Longbeard Press, LLC

Chapter 2

Does God Love Unconditionally?

Mr. Warren says:

“Love is the essence of God’s character.”  (Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, p. 24)

But Scripture says:

“A jealous and avenging God is the LORD; The LORD is avenging and wrathful. The LORD takes vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies.  The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, And the LORD will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. In whirlwind and storm is His way, And clouds are the dust beneath His feet.”  (Nahum 1:2-3, NASV)

            Mr. Warren says, “You were created as a special object of God’s love!  God made you so he could love you.  This is a truth to build your life on.  The Bible tells us, ‘God is love.’  It doesn’t say God has love.  He is love!  Love is the essence of God’s character.”[1] {See support for numbered citations in notes at end of chapter.}  What Mr. Warren fails to mention is that God’s love is conditional, and always has been, and always will be.  While God, in his gracious nature, has built a beautiful world and placed mankind here to enjoy it, the ability to fully enjoy this has always been conditioned upon obedience to God.

            When God created Adam and Eve and put them in the perfect Garden of Eden to live, he warned them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  He told them that, should they ever disobey that command, they must die.  (Genesis 2:17)  They disobeyed, but they did not die immediately (at least not physically).  However, they immediately lost their opportunity for earthly immortality,[2] and brought mortality upon themselves and all their descendants.  They were also banished from the Garden of Eden.  The man was cursed with having to contend with thorns and thistles in farming.  The woman was cursed with pain in child-bearing.  (Genesis 3:16-19, 23-24; Romans 5:12-19)

            God could have said, “Hey, I am love.  I love you so much, I am not going to punish you.  You can even stay in the Garden of Eden, because, after all, the real reason I created you was so I could love you.”  According to Mr. Warren’s theory of God’s essence being love, this is the way things should have worked out.  But God’s love is conditional.  The first man and woman disobeyed, and they were punished.

            People today often quote scriptures like "God is love,"[3] as a proof text for their belief that God is purely a loving God.  They think him incapable of hating, or hurting, or taking vengeance upon, or planning destruction of, individuals and societies.  However, the Scriptures must be taken as a whole, viewed in their entirety, with the understanding that one Scripture cannot contradict another Scripture, but must be understood in such a way that they are harmonized.  As Christ said, "the Scripture cannot be broken."  (John 10:35)  Moses also said that we must not "add to or take away" from the word of God.  (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32)  When a person interprets one passage in such a way that the meaning would be contradictory to another passage, he has effectively "broken" (or annulled) that passage, and "taken away" from Scripture.  Paul said that "all Scripture is inspired by God."  (2^nd Timothy 3:16)  Since that is true, it is entirely improper to interpret one Scripture to mean something that contradicts another Scripture.

            Some suppose that opposite emotions or attitudes cannot exist within the same person.  To them, a person is kind and loving, or else hateful and vengeful, but not both.  This is a simplistic and wrong-headed understanding of human nature and of God's character.  The Scriptures show that God can have, and express, such opposite emotions whenever the emotion is appropriate to the circumstance.  In the first chapter of Proverbs, God is pictured as divine wisdom, embodied in a woman named ‘Wisdom’:

"Wisdom shouts in the street, She lifts her voice in the square;  At the head of the noisy streets she cries out; At the entrance of the gates in the city, she utters her sayings:  "How long, O naive ones, will you love simplicity? And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing, And fools hate knowledge?  Turn to my reproof, Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you; I will make my words known to you. ---- Because I called, and you refused; I stretched out my hand, and no one paid attention;  And you neglected all my counsel, And did not want my reproof;  I will even laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your dread comes,  When your dread comes like a storm, And your calamity comes on like a whirlwind, When distress and anguish come on you.”  Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; They will seek me diligently, but they shall not find me, Because they hated knowledge, And did not choose the fear of the LORD."  (Proverbs 1:20-29 NASV)

            Here we see God as a spurned counselor, warning and offering advice to save the citizens of a city, but entirely ignored.  God’s response is not to wring his hands and weep over the destruction of such a city.  Rather, he laughs at them and mocks them when they are now panicking and desperate.  He refuses to help them even when they are calling out to him for help, because they ignored him for too long.

