What is Divine or Unconditional Love?

I would like to offer my personal definition of divine or unconditional love. I am no relationship expert. I do have experience with various relationships in my life. The idea of divine or unconditional love is broad and is not isolated to just a marital relationship. I hope that by offering some insight and wisdom I will help others appreciate and apply unconditional love to their relationships; as I strive to do the same.

I use divine interchangeably with unconditional because according to 1 John 4:8, God is love. God is divine. Also, God loves unconditionally; according to Romans 2: 11 He does not show favoritism despite our sinful nature. This is why I use those words interchangeably. When I consider what divine or unconditional love means, I look to God's character. I look at Jesus Christ's examples of how he treated people. So, unconditional love is loving beyond common or human comprehension. Sometimes we are not supposed to understand why we love or should care. We just should. Jesus Christ taught the disciples on a number of occasions to care and love unconditionally despite what they were originally taught. We often respond to people based on what we were taught or even what we may have experienced. Then we try to rationalize with our finite minds on why we cannot love unconditionally. We try to be the intellectual or superior one who believes they ought to understand everything. However, to live this life without major stress and mental breakdowns, it is better to embrace unconditional love without trying to make it make sense.

I have been hurt by people. I have had to deal with my own hate and demons. I have had to overcome a lot of emotions where I had so many conditions on loving someone. Then I experienced some breaking points in my life that helped me learn more about unconditional love. One of those breaking points was when our daughter was stillborn at 38.5 weeks in 2013. Some may wonder how was that a breaking point to learn about unconditional love. It was the breaking point to love myself unconditionally. I was that child with low self-esteem issues. I was that teenager who often felt out of place. I was that young adult who did not know much about how to love myself unconditionally. I had deep roots in guilt, shame, and more. When our daughter was stillborn, all those emotions came back. I had moments where I felt like the little girl who was embarrassed about her dark skin color. I had other moments where I felt ashamed like I did when I had to hide the fact I was sexually active at a young age. Then by 2018, I learned how to love myself unconditionally. My other breaking point was in 2018 when I was forced to look myself in the mirror; God forced me when I decided to dig deep into the Word of God. I actually took some seminary classes and discovered the true character of God. I cried so much that year but it was the renewal and release that I needed because I needed to learn how to love unconditionally. Divine Love!

We are required to hate sin. Hate is a strong word. However, hate seems to meet up with repentance. Because once you hate something, you often change direction in order to avoid that which you hate. That's repentance. You change direction; you turn from sin to God. Hate is not supposed to be negative if it's applied correctly. I had to hate the low self-esteem in order to turn to positive self-confidence. I had to hate fornication in order to turn to appreciate how sacred sexuality was. I had to understand the purposes of hate in order to love unconditionally. I was fighting (or hating) against flesh when the real fight is against demonic principalities. So even in relationships, e.g. friends, marriage, co-worker, etc., you can love unconditionally with treating the other person respectfully and with genuine care while hating the sin -- which you should be fighting against by praying for that stronghold of sin to break off that person. Showing unconditional love is more than saying, "I love you despite of...". You show it by respecting the person, hugging them, sit and talk with them, feed them if they're hungry, cloth them if they're naked, genuinely smile at them, and more. And as you are doing that, you pray for them because that is one of the strongest weapons we have against demonic principalities.

Divine love -- unconditional love! It is possible to practice this daily. I say daily because I still mess up and find myself not loving unconditionally. Then I remember that each day is new grace and new mercy which allows me the opportunity to show divine love once again! And so can you!

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*Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

Question: How do you show unconditional love? How are you working to love unconditionally? Post your comment below.