become her image of the Lord, is not doing his job.

And so we go to the next level and we look in the marriage. Here we find that God holds the man responsible to be the image of Christ to his wife. God says to the man,

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

In other words it is saying,

"Husbands, show your wives what Christ looks like."

You may wonder why your wife doesn't understand unconditional love. Well perhaps it's because she has received the wrong image.

She perhaps got it firstly from her father. He may have failed to show the image of Christ in the home, as he took over the responsibility of bringing her out of childhood and adolescence and into adulthood.

This is the point where the father's role is the most important. So it is a bit tough on us guys. We have to be fathers and we have to be husbands. We have to be the image of the Lord to our wives and our children.

How are we going to be that image? We will do it by showing unconditional love. That is the image of God and the image of Christ.

Love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. How did Christ love the church? Did He make demands? No, He died for the church.

Are you prepared to die for your wife? In case you wives are chuckling I will ask you the question too. Are you prepared to live for your husband?

Love in the Church

Unconditional love also needs to be shown in the church as we move up to the next highest level.

How are the believers in the Body of Christ going to see the Lord? They are going to see Him in the spiritual leaders that God raises up; in the shepherds of the flock and the elders in the church. They are to be the image of Christ to the Body.

How will they do that? By standing behind the pulpit and hammering the congregation, beating them into a pulp and telling them,

"If you don't stop sinning, God is going to judge you."

No, they will do it by showing unconditional love. You see it is the same pattern all the way through. That is the only way we are going to grow up with a realization and an understanding of what this spiritual agape love is all about.

Loving Neighbors and Enemies

Who are the objects of this love? The Scripture commands us to love. The Pharisees came to Jesus and asked Him,

What is the greatest commandment?

Jesus replied,

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The word love there is a commandment. It is the Greek word agape love. We are commanded to love the love of the Spirit; to love unconditionally. He said,

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

If you are finding it a bit tough to love your neighbor, Jesus took it one step further and said,

"Love your enemies."

How can you love your enemies? You can do it because it is unconditional. There is no condition to this love. It doesn't say,

"I will love you if you stop being my enemy."

The first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord, and to do this it requires a commitment of your whole being. I want to tell you that this is a condition of the New Covenant. It is the key to your blessing.

Embrace Everything

Jesus said,

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.

On this verse hangs everything. And when you begin to love the Lord that way you begin to obey His commandments. But people have it all wrong. They think in terms of performance orientation and conditional love.

So they begin to think that in order for me to love the Lord I have to learn the commandments. Do you know the Ten Commandments? Could you quote them for me?

You say, "What? You're a preacher and you don't know the Ten Commandments?"

No, I know the commandment that embraces all of them, and it is the commandment to love. You see when you love you automatically obey the commandments.

When you love somebody they don't have to put demands on you. They don't have to tell you what to do. Because you care for them you automatically want to please them.

You are not going to murder somebody if you love them. You are not going to steal from somebody if you love them. You will not be ugly to them if you love them, and you won't covet your neighbor's wife if you love him.

That is why Jesus took the whole law and summed it up in two commandments - the commandment of love. You should be preaching love because love opens the door to everything.

The Nature of God

Love is the very nature of God, and when He said, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, He was saying you must make your neighbor equal to yourself.

If he is starving and you have a loaf of bread, you should break it in half and you give him an equal portion.

Jesus changed it and made it a bit worse. He said,

"I'm giving you a new commandment. Don't think that I'm letting you off the hook here."

Anybody can love that way; it's not that difficult. There are charitable organizations all over the world that are giving out to meet the needs of others. But Jesus says,

"You must love as I have loved."

How did Jesus love? Jesus gave all that He had for those who did not deserve it. It was unconditional.

That means if I have a loaf of bread and the other guy is hungry I give him the whole loaf and I starve.

You say, "But that is foolish."

No, you see if he loves you he will give it back to you again. Love releases a tremendous power and we will look at it as we go on.

The objects of our love are either vertically to the Lord, pouring out all our love to Him, or horizontally to those round about us. That is who we should be expressing our love to.

A lot of people are happy to pour their love out to animals. There are people who are prepared to die for animal rights. There are people who are prepared to die for a tree. But the commandment was,

Love your neighbor as yourself.

It wasn't, "Love your palm tree as yourself."

And sorry, but I don't see the Bible saying,

"Love your cat as yourself."

Love and Ministry

That is the nature of divine love. I want you to see how important it all is. It is the fount of all love. All the other loves spring from this divine love.

Love is the true motivation for ministry. Everything else is just an accomplishment. In 1 Corinthians 12:31 we read:

But earnestly desire the best gifts: and yet I will show you a much better way.

It is a much better way to what? To exercise the gifts of course.

What is this much better way? You will find it summed up after Paul goes to a lot of trouble to explain what this better way is. He takes the whole of 1 Corinthians 13. In verse 1 he says:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and do not have [agape] love, I have become [like] a noisy brass [instrument], or a clanging cymbal.

He goes through all of them. We will look at some more of those verses shortly. But after he has gone through the whole story concerning love, he finally answers his question and the statement that says,

I show you a much better way.

At the beginning of 1 Corinthians 14 he says,

Pursue divine love, and earnestly desire spiritual [gifts]…

If you want to move in the gifts you must earnestly desire them. But the key to getting into the power that will release the gifts is to pursue, run after and chase after divine love. Go after it and don't give up until you have received it.

Why must you pursue this divine love? Because it runs like mad. It is difficult to catch.

Do you know why? It is running out and giving all the time. It is so busy giving out all the time that you have to run to keep up with it, because it gives out faster than what it comes in.

Love and the Prophetic Ministry

Love is absolutely essential for the Prophetic Ministry. This is because the prophet needs to be God's spokesman; to communicate God's very Word, His nature and desires to His people.

You cannot speak a word of judgment without knowing the love of God, because God is a God of justice.

Yes He is a righteous God and He is a God of judgment. But He is also a God of love and His attributes do not contradict one another or work against each other.

If you want to see how they are all combined together, have a look at Calvary and you will see how God hates sin. Look at Calvary and see how God poured out His judgment on His only Son.

And if you want to see love, look at Calvary. You will see that God gave the greatest that He had for you and me, unconditionally and while we were still in sin.

The Scripture says,

While we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

He died for us when we hated Him. That is unconditional love. If you are going to preach judgment as a prophet, you had better learn how to preach love too because they go together.

Love is essential also for the operation of faith. We will look at that in more detail in the next chapter, because the Scripture says that faith works through love.

We have looked at the force of faith previously as well, and we have seen the power that there is in faith. Now I want to show you what gives faith its power.

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