Most of us are familiar with a love commitment that is conditional.
Some of us have been in relationships that have become toxic with conditions are are belittling, or demanding, or damaging, or dangerous, or all of these combined.
- “If you love me you will submit to my demands.”
- “If you love me you will submit to my desires.”
- “If you love me you will submit to my demeaning if you.”
Some of us are too familiar with that sort of call to love.
Indeed there are some, who unfortunately, that’s the only ‘love’ they know.
So when God calls on us to love him, there are suspicions, fears, cautions and hesitancy.
But God’s Love is perfect and pure.
God’s love defines who he is and determines what he does.
God is Love.
But there is an aspect of God’s love that is also conditional. But his condition makes perfect sense.
You couldn’t love me and not love that which is closest and most precious to me – my family, my close friends, my church community!
To love God is to love what is precious and closest to him as well.
Whoever loves the Father, loves His Son as well. Whoever loves the Father, loves his children as well.
That’s a condition that makes sense. That’s a condition that we can understand and even live with.
That’s a condition that makes Christian sense against all the other belief systems.
If you love the Father, you will love Jesus.
Or in other words:
If you do not love Jesus, you do not love the Father.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.
— 1 John 5:1