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Is God's Love Conditional?
Announcer: We'd like to introduce to you our host for that for That’s in the Bible Live, Brother Richie Juatco!
Brother Richie: Hello Seattle! How’s everyone? How’s everyone today? Welcome to That’s in the Bible Live. We're actually live here on location in beautiful Seattle, Washington. And we're here at the INC Media Experience event or INCMX.
For those that don't know what
That's in the Bible is, it's a program where we take questions from people all around the world, wondering what is in the Bible and how it applies to our lives. Now, prior to this event, we actually sent out a camera crew to your beautiful city to find out if there was anyone in the city that had any questions that they've been wondering for some time. And they were hoping that they could find an answer from the Bible. So first of all, we would like to thank all those that asked questions to our camera crew, even those that reached out to us via email. But we wouldn't especially like to thank Robert, Mark and Tyswanekwa, because the questions that they asked, we're going to feature on our show today.
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Topic: Following The Rules Set By A Church
Robert Nichols
Bothell, Washington
Topic: Spiritual vs. Religious
Mark Sokup
Topic: Conditions On Who To Love
Tyswanekwa Crosby
Federal Way, Washington
Brother Richie: Now these are the questions that they asked. Robert, the topic of his question was following the set rules by a church. So he wanted to know did he have to follow those rules. Mark asked about spiritual versus religious, there might be some of us that have heard that or someone wondering the difference between that; and Tyswanekwa, she asked conditions on who to love. She wanted to know if there was anything in the Bible that made her have to love someone a certain way.
We're going to use those three questions, to answer an overarching question, which is: Is God's love unconditional? And we hear that all the time, right? We hear that “God's love is unconditional. No matter how you choose to live your life, He’s going to love you just the same.” And it's so nice to hear, it makes you feel good. But we want to know: what's in the Bible? Is that according to the Bible?
What is a “condition”?
So what we're going to do is we're going to find that out. But before that, let's find out what “condition” is. What's the definition of “condition” [and let’s find out if God has any for His love]. So [a condition] is something that must exist before something else can happen. Another word to say that is a “prerequisite” or a “requirement” or “rule” or “restriction.” So does God not have [conditions]? We’ll find out. Let's go to Tyswanekwa’s question first. We can actually hear it from her:
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So even when I was at my grandma’s church yesterday, they made this statement that God did not make man and man to be together, woman and woman to be together. But I believe God [doesn’t] make mistakes...It’s almost like you make Him less comforting, less inviting. So I’m grateful that I’ve decided to have my own relationship outside of church...but I don’t agree with making them feel bad...Where in the Bible does it tell us to be conditional lovers? Where does it tell us to only love someone “this” way or if they are like “this”?