God is love - a Lenten series 10 Love is unilateral

God is presented as making unilateral, unconditional promises. It's much like a parent's unilateral and unconditional love for a toddler. The kid cannot help herself deal with emotions and hormones and circumstances and acts out in embarrassing, annoying, obnoxious ways, but the (healthy) parent perseveres despite the un-reciprocated love.

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Genesis 12 has a story of God making an unconditional promise to Abraham, promising him children and a legacy that affects the world.

But in later on in the Torah God and Moses work out a deal where the Jewish people have obligations to retain God's blessing. It's a conditional promise and, like making a deal with a toddler, it's a disaster.

The Jewish prophet Jeremiah recognizes this for what it is and sees a better, unilateral promise from God.

Jeremiah 31:31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make pa new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it ton their hearts. and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

There is no condition. It is all unilateral, unconditional love.

Here is how Paul talks about it in his letter to the Romans chapter 3 and read closely verse 22.

20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. 21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

Most modern translations translate this Greek genitive unusually as "faith in Christ." But that is a translation driven by theology, since all translations are interpretations. But King Jimmy's translation team left the genitive as it almost always translates, "of" not "in". Unilateral love means God does all the lifting, not just the heavy stuff but all of it. Paul is telling us, just like with Abraham, God's love for us does not depend on us, but on himself, not on our faithfulness but Christ's, not for some of us but for all of us. Unlike the rest of the world, some are not more equal than others. We are all toddlers in need of a loving parent who can persevere where we can't.