Summary: It’s common to hear Christians talk about God’s love as being unconditional, which most people interpret to mean that God will love us no matter what we do. And, indeed, there are many scriptures that seem to indicate this. Yet, there are even more scriptures that tell us that God’s love has limits and that he will severely punish those who disobey him. Then, is God’s love unconditional or are there conditions to his love? This article examines the answer to that question.

In December 1832, the Lord had commanded the saints living in Kirtland, Ohio to build a temple, but by June 1833 the saints had not even begun construction. As a result, he told them, “Verily I say unto you, it is my will that you should build a house. If you keep my commandments you shall have power to build it. If you keep not my commandments, the love of the Father shall not continue with you, therefore you shall walk in darkness” (D&C 95:11,12).

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we’ve been told that we are literal children of God and as such we are all his beloved sons and daughters. Among Christians, it’s common to hear them talk about God’s “unconditional love,” which means that God loves us no matter what we do. In fact the scriptures tell us that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

The scriptures also tell us that “God commnedeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8), and it further states that “in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). What that means is that Jesus didn’t die to atone for the sins of just those who believe in him, but he died to save everyone, even the worst sinner.

We’re told that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:223), and because everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23), everyone will die. However, because of what Christ did on the cross, no matter how bad our sins might be, everyone will rise from the grave. When that happens, all sinners will be saved from the wages of their sins. And even before then, the scriptures tell us that because God loves everyone, he “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).

The apostle Paul went so far as to say, “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

Surely, this kind of love is unconditional, meaning that no matter what we do, God will always love us. This is why the apostle John wrote that “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

Then why did God tell the saints in Kirtland that “If you keep not my commandments, the love of the Father shall not continue with you”? Doesn’t that contradict what the Bible says about God’s love?

For most people, unconditional love means that God overlooks or doesn’t condemn us when we do something wrong. In other words, when we commit a sin, people think that because God still loves us that means he’s not upset with us. Or, as Nephi explains, “And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God—he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God” (2Nephi 28:8). This is how many people interpret unconditional love.

Yet, this is not the kind of love we find in the scriptures. For example, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s commandment not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he placed a curse upon each of them and cast them out into the wilderness where they then had to work by the sweat of their brow. Worse yet, they were permanently cast out of God’s presence. And besides dying a spiritual death, their physical bodies would likewise one day die.

When the earth became overgrown with wickedness, God destroyed everyone except eight people by drowning them. What a horrible way to die! After God had freed his chosen people from the slavery of Egypt, when they turned back to worshipping an idol made of gold, Moses instructed the Levites to go throughout the camp killing everyone who had participated in worshipping the golden calf. We’re told that 3,000 people were slain by the sword (Exodus 32:28).

In the days of Isaiah, God warned his people that if they didn’t repent of their wickedness, he would destroy them and their city. He gave them 100 years to turn back to him, but when they didn’t, he allowed Nebuchadnezzar’s army to sack the city of Jerusalem.

Almost 9,000 people were either killed or taken into captivity, and when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem around 70 A.D., the numbers of people killed were not only far greater but the Jews were scattered for almost 1,900 years before they were able to return to their ancestral home in 1948.

In the Book of Mormon we read how the entire Nephite civilization was destroyed because of their wickedness. In just the last battle alone, over a quarter of a million Nephites were slain by the sword. Throughout the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord frequently expresses his anger.

Perhaps the most well-known one is found in D&C 19:15 when he says, “Therefore I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore—how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not.”

In addition to this, the Lord frequently warns, “Wherefore, verily I say, let the wicked take heed, and let the rebellious fear and tremble; and let the unbelieving hold their lips, for the day of wrath shall come upon them as a whirlwind, and all flesh shall know that I am God” (D&C 63:5).

The second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves and the way we do that is by caring about the needs of others as much as or more than we care about our own needs. Jesus taught that when he comes again he will separate people into two groups who he calls the sheep and the goats. The sheep are those who cared about others by feeding, clothing, comforting, and caring about their needs.

To these people he will say, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” while to those who have not done these things he will say “these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Matthew 25:34.45). Unfortunately, a large percentage of the world’s population will be counted among the goats.

Perhaps the most notable example of God’s wrath was when he cast one-third of his children out of heaven and consigned them to live in outer darkness where they will live in misery, forever cut off from the presence of God, their Father (2 Nephi 9:9).

None of these examples fit the idea of God having unconditional love. In fact, it was Jesus himself who taught that there are conditions to receiving God’s love when he said, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love… If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him” (John 14:23, 15:9,14:23). Inferred in this statement is that if we don’t keep his commandments then the love of Jesus and the Father will not abide with us.

The clear message found throughout all scripture is that those who keep God’s commandments are blessed and abide in his love, while those who deliberately choose to rebel against God face his wrath and are severely punished. Thus we see there are conditions that must be met in order to qualify for God’s love.

Then how do we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory concepts about God? To answer this question we first have to know what love is and what it isn’t.

