“And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three: but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love” (1 John 4:8). The greatest ingredient in a life is love. If this ingredient is missing, then the recipe for our lives is not complete. Without God's love, and by extension human love that is unconditional and pure from God, a life will suffer in various ways. Do we really know how powerful is the love of God? Human love is powerful, too, but we all know the wrong kind of love or no love at all can be profoundly devastating.
God bestows upon each of us unconditional love. This does not mean He condones the sin in our lives. He hates the sin, but He loves the sinner and has forgiven each of us if we will confess Him as our Lord and Savior and accept that Jesus’ blood has washed us clean. In fact, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Jesus lay down His life for us, as sinners, to redeem us in His love and with His blood. He suffered as a man and experienced our pain, that is truly love.
Through our imperfect and conditional human love, we can believe that God's love is conditional and we can believe a whole host of other falsehoods, because Satan can fill that vacuum with any number of false ideas and false “love”—all of which have negative consequences and take us away from Christ. Christ's great and bountiful love should point us to the importance of unconditional love for one another; for if Christ can love sinners and send His Son to die for us while we were yet sinners, there is no excuse that we do not love others with Christ's powerful love. The gift of God's unconditional love (along with hope, faith, and encouragement) to a child, a sibling, a parent, a stranger, an enemy, or a friend may be the greatest gift you could ever give!
These comments are not reflective of the views of Answers in Genesis or its affiliates.