God's Love: Terms & Conditions Do Not Apply

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Everything is conditional. Every advertisement for a great offer finishes with the caveat, “Terms and conditions apply,” and this is the way we view our world. Our lives are a long tally of terms and conditions.

“If you’re good, we’ll go to the park this afternoon.”

“I cleaned the kitchen yesterday. It’s your turn.”

We keep a tally of brownie points with our spouse. We fight for the terms of our employment contract. We bargain good behaviour and a bit of help around the house from our kids, and we make deals with ourselves all the time. If you… then I will… You know how it goes.

We take this conditional approach into our relationships with our family, employer and selves, and we also operate this way in our relationship with God. We do deals, “God, If you get me out of this I will go to church every Sunday.” But God doesn’t work that way. God’s love is unconditional. The way he feels about you doesn’t change depending on the way you behave.

Unconditional. Think about that. There are no conditions on God’s love. You can’t earn it. You don’t deserve it. You can’t change it. It’s unconditional. It’s so unfair! 

You can’t make God love you more. It doesn’t matter how good you are. No matter how much you work for him, sacrifice for him, give to the church or serve the poor, you can’t get any more of his love. 

You can’t make God love you any less. God won’t stop loving you if you make a mistake. This also isn’t fair at all. When we least deserve it, God loves us. When we were still sinners, Christ died for us. What a wonderful gift.

When we understand the reality of God’s grace, it changes everything. When we get it, that God’s love is not conditional on our behaviour, the posture of our heart is completely different. We stop keeping a tally of brownie points.

One of my favourite children’s books is You Are Special by Max Lucado. This beautiful story is about a village of people who are carved out of wood by a man named Eli. The people in this village all had two boxes of stickers, gold stars and grey dots. They spent their days going around evaluating each other, giving gold stars to the beautiful, talented and gifted, and grey dots to anyone who was out of shape, showed signs of wear or made mistakes. All the people had stars and dot stickers all over them, except for one.

One girl in the village didn’t have any stickers, and whenever anyone tried to put a star of affirmation on her, or a dot of disapproval, it simply fell to the ground, unable to stick. The townspeople discovered that this carved wooden girl spent her afternoon’s talking with Eli, the carver. She was friends with him, knew his plan for her, and was happy being herself, regardless of what the other people were trying to stick on her. Her relationship with the carver was the foundation of her identity, no one else.

When we understand that we don’t have to earn God’s love, we are free to stop worrying about the stickers we are accumulating and just be ourselves. Earning stickers, striving for approval from God, ourselves and others is exhausting! It takes time and effort, it steals our joy, and it makes us judgmental. We can stop constantly comparing ourselves to others who are better or worse than us, weighing up whether we are good enough. 

It also takes away our right to judge others. We don’t get to feel better or worse about ourselves based on other people’s achievements or mistakes. We can be free. When we know that God loves us no matter what, we can stop focusing on being loveable. We can find rest for our soul, fully loved every single day.

How does this play out in our day to day life?

We can practice unconditional love in the way we treat others in our family. We can serve without keeping score, and we can receive without feeling guilty. This is so important to model to our children. If they feel like they have to earn our love by the way they behave, they will never truly feel loved and accepted for who they are. If, on the other hand, they know that you are always a safe place for them to celebrate their achievements and to grieve their failures, we are teaching them about the character of God and setting them up to understand the freedom of grace.

It changes the way we relate to those around us. We can celebrate the achievements of our colleagues and friends without feeling threatened. We can support friends who are struggling through a difficult time without feeling superior. 

It changes how we relate to people in poverty, caught in a cycle of crime or unemployment. Those who have a different race, religion, worldview, sexual orientation or socioeconomic situation are all loved by God, just as much as we are. He created them, sent his Son to die for them, and is pursuing them with his love. We have no right to judge, just love the way Christ does. Terms and conditions do not apply.

Take a moment to search your heart. Find your secret brownie-point tally and bring it before God in prayer. Ask Him to help you love unconditionally and to accept His love unconditionally.

Let’s live in the freedom of grace. Let the stickers fall…