When someone loves someone else, it means they care about that person, and are willing to sacrifice their needs for the good of others. Parents exhibit this kind of love for their children because they are willing to sacrifice their time, money, and material possessions to make sure their children’s emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual needs are being met. An important part of caring for the needs of their children involves teaching them to be the best they can be.

Every parent knows that if they allow their child to misbehave, it only teaches them that they can continue their bad behavior. If a parent truly loves their child, they want to instill in them behavior traits that will help them to be successful in life and find genuine joy and happiness because that’s what’s best for them. On the other hand a parent who doesn’t discipline their child when they do something wrong doesn’t truly care about them because they’re not interested in doing what’s best for their child.

Because God loves us, he wants what’s best for us, and what will bring us the greatest amount of joy and happiness is to obtain eternal life because it’s what brings a fulness of joy (3 Nephi 28:10). But, to have eternal life requires us to be prepared to inherit it.

To understand this principle we can look at something we’re all familiar with, which is driving a car.

Many children at a young age dream of the time when they can have a driver’s license. However, the law
states that a person must be at least sixteen years of age before they can apply for one, but why? For the most part, children under that age are not mature enough to drive responsibly. Imagine letting an eight year old or even a ten year old drive a car by themselves. They might be able to operate the vehicle and drive it in an open field, but they don’t have the maturity to make wise decisions when traveling on the road in heavy traffic.

In fact, according to statistics, drivers between the ages of sixteen and twenty have three times the number of fatal crashes, and four times the number of non-fatal crashes than those over the age of twenty. That’s not because they don’t know how to mechanically operate a motor vehicle. It’s because they lack the ability to make wise decisions while driving a car.

For this reason, a good parent will do all they can to impress upon their teenage children the importance of driving safely and when they don’t, most parents will administer corrective punishment appropriate to the offense. The worse the offense, the stronger the punishment will be. That’s not because parents want to be mean, but because they want to help their child to be safe.

This is exactly how our Father in heaven deals with us. To inherit eternal life doesn’t mean living a blissful life sitting around in heaven doing nothing. There are grave responsibilities that go with receiving eternal life, therefore, a loving God needs to help prepare his children to carry out those responsibilities in a wise and mature way because the consequences of not doing that are far more devastating than we can imagine,

The reason why God gives us commandments is to help prepare us to someday be worthy of inheriting the responsibilities that go with eternal life, and as we are diligent in doing what God asks, we learn how to handle those responsibilities. In effect, the commandments God gives us are designed to help us learn by to do what he does.

But it takes practice to be good at doing anything, and that includes practicing how to care for the needs of others. It especially takes practice to learn how to be as perfect as God is. As we struggle to do these things, God can be patient with us as long as we are trying, but when we willfully rebel against him and deliberately reject his efforts to teach us, then he must apply some kind of correction or else we will feel no need to change our bad behavior. Therefore, of necessity, God has to discipline us precisely because he loves us and cares about helping us become better. And the greater the offense, the greater the punishment must be.

Therefore, when we sin, it’s true that God still loves us, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care what we do. If God were to allow us to get away with whatever we want, that wouldn’t be love. That would be indifference and negligence. Therefore, God administers punishment precisely because he loves us.

But what about when he deliberately takes the life of the wicked, such as he did in the flood, or with the Israelites, or with the Nephites? How is that showing love?

First of all, we have to realize that it is impossible for God to kill us because all of us are eternal beings. We existed before we came to earth and we will continue to exist forever after we leave this mortal world. Before we came to earth, we lived in heaven with God, and then we were sent to live in a physical body for a short period of time, and then we will return to living as spirits again, until the resurrection when everyone will receive their physical body and live forever as an immortal being. Thus, we never truly die. Instead, we merely move from one environment of existence to another.

One of the methods a parent uses to discipline their child is called time-out, where they take their children away from what they were doing and put them in a place where for a period of time they’re not allowed to do what they had been doing. In the same way, when God takes the life of someone, he is merely taking them from their earthly environment and placing them in another environment where they are put into a time-out situation for a short period of time. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we refer to that place as the spirit prison. But even that is an act of mercy, because it removes the wicked from being able to continue doing more evil.

Therefore, the question is: Does God’s love have conditions to it? That all depends on what we mean by unconditional love. Does God show more love to those who keep his commandments than he does to those who don’t? The scriptural answer is definitely yes. Does God withhold his blessing from those who fail to obey him? The scriptures clearly show that he does. Can we grieve his Spirit to where it withdraws from us? That’s what the scriptures say. Has our sins separated us from God? Christ died for the express purpose of some day bringing us back into God’s presence, but that will happen only to those who accept Jesus and endure to the end in keeping his commandments. But when God punishes us, or withdraws his Spirit from us, or we are kept from his presence, does that mean he doesn’t love us? Of course not.

It’s true that God will always love us no matter what we do, and nothing will ever change that, but there are conditions on how much of his love we receive, and how merciful he will be to us. It is in this sense that God’s love is conditional

 

 

Related articles can be found at The Nature of God