Imagine for a moment that we live in a world without boundaries. There are no geographic lines separating state from state, continent from continent, sea from sea. There’s just one endless mass.
That’s how God’s love is. There are no boundaries, it is limitless. God’s love is so vast that it’s almost incomprehensible. We could travel to the deepest part of the earth and still not reach the depth of God's love. When we talk about God’s love, most of us try to understand it within the context of our own human relationships because that’s all we know. And sadly, most of those relationships have caused us pain and disappointment in one way or the other. Its hard to believe that God’s love is truly unconditional and unfailing when all other loves have failed us.
Trying to understand God’s love with our human minds is impossible. That’s why the Apostle Paul prayed that we would get a revelation of God’s love. A revelation is the act or process of disclosing something previously secret or obscure. For many, the truth of God’s love is a secret, or mystery, because they are not able to fathom what true love feels like. Thus, it would take God to uncover the mystery of His love for many to believe that this kind of love is readily available to them.
Some may think that the concept of God’s love is elementary and a concept everyone should just “know.” But, I always thought I had a 3-strikes out rule with God. Every time I messed up I wondered if that would be the last time God would forgive me. If, like me, you find yourself questioning God’s love for you when you fail or make a mistake, the truth is you haven’t fully grasped what His love is all about. For me, no matter how much I think I’ve realized God love for me, He continues shows me new heights. Once we truly understand God’s love we know that there’s nothing we could do that would separate us from His love. We can reject Him, but He can never reject us.
The thing is, God’s love is not conditioned upon us loving Him nor is it conditioned on whether we do the right thing. The Bible says that if we love God, we’ll keep His commandments. But the scripture “For God so loved the world…” is without condition. Whether you’ve asked God into your heart, or like me you did but later returned to your old habits, God’s love is constant. In this life, it’s the one thing we can be sure of to never change.
God loves us with a passion so deep that He would send His only Son to die for a world that didn’t know Him. This love extends to the murderer, the prostitute, the homosexual, the molester, and the atheist. When all other loves are capable of failing, why not accept a love so unconditional.