Loving Like God: The Radical Grace of Agape
There’s a profound truth that should stop us in our tracks every single day: we are loved unconditionally by the Creator of the universe. Not because we earned it. Not because we deserve it. Not because we’re good enough, smart enough, or holy enough. We are loved simply because God chooses to love us.
Who are we to receive such love? Nobody special. Just broken, flawed, ordinary human beings stumbling through life making mistakes at every turn. Yet here we are, recipients of the most perfect love that exists—agape love.
The Scandalous Nature of God’s Love
Agape is scandalous in its generosity. It doesn’t wait for us to clean up our act or prove our worth. It doesn’t keep score or hold grudges. God’s agape love reaches toward the adulterer and the saint with equal intensity, toward the prisoner and the preacher with the same open arms. This love defies every human system of merit and reward we’ve ever known.
When we truly grasp this—really let it sink into our bones—it changes everything. If we, in all our unworthiness, are loved this completely, what does that mean for how we’re called to love others?
The Great Command, The Great Challenge
Jesus made it clear: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Not as they deserve. Not as they earn it. Not when they prove themselves worthy. As He has loved us—unconditionally, sacrificially, without reservation.
This is perhaps the most challenging command in all of Scripture because it goes against every instinct we have. Our natural tendency is to love those who love us back, to be kind to those who are kind to us, to extend grace to those who seem deserving of it. But agape love calls us to something far more radical.
Love Without Conditions, Love Without Limits
When we love with agape, we love the difficult coworker who takes credit for our ideas. We love the family member who has hurt us repeatedly. We love the neighbor whose political views make our blood boil. We love the stranger whose lifestyle we don’t understand. We love not because they’ve earned it, but because we have been loved by One who owed us nothing.
This doesn’t mean we become doormats or ignore harmful behavior. Agape love is not passive—it actively seeks the highest good for others, which sometimes means setting boundaries, speaking truth, or even walking away. But it does all of this without hatred, without the desire for revenge, without writing people off as beyond redemption.
The Transformation of Perspective
When we begin to love with agape, our entire perspective shifts. Instead of asking, “What has this person done for me?” we ask, “How can I reflect God’s love to them?” Instead of keeping a mental ledger of wrongs, we choose to see others through the lens of divine possibility—not as they are, but as they could become under the influence of unconditional love.
This transformation isn’t instantaneous or easy. It requires daily surrender, constant forgiveness (both given and received), and a willingness to be hurt. Because agape love is vulnerable love. It opens itself to rejection, misunderstanding, and pain. Just as God’s love for us cost Him everything.
The Ripple Effect of Radical Love
But here’s what happens when we dare to love this way: we become agents of transformation in a world desperate for grace. Our unconditional love becomes a mirror reflecting God’s love to others who may have never experienced it. We break cycles of hurt and bitterness. We offer hope to the hopeless and dignity to the forgotten.
Most remarkably, as we practice agape love, we begin to understand more deeply the love that has been lavished on us. Every time we choose to forgive the unforgivable or love the unlovable, we get a glimpse of the incredible grace that covers our own failures and shortcomings.
The Daily Choice
Loving with agape is not a feeling—it’s a choice we make moment by moment, day by day. It’s choosing to see the homeless person as God sees them. It’s choosing to respond with gentleness when someone is harsh with us. It’s choosing to pray for our enemies instead of plotting against them.
It’s remembering that we are nobody special—just recipients of outrageous grace—and allowing that humility to fuel our compassion for others who are also nobody special, also in desperate need of the same grace we’ve received.
The Revolution of Love
In a world that operates on transactions and conditions, agape love is revolutionary. It doesn’t make sense to the natural mind. It seems foolish, wasteful, even dangerous. But it’s also the only thing powerful enough to heal our broken world, one relationship at a time.
We love not because others deserve it, but because we have been loved beyond what we deserve. We extend grace not because it’s earned, but because grace has been extended to us. We offer forgiveness not because wrongs don’t matter, but because we know the freedom that comes from being forgiven.
This is our calling: to love as we have been loved. To be conduits of the very love that rescued us from our own unworthiness. To remind a hurting world that there is a love that asks nothing and gives everything—and that love has chosen to flow through us to others.
Who are we to be so loved? Nobody. Who are we to love others this way? Nobody. And that’s exactly the point.