I've always heard that God's love is unconditional. But I was thinking,
is it also conditional? Is it both? Because in John 15:9, Christ says,
"As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my command,
you will remain in my love. Just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in his love."
Is he talking about unconditional love?
Great question! Man, we're getting some good ones. No, he's not talking about
conditional love. And this is crucial, right? Saint Paul puts it so beautifully.
Christ - or -God commended his love for us in that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us right in the, you know, the reality is first John 4:18 says "God is Love."
There's a sense in which you can say that God, that's all God does!
Right? Because it's what he is. We talk about how God is his attributes, right?
But the attributes in one sense are reflections of God and who God is. And so,
yes, we can say God is wisdom, but but but, you know, when we talk about God is Love,
we're talking about something more than just his attributes which pertain to his essence.
But we're talking about the eternal relations between the persons. And that's why this God
is love is unique. It is different than his attributes because of that relational reality
that we're talking about. - So another - I went a long way to say God is Love. And in fact, there's
a sense in which that's all he can do. He loves; he loves everything that he made as, - what is it?
First Timothy, That would be 4:4 Saint Paul says that - God loves - God created
everything good. Everything that he created is good. And He loves it as such, even the
devil, - the God that you know, - God loves in as much as he exists doesn't love what he
does. All right. That that's the sense in which we say God loves the sinner but hates the sin.
Right. So now when you talk about remaining in God's love, now we're talking about a different
animal. Because even though God loves absolutely, - In fact, as our old friend, Cy, Patrick
Coffin used to say, when, when he was sitting in your seat - "God loves you and there's nothing
you can do about it." Right. That that's a profound truth.
Absolutely - However - and so, in other words, in answer to the question that love is unconditional.
However, if we are going to remain in his love, that's on us, God gives us the grace
to be able to cooperate. But this is why Jesus says Remain in my love, because he chose to give
us free will. He created us with free will so that there could be love. Without free will,
really, love doesn't exist is at least as we know it. If we're just automatons,
there's no love. And so God gives us the freedom to be able to choose to either continue
in His love. That is, to experience his love. And that is the gift of
sanctifying grace that he communicates to us through the sacraments, which is our union with
God and then Jesus as the first principle of charity in our lives, exists real time
in our very being, in that great gift that we have of sanctifying grace.
But if I choose not to continue to in his love, guess what happens? I destroy sanctifying grace.
That is, by committing a mortal sin; I turn away from God, I turn away from my neighbor,
and I'm left with me. I destroy sanctifying grace,
and then I am no longer continuing in his love. It's not that God doesn't love me anymore.
He absolutely does. I'll leave you with this. Consider the prodigal son, one of Pope Francis
favorite stories he talks about it often, right? The father continues to love the son.
And even when he sees the son from afar, the son who doesn't even think he's worthy to be a son
any longer, what does the father do? He runs to the son and gives him the best robe and the ring.
And so forth. That is the image of God who loves even when we are far off,
we are in the midst of sin. We have to realize this because without that knowledge it is
easy, my friend, to fall into despair. It is easy to say, you know, with the Calvinists,
right. The Jonathan Edwards sort of dark Christianity: "Well, God despises me now."
Right? "He looks at me," as Jonathan Edwards famously said, in that horrible homily of 1641,
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, he said, "You may look at a scurvy spider with disdain,
but God looks at you with infinitely more disdain than you have for that scurvy, little spider." Oh,
God, help us, deliver us from that image of God and understand that God loves us absolutely.