If God's Love is
Unconditional, Then...
By John Gavazzoni

If God's love is unconditional, then all the promises of God are also. As God loves unconditionally, so He promises unconditionally. Conditionalism belongs to the administration/economy of the law. Under that administration God's promises of blessing were conditioned upon obedience. As an aside, do we really believe re: any and all instances of the if-thou-shalt-I-will arrangement within the law paradigm, that God didn't know in advance that Israel would not live up to its part of the arrangement? The law has to do with proving that whatever demands are externally-imposed upon a person (e.g. the law given by Moses) will expose that person's inability to perform what is required.

Harry Robert Fox labeled that arrangement a bilateral covenant, i.e., man is required bilaterally to come up with his side of the bargain, whereas, in stark contrast, the new covenant/arrangement is a unilateral one: unilateral, as in, "I (Jesus) and the Father are one." The new covenant was set in motion by the agreement within Godness alone. No other outside opinion, vote or contribution has a place...NONE. The Son agreeing with the Father (the Son's agreement drawn forth by the power Father's love) is the very constitution of the new covenant, which covenant existed before the law was given, continued as a hidden thread throughout the time of the law's imposition, and on into the ages of the ages, and the age of the ages.

The law was interposed or interjected as a presence of contrariety, of opposition, even enmity, toward the essential posture of God toward man. That contrariety inevitably serves to highlight by contrast, the glory of God's grace. When man is induced, through any externally-imposed moral and/or ethical requirement, to attempt to perform in a way pleasing to God, his autonomous impotence is exposed. The experience of failure is necessary to the existential realization of being those who "always triumph in Christ Jesus."

It has not escaped my observation that whenever God has granted me any victory, any triumph, any success, it has followed failure that cast me upon his grace. There can be no deep experience of grace without failure, and it is not unlike God to set us up for even the most egregious, abysmal, failure in order to prove Himself to be the God of mercy and grace to us. With those presuming to be reckoned righteous by God on the basis of their performance, their failure lies in believing such a fundamental deceit.

I believe we can be sure that even with such examples of sterling character like Enoch, Daniel, Joseph, Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego, that if we could sit with each of them, and hear their story, they would share with us what the biblical text does not get into: that they were prepared for their courageous, exemplary acts of obedience to God by some previous experience when their own vanity was exposed. Scripture does not inform us of that doubtless part of their full experience, for their story is meant to be a type of the believer's ultimate victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil.

I know I have alluded many times in my writings and preaching, that "where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound," that is, it super-abounds, but it's such an important principle that I won't apologize for reminding my fellow believers over and over again of that truth, alongside, "for those who are forgiven little, love little," with the converse: those who are forgiven much, love much. A conscience filled with a sense of guilt, of being the object of God's angry disapproval, becomes the most terrible prison from which Jesus came to set us free: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed me to...."announce freedom for prisoners..." (CEV). After a period, even after the Lord had called me to Himself, I found myself in such a solitary confinement. He came, spoke freedom to me, my shackles fell off, the prison door opened, and I walked out free. It's hard to tell someone what the following stanza of a hymn meant to me after that experience: