What does pure “God love” look like? Many people on this earth believe God loves “good” people and is unloving to “bad” people. But Jesus Christ tells us that God loves the whole world unconditionally! Often God’s love is so hard for us to grasp because it is so much higher than natural human love, which accepts only the lovely and rejects the unlovely.
Yet Jesus tells us to love and be kind and good to our enemies, which is not a natural human reaction. Learning to love our enemies often takes time. We must desire to mature spiritually and to work out our feelings of anger and hurt toward our enemies, which is part of the process of forgiveness. This will then free up space in our hearts for God to pour in His unconditional, healing love and grace. Loving our enemies does not necessarily mean we will be in a two way friendship with them; but God’s Spirit will give us the ability to love the unlovely as He does!
God’s love will also give us the courage to give without expecting anything in return. Yet He promises that we will be greatly recompensed in being called “sons of the Most High,” for we will be like our Father-kind, sympathetic, tender, responsive, charitable, compassionate, and good to the ungrateful and selfish. Let us, as God’s children, press on to grow in His unconditional love and to show forth His light and healing to a hurting, broken world.
“If you [merely] love those who love you, what quality of credit and thanks is that to you? For even the sinners love their lovers [those who love them]. And if you are kind and good and do favors to and benefit those who are kind and good and do favors to and benefit you, what quality of credit and thanks is that to you? For even the preeminently sinful do the same. And if you lend money at interest to those from whom you hope to receive, what quality of credit and thanks is that to you? Even notorious sinners lend money at interest to sinners, so as to recover as much again. But love your enemies and be kind and do good [doing favors so that someone derives benefit from them] and lend, expecting and hoping for nothing in return but considering nothing as lost and despairing of no one; and then your recompense [your reward] will be great [rich, strong, intense, and abundant], and you will be sons of the Most High, for He is kind and charitable and good to the ungrateful and the selfish and wicked. So be merciful [sympathetic, tender, responsive, and compassionate] even as your Father is [all these]”(Luke 6: 32-36).
