Harvest Time TV Weblog

   As you said in your article, the question about whether God's love is conditional or not is, indeed, an extremely important one. It's important not only for "Seekers," but also for what seems to me to be an awful large number of Christians who mistakenly think that if they don't repent or obey that God won't love them.

"But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

   Actually, it seems to me that the reason we ought to repent is BECAUSE God loves us unconditionally, isn't it? Beginning with the book of Hosea in the Old Testament and throughout the writings of the prophets, we see the sometimes harsh warnings to repent precisely because God loved Israel with an "unconditional love."
   This may sound unusual, but I was finally able to understand this after hearing the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Even if you think that God doesn't love one nation more than any other, the fact that God has not forsaken Israel over the course of thousands of years is living proof that His love is, indeed, unconditional.
   You'd never hear, for example, a man say to a woman he cared nothing about something like, "If you return to me, if you repent, if you obey me, then I'll give you..." Likewise, if God didn't truly love us, He'd never attempt to compel us toward repentance at all.
   Since I haven't examined the whole Bible, I don't have proof of this, but it seems to me that when phrases like "if you return to Me,...", "if you repent,...", "if you obey Me,...", etc. are used, they always seem to be followed by a phrase like, "I will be your God and you will be my people." The idea seems to be that of an attempt to restore a relationship, maybe even like in the case of a marriage. There's just really no such thing as a "if you repent, I'll love you" type of conditional love anywhere in the Bible.
   I really began to understand this in terms of the problems related to Israel. Unfortunately, the reality is that when I get into conversations and start talking about how Israel is proof of God's love, most of the Christians I know start frowning at me. If you hear "God has cast away faithless Israel" preached from the pulpit often enough, it seems to me that it'd be difficult to believe that there's such a thing as the unconditional love of God at all.

   It looks to me like this reader really understands the perspective of the Old Testament and has put his finger on an important truth. I'm thankful for that.

   In last week's post, I made a reference to the Greek term for God's love, "agapé." The word in Hebrew that is closest in meaning is "chesed." This term is a reference to God's grace, faithfulness, and unchanging love based upon His covenant. This might sound a little complicated, but the idea behind "God's unconditional love" is actually God's "covenant-based love." The God of the Bible is a covenant-maker and He always and faithfully fulfills the terms of His covenants.

   Finally, last week at our monthly "Getsureikai" meetings in Tōkyō and Ōsaka, I preached a message entitled, "What Is Christianity?" With so much about the near future that we don't know (to say nothing about what it means to know one's own heart), I felt that it was appropriate that we review the basics of what we believe. I'd encourage any of you to get a copy of the tape and listen to it (Japanese-language only).

   That's it for this week. Leave any comments or questions below and have a great weekend. Shalom!


   Kenichi Nakagawa