Obstacles on the Way to God - #2

2. God's love is unconditional because conditional love is imperfect.

Examples from Scripture that refute the notion that God's love is unconditional:

• God establishes His covenant with Adam and Noah with distinctive instructions as to what they are supposed to do: Gen 1:28; Gen 9:1-17.
• God establishes His covenant with Abraham, reminding him to keep His covenant, and as a sign instructing him to circumcise all males of his household, Gen 17.
• The blessings described in the books of Moses always come with an "if": "If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit." (Lev 26:3-4)
• Deu 28 describes at length the curses and blessing that come with either disobeying or obeying God's word, and Chapter 29:1 sums these up as the "words" or "terms" of the covenant, followed by another longer summary in Chapter 30: "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it. But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it. I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them." (Deu 30:15-20)
• God wants it to be well with us, but the prerequisite is keeping His commandments. He knows that there would always only be a remnant since men fell, because "the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and (...) every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Gen 6:5), just as the prophet Jeremiah stresses the "imagination of their evil hearts" many times (the exact phrase alone appears four times in the KJV, in 3:17, 7:24, 11:8 and 13:10). So after reminding the people of the Commandments that were given to Moses as recounted in Exo 20 and Deu 5, God says: "O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!"(Deu 5:29), knowing full well that in the course of history - as recounted in the Old and New Testament - all the curses listed later (Deu 28) will befall the chosen people as a result of their unfaithfulness to God, shown in their disobedience.
• If you want to hold that since it is conditional, God's love is imperfect, you might want to look for a different god to follow. If you want to stick with the bible, remember that "God is Love" and that it is Him who defines what love is and how to show it, so we should not fear and follow Christ's example, who perfectly loved God, which means, who perfectly obeyed His commandments (Joh 14:31; 1Joh 4:16-21).

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