Over the years I’ve heard a number of religious personalities from different so called Christian religions say that God loves everyone, He loves people no matter what. The last time I heard that was very recently.
I understand that from the perspective of people who don’t like to obey anything except their own whims it must be cool to belong to that kind of religion. The ideology of “do whatever you feel like and God will love you anyway” makes things easier, doesn’t it?
The saying of "God loves everyone no matter what" can leads to two interpretations:
(1) God loves every christians, no matter what a christian had done, God will always love them. Although God's love is unconditional and he does provide forgiveness when christians repent their wrong doing and try their best to not doing wrong again, in the judgement day, the christians who having been repent but still continue to doing wrong will still ends up in hell. Although God loves every christians no matter what a christian had done, but christians is not encourage to keep doing whatever wrong doing they like to do, because they will still ends up in hell. Going to hell is a punishment set up by God, or is not a punishment set up by God but instead a natural consequences if a christian fail to live according to the true interpretation of God's rules, out of those thousands of interpretations of God's rules available from thousands of christianity's denominations.
(2) God loves every christians, no matter what a christian had done, God will always love them. Once a person becomes a christian, God will provide unlimited forgivesness to them and they can always doing whatever wrong doing they like to do but not be ends up in hell, because the only requirements to not be ends up in hell is to becomes a christian, aka a person who accept christ as their saviour.
If a christian says "God loves everyone no matter what", it does not necessarily means that they must be encouraging every christians to do whatever wrong doing every christians like to do, instead the hidden message might be: God loves every christians no matter what they had done, but a christian will still ends up in hell if they fail to live according to the true interpretation of God's rules, out of those thousands of interpretations of God's rules available from thousands of christianity's denominations.
But from a Christian perspective, it doesn’t make any sense. Christians base their belief in the Bible, and the Bible contains a number of laws and principles that God himself requires people to follow. If it wasn’t important how people behave, He wouldn’t have bothered in the first place.
Does it matter whether it makes sense or not? Many christianity's denominations just cherry pick the Bible's laws and principles they wish to follow, what about the remainings rules? They might say this rule and that rule have been fulfilled, so convenient, yet saying God's words and morals is unchanging.
So, for example, does a person who is violent towards others, a person who steals or someone who commits adultery deserve to be loved by God? If they are not obeying God’s commands, then they don’t care about Him, so why would he care about them?
He cares about them because he loves them, he loves them maybe because it's a natural reaction.
Like if John loves his daugther and cares about her, although he is sad that his daughter don't obey his commands, he still love her anyway because she is his child and he thinks it's his responsibility to love her. Not saying that every parents must also behaves like John, it depends on individual.
Have you ever have the experience that the person you love is bad, very bad like a garbage, they're so bad until you think they're not deserve to be love by you, but you still cannot stop loving them, you cannot control love or don't love them, you will always forgive them, you eagerly try to help them to be a better person, you will never give up on them, you even will die for them if that means they will move by your act and becomes a better person? It's happens everyday, all over the world in many people's life.
One can talk about forgiveness, which is mentioned frequently in the Bible, but forgiveness applies when people repent and stop doing whatever they were doing wrong. If someone acts against God’s principles, apologizes and then goes back to doing the same thing, would it make any sense for God to overlook their behavior and just love them anyway?
According to what I’ve learned in the Bible, I don’t think so.
You don't know love.
