The wicked are hated by God (Psalm 11:5). “Vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus,” says the Lord Jesus, when He returns.As a punishment, they shall experience eternal destruction (2 Thessalonians 1:8,9). We should be afraid of God’s judgment rather than at ease by the idea of God’s love if we do not know God and do not obey him.
God is love
Therefore, in the sense that everyone will go to paradise, God [does not love] everyone without condition. Love is God. Furthermore, He cares about our identities and actions because He is love. He detests evil because He is love. God’s love for the good must result in His judgment of the evil; else, it is meaningless.
However, there are a few instances where God’s love is unwavering. According to Luke 6:35, God “is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” According to 1 Timothy 2:4, he “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” We discover that God has loved us with a unique, unconditional sort of love when we become believers. Because Christ died for us “while we were still sinners,” His love for us is based on who God is, not anything we have done (Romans 5:9).
Abide in His love
However, speaking about God’s unwavering love can go awry even for Christians. “Abide in my love,” says Jesus to us (John 15:9). We are able to move past God and into God. Our obedience is a condition of God’s love for us. Jesus states that loving Him and abiding by His commands are the two requirements for receiving God’s love, and they are actually the same (John 14:21). Therefore, we shouldn’t live our lives believing that “God loves us and everything will work out no matter what I do.” That is an incorrect interpretation of God’s love.
It starts with God
It all starts with the love of God. He has loved us with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3). Our security is not in what we do, but in His promises. “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). But our answer to God’s love matters. God’s love is wonderful, eternal, overwhelming, deeper than we can imagine and it is for us if – note the conditions! – we trust Jesus as our Savior, if we love Him, if we obey His commands, if we devote ourselves “to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42).
