The limits set by unconditional love
What is “unconditional” love? Although God disapproves of your poor choices that accumulate bad consequences and guilt, He always cares about you! To compassionately disapprove of someone’s harmful actions is to demonstrate true “unconditional” love. To approve of people’s bondage to self-focused desires, is not being loving.
God cares enough to explain to us the consequences of harmful choices and to warn us against making them. His love always includes His disapproval of destructive choices. Although He respects free will, He sets loving conditions (boundaries, laws, and government) to protect people from the chaos of our rebellious feelings, desires, and thoughts.
When we become deeply aware that God loves with enough love to allow us the freedom to reject Him and to cause Him extreme pain, our heart is touched. Our guilt becomes unbearable as true love for God rises up within us and causes us to want to respect and obey His commandments (His protective boundaries). Yet, although our efforts can establish outward compliance to God’s will, they alone cannot align our inner thoughts, desires, and feelings with God. Like Paul, we realize, “O wretched man that I am.” We understand that we need rescuing that goes far beyond self-effort and/or a one-time religious decision.
Then we can behold the amazing love of the Lamb of God and His redemptive sacrifice on the Cross. Then we can begin to experience truly unconditional love that empowers us to see and be set free from our desire to get off God’s track and dive into the muck of inner corruption. Then we can experience Christ’s ongoing presence within us to lovingly lead us by His Spirit and to be our hope of glory, not just in the afterlife, but in the present moment. When we take personal responsibility for the guilt we feel, we’ll be willing to ask for and receive forgiveness and healing.
When people sound a gong
And declare that wrong
Is now right
And if you don’t
Sing their song
And go along
With their behavior
They say you hate them,
Then society’s in for a long
Dark night.
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