Be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32)
Week 5, Day 3
A couple came to me about a year ago and asked me to perform their marriage. As we began to talk, the woman handed me a piece of paper. She said, “This is the vow we want to make to each other.” The long paragraph of promises concluded with “as long as we both shall love.”
As we talked further, I began to realize she had put conditions on her love. Without actually saying it in words, she communicated that she would love her husband as long as he did things that she believed he ought to do. She was saying, “As long as you operate by my rules, I will love you. When you stop using those rules, I will stop loving you.”
True love doesn’t work that way. True love is absolutely unconditional. Unconditional love means I accept you for who you are, for all your strengths and your weaknesses.
The verse that is often called the gospel in a nutshell, John 3:16, begins, “For God so loved the world …” God gave that statement of unconditional love. He loved, and he gave. We don’t have to be good; we don’t have to reach a certain level of attainment. God doesn’t love us as long as we’re good or as long as we behave. His love never ends. When two people love each other, but put conditions on it, they really say, “I expect you to live up to my arbitrary standards, and I will live up to your expectations. If either of us comes up short, our love will dissolve.” That’s a no-win game, because nobody ever fully lives up to anyone else’s expectations.
On the other hand, I remember an example of unconditional love. A year after Shirley and I married, we joined a church. Don belonged to the same church, and I didn’t like him. I found him irritating and difficult to get along with. Yet every time I turned around, Don seemed to be there. He would even come to see me. We had a lot of ups and downs in our relationship, but eventually I learned to like him.
He once said to me, “I chose you to be my friend. I love you as a friend. My love for you was not conditioned upon your response.”
I’m not sure that most of us can love someone and accept that person whether or not it’s reciprocated. But that’s what real love is. It’s to love whether or not we’re loved in return. That’s the kind of love that God pours out to us. It’s also mature love, the kind that we want as lovers to offer each other. This love has no strings attached, and no conditions. We say “I love you.” Period.
God, you put no conditions upon your love to us. Help us to love each other without strings attached. Amen.