            Has God’s character somehow changed after Christ’s appearance, death and resurrection?  Some people evidently think so.  They think that God is now the ever-loving Santa Claus type of god – different from the fire-breathing type of God we see in the Old Testament stories.  Well, the truth is that God remains always the same.  His character and his nature are the same they have always been, and always will be, and he is just as capable of becoming angry and punishing people today as he always has been.  “I the LORD do not change.”  (Malachi 3:6 NIV)

            Even after Christ’s resurrection, we see God becoming angry and punishing those who displease him.  In Acts 5:1-10, God strikes dead a husband and wife, Ananias and Sapphira, for their misconduct.  In Acts 13:8-11, God strikes a sorcerer with blindness for opposing the message of Saint Paul.  God sickened and killed members of the Corinthian church for dishonoring the Lord’s Supper.  (1 Corinthians 11:27-30)  In an excommunication procedure, Paul delivered a church member over “to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”  (1 Corinthians 5:5 NASV)  During the days of the early church, when the people of Tyre and Sidon began proclaiming King Herod to be a god, Luke tells us:  “And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.”  (Acts 12:23 NASV)

            God continues to punish sinners as actively as he did in the Old Testament times.  God’s nature never changes, and his anger toward sinners has always been part of his character, and always will be.  God does not love unconditionally.  Even the favorite gospel passage, memorized and repeated by so many evangelical Christians, is a statement of conditional love, not unconditional.  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”  (John 3:16 NASV)  This is a poor translation of the Greek for a modern English speaking audience.  The reason is, first, that the word “so”, in this passage, is mistakenly treated by most modern readers as an intensive adverb in English, similar to the phrase “very much”.  However, the Greek word, used by the apostles, ‘houtos’, primarily means ‘thus’ or ‘in this manner’ or ‘in this way’[4] – which is also one of the ways we use the English word ‘so’.  If a child asks their parent, “How should I hold my hands when I pray?” -- the parent might answer, while demonstrating:  “Hold your hands so.”  Or a person at the end of a story might write, “And so they lived happily ever after.”  In both these examples, the word ‘so’ is being used as an adverb to mean ‘in this way’ or ‘like this’.

            The Greek word order of John 3:16 makes clear that the Greek word ‘houtos’ is being used to mean ‘in this way’, ‘thus’, ‘like this’ or ‘in this fashion’.[5]  The first word in the verse is ‘houtos’.  A more accurate translation would be:  “For in this manner God loved the world: He gave up his one and only son, in order that all who are trusting in him may not be destroyed, but may take hold of eternal life.”  God does not love the world ‘so much’ that he lets everyone into heaven unconditionally.  Instead, God loves the world ‘in this manner’, that he grants eternal life to those who “are trusting” (i.e., life-long, continuous trusting – not a one-time response to an ‘altar call’) in Christ, and he destroys everyone else.

            It should also be mentioned that the concept of ‘belief’ or ‘faith’ or ‘trust’ in Christ is widely misunderstood by evangelical Christians.  The Greek word used by the apostles is ‘pistis’.  The verbal form, ‘pisteuo’, can be translated ‘believe’ or ‘have faith in’ or ‘trust’ or ‘put confidence in’ or even ‘entrust’.  Like English, Greek words also often have a spectrum of meaning.  The context in which the word is used provides the means to proper understanding.  A respected Greek lexicon gives two expanded definitions for ‘pisteuo’:  “to consider something to be true and, therefore, worthy of one’s trust” and “to entrust oneself to an entity in complete confidence”.[6]

            To ‘believe in Christ’ is to believe in everything he says as trustworthy, to rely upon him and his words.  The implications for this type of ‘faith’ in Jesus are weighty.  After John 3:16, the implications are spelled out, at the end of the same chapter:  “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”  (John 3:36 NASV)  This is quite a different condition for salvation than what is commonly taught among evangelical Christians.  But this is not a concept that can be ignored.

            Christ, throughout the gospels, makes it clear that ‘faith’ in Christ involves obedience to his commands.  Consider the following:

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."  (Matthew 7:21 NIV)

"As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it.  There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day."  (John 12:47-48 NIV)

"He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will disclose Myself to him."  (John 14:21 NASV)  [Note:  Therefore, it must also be true that those who do not strive to keep Christ’s commandments do not really love him, and are not loved by Christ or by the Father, now or in eternity.  They are enemies that suffer the same eternal destruction of all non-believers.]

"Jesus replied, 'If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.  He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.' "  (John 14:23-24 NIV)  [Note:  It is only those who make sincere efforts to obey who are true Christians, in whom God lives in the form of the Holy Spirit.  All others are not true children of God, and are without hope of salvation.]

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.  If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned."  (John 15:5-6 NIV)  [Question:  How does one ‘remain’ in Christ, so as not to be cast away and burned in eternal fire?  See John 15:10, following.]

"If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love."  (John 15:10 NIV)  [Note:  Either one remains in Christ’s love by striving to live a life in keeping with Christ’s commands, or one is not loved by Christ, in this life or the next, and suffers the consequences.]

            Christ’s apostles, who were entrusted to teach and to write down the truths of the Christian faith, also taught that one must strive to obey Christ’s commands in order to inherit eternal life.[7]  Consider the following:

"Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God."  (1^st Corinthians 6:9-10 NASV)

"The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God."  (Galatians 5:19-21 NIV)

"Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.  The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life."  (Galatians 6:7-8 NIV)

"For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy ['covetous'] person-- such a man is an idolater-- has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.  Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient."  (Ephesians 5:5-6 NIV)

"What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?  Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.  But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.  You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that-- and shudder.  You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?  Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?  You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.  And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called God's friend.  You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone."  (James 2:14-24 NIV)

            God does not love people unconditionally.  Oh, it is true that he often extends kindness to pagans by sending them rain and sunshine so they can grow crops for food.  But this kindness is God’s attempt to have them recognize and embrace God and his son.[8]  Ultimately, only those who seek to do God’s will are pleasing to God and loved by God.  To these people, God reveals the truths of salvation, and welcomes them into his family.  Jesus said, “If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.”  (John 7:17 NIV)  The ability to recognize Jesus as God’s son is given to those who are willing to obey God.  And God loves only these in an eternal love that watches over them in this life and gives them eternal life in the future.  God’s love is conditioned upon one’s willingness to obey him.

Conclusion of “Purpose Driven Life”:        “You were created as a special object of God’s love!  God made you so he could love you.  This is a truth to build your life on.  The Bible tells us, ‘God is love.’  It doesn’t say God has love.  He is love!  Love is the essence of God’s character.”  (Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, p. 24)

Outworking of “Purpose Driven Life” Conclusion:          If the reason God created me was so that he could love me, then I must really be someone special!  This theory promotes self-satisfaction with oneself, instead of motivating one to want to be a better person.  A little girl might make a doll so she can love the doll.  But people are not dolls.  People behave badly or act in noble ways.  God has little love for those whose actions demonstrate a lack of love toward others or toward God.  But if you think God made you, like the little girl who made a doll, so that he could love you – you mistakenly think that God’s love is unconditional, and you will likely fail to live a life of love toward others, which is disobedience to Christ’s commands.  Such persons will not inherit eternal life.

Conclusion from Scripture:  God did not “make you so he could love you.”  He made you so that you could obey him, and he loves those who obey him and obey his son, Jesus Christ.  To believe in Christ is to believe in his words.  Christ’s commands can be boiled down to loving others and loving God.  Christ says that those who do this inherit eternal life.  Those who do not believe Christ and his words are disobeying him, and receive his eternal anger and punishment.

Outworking of Scriptural Belief: If you sincerely believe in Christ, you will believe in his words, which warn you that disobedience to Christ’s commands will prevent you from inheriting eternal life.  This will motivate you to strive to obey Christ commands, so that you will not fall short of the gift of eternal life promised to all true believers.

Memory Verses:

“He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”  (John 3:36 NASV)

“Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”  (Matthew 7:21 NIV)

“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.  The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”  (Galatians 6:7-8 NIV)

“He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.”  (Titus 2:14 New Revised Standard Version [hereafter ‘NRSV’)

Rick Warren & The Modern Church:  Purpose Driven Disaster; 155 pages; 6" x 9"; paperback; $9.99; available for purchase at Amazon.com.