Unreasonable Love

I heard the Lord speak to me today. He said that His love is ‘unreasonable’. I asked what He meant and He said that, to most people, unconditional love, like He gives to us, is completely beyond the bounds of reason. He said that “Real love, as I give, is beyond the capability of nearly all men so, surely, this is an unreasonable love?”

I found this very challenging. I have often said that I have so much love to give that I find it impossible to hold it all – I simply have to give it away to anyone who crosses my path. I am sure I am not unusual in this for many Christians I know personally seem to me to reservoirs of God’s love – or at lease reservoirs of a God-given love.

So what is it that separates Gods love from the very best God-given love that we can offer the world. I think it’s that single word “unconditional”. We may speak all we like about our love for each other being unconditional but, despite all our protestations, it isn’t unconditional in the way God means unconditional. There is no way we can change by one iota Gods complete love for us. There is nothing we can ever do to separate ourselves from Gods love for even a nano second. There is nothing we can do to make Him love us, or anyone else, more or less than He loves us now. God’s love is everything spelt out for us in 1 Corinthians 13 – and then some !!

We, on the other hand, can only carry ‘unconditional’ love so far and no farther. We love our errant, drug filled, criminal child without reservation. We never stop loving them but we give up trying to change them. God doesn’t. We love our enemy to the extent that we will feed them, even at our own expense, we will water them, we will build them new homes and give them jobs, but even they can stretch our patience too far and we give up on them. God doesn’t. How easy it would be for us to volunteer our own lives for those we love and who love us. Yet how many of us would give our only son to do the job for us? Not just for us but for every man woman and child on earth – no matter how bad, how criminal, how defiled and despicable they seem to us. God did.

That is unconditional love. God loves us with an unreasonable love. It is completely beyond reason. Unconditional love is surely totally unreasonable.

Isn’t it?