The question is phrased in various ways like: What must I do to be saved? Why is there evil in the world? What about hell? Why did Jesus have to die? What is acceptable worship? What does God want from me? What is my purpose in life? Am I gifted enough? What is my ministry? How can God love me if there is so much misery in the world?

 

We could go on and on, but you know the questions. You’ve asked them, and maybe you’ve sought answers in churches, from theologians, and in prayer. Churches tend to respond in the affirmative, yet they often negate the answer with one little word. “But.”

 

God loves you, but you must stop sinning. God loves you, but you must speak in tongues. God loves you, but you must be baptized. God loves you, but you must go out and change the world. God loves you, but you must acknowledge the creeds. God loves you, but if you don’t do all of the right things in all of the right ways, then God will make sure something really bad happens to you—either now or in the hereafter.

 

Oddly enough, this message is habitually packaged as “good news.” On closer inspection it looks a lot more like bribery or a commercial transaction. Imagine a mother instructing her child, “I’ll hug you but only if you obey me perfectly.” Would anyone call that love? Picture a father telling his child, “I love you, but if you don’t do exactly what I say all of the time I’ll beat you senseless.” Wouldn’t we call that abuse? If someone solicited another, “I’ll love you but only if you pay me upfront,” we all know what that is called.

 

Here’s the point. God’s love for you, me, and humanity is not about what any of us has done, might do, or might not do. God’s love is unconditional. In fact, to say that agape love is unconditional is repetitive. Agape love, for it to be agape love, must be unconditional. Agape love, the love God has for you, has nothing to do with any allurement or enticement you have. God’s agape arises from the heart of God because, as the apostle John wrote, God is love.

 

This is Agapetheism. God is love, and this love covers a multitude of sins. Let me ask you a question: Are you more powerful than God? Of course not. I’ve never met anyone who has asserted such a thing. No one is bigger, stronger, or wiser than God. In fact, some theologies going back to Anselm suggest that this is what makes God “God.”

 

Now, I’d like to rephrase that question. Are you ready? Here we go: Do you have the capacity to “outsin” the love of God? In other words, is your sin (however you choose to define is) greater than God’s ability to forgive it, cover it, and wash it away?

 

Those two questions are the same thing. One message I’ve learned about grace from all Christian traditions is that it is God’s unmerited favor. That’s why we can thank God that our beliefs about our sin do not influence God’s action of forgiving our sin. If salvation by grace demands our right thinking, then grace has ceased being grace.

 

We’ve all felt that we’ve been too bad, done too much wrong, and hurt too many people. Our sin, we’ve dared to suppose, is too much for God to handle. Allegedly, our thoughts and actions have so affronted an eternally holy God that he can’t even look upon us. We’ve tended to believe that we have merited irresistible retribution because the wages of sin is death.

 

True. The wages of sin may be death, but Romans 6:23 goes on to assure us that the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The gift of God is just that: it’s a gift. Unmerited. Not earned. Not bought. Not deserved. It is given by God to us, and nothing can separate us from the love of God—as the apostle Paul wrote. That sounds like a promise to me, and God cannot lie.

 

If you need confirmation of God’s love for you, look no further than the cross. That’s what Paul did. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us… For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life” (Romans 5:6-10).

 

Look at how broad Paul’s categories are. Christ died at the right time for ungodly unrighteous sinners who were God’s enemies. Who does that leave out? (I understand there is a context to this statement. More on that in a moment.) According to Paul, Christ’s death reconciles ungodly unrighteous sinning enemies of God. Beyond that, Christ’s life—that is resurrection life—saves ungodly unrighteous sinning enemies of God.

 

Yes—someone might protest—but mustn’t the ungodly unrighteous sinning enemies respond. Don’t they have to do something to access this gift, to obtain this love, to take this grace for themselves? (There is that “but” again.) Grace might be a gift, but if I don’t take it, then it’s not really mine, right?

 

No. That’s not right. The gift is still yours because God has given it to you. It is yours. True, you may not enjoy it nor thrive in it if you don’t accept it. But it is still yours because the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable—to quote Paul again.

 

Speaking of Paul, he described himself as a “blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.” Yet he believed that he received mercy because he acted “in unbelief.” How incredible! God granted mercy to an unbeliever to the extent that “the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” God’s unmerited favor and unbought love abounded in a violent blasphemer. Yet even in all of this, Paul could say, “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost” (1Timothy 1:12-15).

 

No wonder Paul could write that Christ dies and lives to reconcile and save the worst of us. Speaking from his own experience, Paul saw himself as the most severe case. Paul’s point: If God could love Paul, who could God not love? If God saved Paul, who would God leave behind?

 

But what about the context. (Here we go with “buts” again). Wasn’t Paul writing only to a first-century audience? Didn’t Paul have something else in mind that was limited to his time and place? Yes—and no.

 

Paul—like all of us—lived and worked in a specific setting. In Paul’s case, it was during the transformation of the ages, the transition from glory to glory (2Corinthians 3). Paul, living with one foot in the “old adamic age” and one foot in the “Last Adam” eagerly anticipated the dying of the old man and the rising of the new (Ephesians 4). The Last Adam was not subject to death. Again, Paul put it like this, “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:9-11).

 

Christ, the Last Adam, died once for all and lives to God on behalf of all. Therefore, we can consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. Alive, in love, having been given the gift of God, the gift of love, having been fashioned in the image of God.

 

But that’s crazy talk (once again with the buts.) Perhaps it is. “For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (2Corinthians 12:13-15).

 

The death and life (yes, in that order) transformed worlds and changed the ages The old world of sin and death has been removed, and a New Heaven and New Earth remain, never to pass away, all things have become new thanks to the work of God in and through Christ. In the old world sin and its death reigned, and all in that world were dead because that world determined them. But that world has been surpassed by the exceeding glory of the New World. “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (Romans 11:32).

 

Today, we live in a new cosmic order. The mortal has put on immortality. Death has been swallowed up in victory. “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1Corinthians 15:54-56; Romans 8:2).

 

So, does God love you? Yes with no buts. This is the good news without a catch. This is the confidence we have in living in light of God’s promise to Abraham fulfilled through Christ (Romans 15:8-9). All families of the earth, Jew and Gentile alike, are blessed. That’s why we all can rejoice together, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen” (Romans 11:36).