It’s a balancing act to be a godly leader in our culture. How can you adhere to a God-given standard, and spiritual practices, and yet at the same time be accepting of many of the philosophical and social norms that are pushed outside of faith? Many characteristics are mutually respected—honesty, integrity, determination, wisdom, kindness. There’s little argument on these.
But what happens when you push up against divisive issues, like gender theory, or antisemitism, or vaccine mandates? No matter the area of disagreement, there is likely a faction of people in the leader’s sphere of influence who, knowing his faith-centered background, may insist he follow a policy of God-driven unconditional love. That is, by some people’s definition, tolerance of any decision and lifestyle, regardless of its core truths or beliefs, in order to imitate the “unconditional love” of God Himself.
But there’s a fallacy in this. Because though God is love and God does love, by no means is His love unconditional. Rather, love is God’s nature, and God loves for His own glory and purposes. If God’s love were unconditional, He would never have kicked man out of the Garden of Eden when he sinned. If God’s love were unconditional, He would never have given man the Ten Commandments as a standard which He could not attain. Though we would like to believe that God loves unconditionally, we need only read the Bible to discover God’s character does not conform itself to our culture and ways. Rather, God demands we confirm to His. When we read about God’s traits in the Bible, we find:
God is love. This is tremendous and positive spiritual truth for every leader. 1 John 4:7-12 is a wonderful reminder of God’s love: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” In this we read that God’s love is complete, and love is God’s very nature. God not only wants us to know His love, but He wants us also to love one another. And to the Christ-follower God grants us the ability to love in the same manner He does. Astounding!
A loving God is Someone we all want. Because we believe in a certain purity when it comes to love, we view a phrase like “God is love” as nonthreatening and aspirational. Of course, we will desire to be loving toward others if God is directing His love toward us. And we’ll also lump in all of the other squishy emotions in with this definition of love, like kindness, tolerance, gratitude, happiness, satisfaction, pride, joy… It's easy to accept that God is love, because there is no downside for us. A loving God accepts us, values us, made us, likes us just the way we are.
Love in our language is so loosely defined. We can love our mother. We can love ice cream. We can love the poor and hurting of the world. We can love the New York Yankees. All of these use different levels and facets of emotion to define the word “love”. But in doing this, we might miss a key element of God’s love, which is sacrifice.
Jesus teaches, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). If we love as God loves, we must do so at the cost of our very lives. 1 John 4 also reminds us that Jesus did not come and die for us out of our love for God, but rather because God loved us. Jesus’ actions were not the result of a mutual love-fest. God’s love came to us at great cost. And if we accept that God is love, then we should dig deeper and discover other important aspects of His character.
God is just. Why did God show sacrificial love through Christ? Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God’s demonstration of love was because we are sinners. God has not changed from the Old Testament until now. As we can know God is love, we must also know that He is just. That is, God is good, in fact the very definition of goodness. He hates evil, and He punishes severely anyone who sins, even once. Deuteronomy 32:4 describes God as “a God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is He.” Later in Psalm 33:5 we read that “He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.”
Because God is just, He is intolerant of sin. He demands it be punished. He separates Himself from sin because God is holy. Holiness means to be set apart for a divine purpose. So God sets Himself apart from sin and from sinners. You may have heard the old church phrase “God hates the sin, but loves the sinner.” Is this true? This is where we find some uncomfortable Bible teaching that we need to fully absorb.[1]
Psalm 5:4-6 says, “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.” That doesn’t sound like God loves sinners. Reading further, Psalm 11:5-7 says, “The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. Let him rain coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup. For the Lord is righteous; He loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold His face.” Ouch! Notice God is hating both the sin, and the man who sins. He doesn’t destroy the sin, but He does destroy the evildoers who commit the sins. So God hates sin. And God hates sinners.
At the same time, the psalmist reminds us “the upright shall behold His face” because “He loves righteous deeds.” Not only is God’s love not unconditional, both His love and His justice are based on our actions. God sets an impossibly high standard for righteousness. God also clearly punishes those who are wicked, evildoers, liars, or violent. If we simply claim God approves of us because He “loves unconditionally”, then we don’t know God very well at all.
God is unfair. God is not pursuing “fairness”, in the way we might define it. Fairness is being under judgement that is free from discrimination. We want the people and leaders around us to be fair, and consider fairness a moral goal that we strive for. But what would happen if God were fair? In that case, we would all be dead, because we are all wicked. When God looked at the world in Genesis 6:5 He described man’s condition: “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” If God is pure good and won’t stand for a hint of evil, and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), then in fairness, we all die.
Thank heavens that God is unfair! In Jesus on the cross we see both God’s great love and His justice. Does God love mankind? Yes, look at the cross. Does God hate sin and punishes injustice? Yes, look at the cross. God’s love and wrath are both displayed in the death of Christ for the sins of man. This wasn’t fair to Jesus—He didn’t do anything wrong. In Christ we see the depths of God’s love for us. It is sacrificial, and wholehearted, purposeful and costly. But it certainly was not unconditional or fair. God’s justice too is perfect and deserved. Yet we cannot read Scripture and look at the sacrifice of Christ and call God tolerant (of sin).
Accepting all that God is. The theological difficulty in Christ-centered leadership is that one cannot accept one facet of God’s character as valid, without looking at all that we know of God and believing in the fullness of Who He is. And we cannot define for ourselves what an element of God’s Person looks like—be it love, or wrath, or jealousy, or anger, or patience. The Bible teaches us that God is all of these things.
The best answer to the statement, “God loves us unconditionally” is to ask, “Then why does God punish sin?” The concept of unconditional love runs up against the justice and wrath of God against that which He hates. But it also opens the door to understand the grace of God, which gives forgiveness of sin, the punishment for our wrongs having been paid by Christ Himself. We can look at the cross to have a fuller understanding of God, Who hates sin and abhors sinners. But oh, what a love He has shown us!
[1] https://damonjgray.medium.com/god-hates-sinners-really-49abd4ee37ad
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Jesus and His disciples traveled and ministered together, day and night, for three years. We don’t know of all the meals they had together, the conversations as the walked from town to town, or what Jesus said when they fished, and started campfires, and woke up in the mornings.