“One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus,
“is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as
yourself.’ There is no commandment
greater than these.”” (Mark 12:28-31)
Love transforms the hearts of people to be more affectionate towards one another. Although we know this as much, we have conditional love. We love people to be more nice and kind towards themselves, but if they do not love us back, no matter how hard we try, our love towards them may fail or become weaker. The worst case scenario is we tend to forget and ignore each other to the point where we forget their existence. Loving others unconditionally is challenging, but we have to keep practicing it.
It was because of God’s unconditional love, He sent His only beloved Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to be sacrificed for our sins (John 3:16-17; 1 John 4:9-10). Although we do not have to literally sacrifice our lives to show our love for others like Jesus did, we can learn from God, even it takes long time.
Hence, the best practice for loving others unconditionally is probably loving others as ourselves. We love and value ourselves. If we treat others how we want to be treated but without having expectations of others treating us back, we are practicing unconditional love. This means we actually have to value others above ourselves (Philippians 2:3-4). Secondly, we have to listen more than we respond, even though this may require continual practices. Then, we can respond appropriately. For example, God is always there in heaven, waiting for us to come to Him in prayer through faith in Christ and do His will through the Holy Spirit’s leading. God always has wanted us to do His will in entire devotion, but the fact that God has given us free will to do anything we want is that true love cannot be coerced. God can do anything but the one thing He cannot do is coercive and forced love. God has the identity of true love, instead of just illustrating His unconditional love. As God has created us to be His image-bearers, we have to show His unconditional love toward every person we meet. Otherwise, it claims that we are not God’s children and do not know Him, as loving one another unconditionally is the perfect illustration of God’s dwelling in us (1 John 4:7-21). Jesus even has said that we ought to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6:27-36).
Meditate on 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 and Romans 13:8-10, and ask yourself these questions: “Am I illustrating
God’s unconditional love towards everyone I meet? If not, what do I have to do
and let go of, to show His unconditional love?”
