Conditional Love

 

Some of us on this spiritual walk, create a step by step list of tasks to accomplish, and next to each task is a checkbox that we tick off every time a task is completed.

For instance,

• pray daily between the hours of 3am and 4am (tick)
• read my bible from 4am to 5am (tick)
• listen to worship music from 5am to 6am (tick)

and the list goes on and on, and you check off those boxes on a daily basis.

Every day you religiously go through your list, sincerely believing that by doing this you can earn God’s approval and by extension, His love.

But the bible clearly tells us that God’s love is not earned; it is a gift, He cannot help but love us because He is love.

What happens to us, is that we tend to project our imperfect human characteristics onto a divinely perfect God and that includes the way we love.

Our human offering of love is always conditional, we seldom, if at all, love unconditionally. We may proclaim our love to someone saying, “I love you unconditionally” and we may honestly believe it to be true but mostly it’s not.

You see, if we really think about the way in which we love, we’ll realize that there is some kind of string attached. We feel that others must earn our love. We say things like,

“I am not going to love him until he…”

“You better do … otherwise I can never love you”

“I’ll love her if she…”

“I’ve fallen out of love because you don’t do…for me anymore”

“I love you because you do…for me”

If God were to love us only if we did something noteworthy, then heaven help us. God’s love is not a reward for our perfection. God’s love has no conditions attached. We don’t have to earn it or search for it, but we must surrender to it and abide in it by allowing it to abide in us.

God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides continually in him. – 1 John 4:16 (AMP)

We don’t recognize that all our relationships are transactional, whether romantic or not, it’s always about what’s in it for me.

A friend, referring to a guy with whom I’d just got into a relationship, asked me, “So what has he brought to the table?” I was taken aback because that never crossed my mind.

These days the concept of love has been watered down and commercialized to the extent that we are unable to grasp the unconditional nature of love; it is that love that God wants us to show to each other.

love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. – John 13:34 (ESV)

Jesus has shown us how to love without condition and as believers in Him, we need to acquire a perception of love from a divine perspective.

God is the definition of love and He loves us unconditionally. Nothing we do makes Him love us more, and nothing we do makes Him love us less.

God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8 (NIV)

Our first step out of conditional love toward unconditional love is to surrender our love to God so that He may replace it with the fullness of His love.

First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first. – 1 John 4:19 (MSG)

Beloved, only God can release you from the constraints of conditional love, and thrust you into His radical unconditional love, where love is experienced in a whole new way. God’s love is your example of how to love.

Amen †

 

Shelley Johnson “Conditional Love” ©2026 April 27, 2026