God's Unconditional Agape Love-Seventh-day Adventist Church

In this message presented at the Chino Seventh-day Adventist Church we explore God’s unconditional, unchanging and self-sacrificing love for us.

ILL> We began with a humorous story about a retired seminary professor who found some kids putting their footprints in the wet concrete of a driveway he had just finished.

Last week we talked about the fruit of the Gospel otherwise known as the fruit of the Spirit. There is just one fruit of the Spirit and that is agape love. The Greek word for fruit is singular.

Those other eight characteristics that Paul mentions are just different practical manifestations of God’s love in our lives. The better our understanding of God’s love for us the more those precious fruits will be produced in us.

And so, where does our emphasis always need to be? It needs to be on staying focused on God’s agape love for us. That means that our roots need to go deep into this incredible love that God has for us.

Let’s begin today by looking at Paul’s prayer for the believers in Ephesus. That’s found in Ephesians 3: 14-19.

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians and for us is that we will be “rooted and grounded in love”. Paul’s prayer is that we will be able to comprehend something of the infinite expanse of the Lord’s love. Because to the extent that we know and appreciate that love we will be filled with that love.

The reason Paul prays that we will comprehend God’s love is because this is something that so many of us struggle with. One reason we struggle with this so much is because we all live in a world that does not operate on the basis of agape love.

God’s love is different from our human love in three primary ways. God’s love is unconditional, unchanging, and self-sacrificing.

Unconditional love is a very rare and precious thing. When this love is on display books are written about it and movies are made about it, because it’s like witnessing something from another planet.

ILL> In Earnest Gordon’s book “Miracle on the River Kwai” he tells a story that illustrates the power of selfless agape love. One soldier’s willingness to sacrifice his life for others changed the entire attitude of the rest of the camp of prisoners of war.

When the prisoners were finally liberated they didn’t want revenge; they said, “What we need now is forgiveness”.

1 John 4: 16 tells us that “God is love”. And so, any teaching that has to do with God has to be absolutely saturated and immersed in the love of God.

That’s the great litmus test for all biblical teaching. Is the love and grace and goodness of God being set forth as the central focus of everything? If not, then it’s falling short of being the truth of the Gospel.

Let’s do a quick review of the truth of the Gospel. Ephesians 1: 13. In (Jesus) you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,

What is the truth? The truth is the Good News message of the Gospel of our salvation. And how are we saved? We are saved by truthing in Jesus and believing in Him. When we do that we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.

What does it mean to be sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise? It means it’s going to be very difficult for the devil to get us to reject the Gospel when we’ve finally seen just how beautifully simple and simply beautiful it is. The Holy Spirit seals our minds against the enemy’s bad news lies and He seals our minds in the Good News truth of the Gospel.

And so, what we are doing here today is just, by God’s grace, trying to reinforce that seal. We are here to be more firmly rooted in God’s love for us. We are here to be more solidly grounded in the foundation of our faith. The foundation of our faith is God’s unconditional love for us. But understanding that love is something we all struggle with to one degree or another.

When King David thought about God’s love for Him it made him ask the question “Why?” In Psalm 8: 3-4 he says,

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, 4 What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?

God’s love doesn’t make any logical sense. Why does the Lord continue to do so much for us? The answer is because of His unconditional love. But that kind of love is hard for us to wrap our minds around.

Thinking of God’s love as being conditional is much easier for most people to believe. Because that’s exactly how everything else in our world works. But not God. He is completely different.

Let’s look at 2 Corinthians 3: 17-18.

Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

God isn’t a dictator; He’s a liberator. He’s a God of unconditional agape love. Our lives are transformed as we, by faith, behold the glory of God’s goodness. This is a growing experience.

Now, for the Apostle Paul, the stadium lights of God’s glory got turned on all at once on the Damascus Road. Paul was literally blinded by God’s glory.

But for most of us, it’s a much more gradual experience that happens over the course of many weeks, months, or years.

But whether it happens instantly or over the course of time, it’s the Lord’s desire that we all be standing in the bright sunshine of His unconditional love for us.

We don’t have to guess what would happen if people began to realize they are loved with an unconditional love. That’s what happened in the first century. And it turned the then-known world upside down.

But after the apostles were resting in their graves the very first thing the devil attacked in the Christian Church was our understanding of God’s love.

The reason the Christian Church was such a revolutionary movement in the first century is because the message they carried was such a revolutionary depiction of God.

A lot of the Greek gods were depicted as being more corrupt than the worst humans. The God that the Jews, by and large, believed in at the time, wasn’t anything like Jesus. That’s why they thought He was an imposter. They couldn’t imagine God being that kind, that gracious, that merciful, or that loving. But a careful study of the Old Testament shows us that that is exactly was God is like.

Today, many people still have a hard time imagining that God actually loves them unconditionally. That can’t imagine that the Lord has already provided them with everything that pertains to life and godliness. They can’t imagine that salvation truly is an unearned, undeserved gift that we simply accept by childlike faith. It all comes down to the fact that many people have a hard time believing that God could actually be that good.

If our universe wasn’t under the control of a God of unconditional agape love, none of us would even be here. God in His love created us. God in His love redeemed us. And God in His love is coming back to take us home.

Let’s look at another Scripture that established God’s unconditional love for us. 2 Corinthians 5: 19. …God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

This verse is powerful. First of all, it clears up all of this misunderstanding that portrays Jesus as coming to this world in order to try to change the Father’s mind about us. Nothing could be farther from the truth. God the Father was in Jesus, God the Son, reconciling the world back to Himself.

What does it mean to reconcile? It means “to restore to friendship and harmony”. That’s earth-shattering Good News right there! Call the papers. Alter the media. Let all the talking heads know. Inform all of the political talk shows. Let the whole world know that the Father was in Jesus reconciling the world to Himself.

Brothers and sisters, this should be the lead story on every newscast. This should be the headline of every newspaper. This should be the focus of every television program. It should be at the top of every radio broadcast. One day it will be. But right now it’s not. And why not? Because the Good News of the Gospel can’t be sold. You have to give it away for free because it’s so simple a little child can understand it. And yet, there is a depth and a richness to the Good News that engages the full capacity of our minds. 2 Corinthians 5: 19 says that “(God is) not imputing their trespasses to them…”

Galatians 3: 22 explains this.

The Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

And so, we are all in the same boat with the same problem. But we all have the same answer that is freely available to us all. The promise of salvation through Jesus to everyone who believes. The last part of 2 Corinthians 5: 19 says that God “has committed to us the word of reconciliation”.

The most precious message committed to this world has been entrusted to us. The message of God’s unconditional love and reconciliation for the entire planet. All we have to do to make that reconciliation our is to accept it and embrace it.

But we have to first believe this Good News ourselves before we can tell other people about it. That’s one reason we are here. We are here to help our unbelief.

We concluded the message with two illustrations that demonstrate the practical power that God’s unconditional love will have on us.

(This is a summary of the message shared at the Chino Seventh-day Adventist Church. If the message was a blessing to you please “like” and subscribe to our Youtube channel. If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact us. May the Lord richly bless you as you come to know Him and His Good News better.)