D. A. Carson (1946–) on God’s Provisional and Conditional Love Toward His Own People

It is all too common to hear Christians talking about the unconditional love of God (which Carson touches on as well), but there is very little mention of God’s conditional love. On that note, here is some good material by Carson on the subject:

2.5 God’s Provisional or Conditional Love Toward His Own People

God’s love is sometimes said to be directed toward his own people in a provisional or conditional way—conditional, that is, on their obedience. Already in the Decalogue, God declares himself to be the one who shows his love “to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Ex. 20:6). “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him…. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him…. But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him … with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts” (Ps. 103:11, 13, 17–18, italics added). In the New Testament, Jesus declares, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love” (John 15:10). Similarly, Jude exhorts his readers, “Keep yourselves in God’s love” (Jude 21), making it clear that it is possible not to remain in God’s love.

These sorts of passages presuppose that there is already a relationship between God and his people. Such passages do not depict how we become Christians or the like; they insist, rather, that the believer’s relationship with God must be maintained by obedience, and there is threat of falling out of God’s love and into his judgment if we disobey—in exactly the same way that my children may fall out of my love (in one sense) and under my discipline if without good cause they do not return with the car when they have promised to do so. Of course, that is not the only way in which I will speak of loving my children. In some contexts, I am able to speak of loving my children regardless of what they do. Nevertheless, there is this familial structure of obligation, this covenantal structure, that makes it possible to speak of my love for them being conditioned on their obedience. Similarly for God’s love.

D. A. Carson, “How Can We Reconcile the Love and the Transcendent Sovereignty of God?,” in God Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 285–86.