Unconditional love: affection without any limitations, or love without conditions. This term is sometimes associated with other terms such as true altruism or complete love. Each area of expertise has a certain way of describing unconditional love, but most will agree that it is that type of love which has no bounds and is unchanging.  Wikipedia

God is Love. While it is true that God, which is Spirit, has no limitations. Is it true that God, which is Love, has no conditions?  God has spiritual laws set in place, and being made in the image of God, man is subject to these laws. If he breaks these spiritual laws, he suffers the consequences. The law is the condition. God set up His Law out of Love, to keep us in the borders of obedience, within a wall of protection.   “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee… Exodus 15:26.  There are conditions that must be met in order to escape the diseases that plague us. Clearly, man is not been in compliance with the conditions that God has laid down for us, to protect us, because he loves us. 

God is Love, which also has a condition:  “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” John 14:16—  which is to say, no man comes to Love, except through truth.  “For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me…” John 16:27.  God loves those who love truth, therefore, God’s love is conditional!  So where did this “feel-good” expression come from?  A search reveals that the term, “unconditional love,” was first used by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in 1934.  So, it is a precept of man, not of God. The term is sometimes associated with “complete love,” the biblical term for which is, “perfect love.”  “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God… God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.  Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: … There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear… We love him, because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?  And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.” 1 John 4:15-21. 

The word confess means to assent; i.e. covenant, which is to express agreement or acceptance of something.  Those that agree or accept that Jesus is the Son of God, dwell in love.  Therefore, those that accept that Jesus is God, do not dwell in love.  Why?  Because, in removing the Son we remove the word of God (truth), the very essence of God’s spirit— “the spirit of truth.”  So we can conclude that if we remove truth from the equation, our love can never be made perfect.  We can never reach “perfect love” from within our heart. The “day of judgment” is the period of time in which we judge (overcome) our false perceptions and beliefs. If we achieve it in this life, we will have boldness on the day of judgment in the afterlife.  Love, by itself, has no power until it is directed toward someone or something. God directed His Love toward us by giving us Jesus, the manifestation of God’s seed or word of truth.  How do we love ourselves?  By giving ourselves the truth.  Only then, can we truly say we love God.  Only then can we truly love our brother.  Fear opposes love.  A lie opposes truth.  Fear is the spirit or energy of the lie.  Love is the spirit or energy of truth.  How many of us have (knowingly or unknowingly) enabled our brother’s bad behavior as a result of accepting the “unconditional love” lie?  That is not loving our brother.  Love has a condition, which is truth.  Yet we fear telling our brother the truth, which would be a demonstration of our love towards them. 

Fromm’s concept of “unconditional love” could very well have been an unconscious back-lash against the fear instilled in him through religion, having come from an Orthodox Jewish family, a religion he turned away from in 1926.  If we did our due diligence by looking into the history of those that come up with these man-made concepts, we would most likely understand the psychology behind it. This obsession with love is an attempt to counteract the fear buried so deep within the psyche, that most of us are still unaware of its existence, a fear that can be overcome by replacing all of these lies, with truth.  In truth, there is no such thing as “unconditional love.”

Written by Sandra L. Butler © 2021