Is God's love conditional or unconditional?

God’s love, as described in the Bible, is clearly unconditional in that His love is expressed toward the objects of His love (i.e., His people) despite their disposition toward Him. In other words, God loves because it His nature to love (1 John 4:8), and that love moves Him toward benevolent action. The unconditional nature of God’s love is most clearly seen in the gospel. The gospel message is basically a story of divine rescue. As God considers the plight of His rebellious people, He determines to save them from their sin, and this determination is based on His love (Ephesians 1:4-5). Listen to the Apostle Paul’s words from His letter to the Romans:


“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die” (Romans 5:6-8).

Reading through the book of Romans we learn that humanity is alienated from God due to our sin. We are at enmity with God and His wrath is being revealed against the ungodly for their unrighteousness (Romans 1:18-20). We reject God and God gives us over to our sin. We also learn that we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23) and that none of us seeks God, none of us does what is right before His eyes (Romans 3:10-18).

Yet despite this hostility and enmity we have toward God (for which God would be perfectly within His rights to utterly destroy us), God reveals His love toward us in the giving of His Son, Jesus Christ, as the propitiation (i.e., an appeasement of God’s righteous wrath) for our sins. God did not wait for us to get our collective acts together as a condition of atoning for our sin. Rather, God condescended to become a man and live amongst His people (John 1:14). God experienced our humanity—everything it means to be a human being—and then offered Himself willingly as a substitutionary atonement for our sin.

This divine rescue mission results in a gracious act of self-sacrifice. As Jesus says in John’s gospel: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). That is precisely what God, in Christ, has done. The unconditional nature of God’s love is made clear in two more passages from Scripture that further highlight the unconditional nature of God’s love:

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5).

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:9-10).

It is important to note that God’s love is a love that initiates; it is never a response. That is precisely what makes it unconditional. If God’s love were conditional, then we would have to do something to earn or merit it. We would have to somehow appease His wrath and cleanse ourselves of our sin before God would be able to love us. But that is not the biblical message. The biblical message—the gospel—is that God, motivated by love, moved unconditionally to save His people from their sin.