Does God deserve our love? I ask the question following a debate Helen and I had in the car on the way to our Sunday morning meeting with church yesterday. We had a worship CD on – I forget which one, they all sound similar these days – and one song had the line ‘You deserve our love’ in it.

Does he? He certainly deserves our praise, our gratitude, our time, our attention, our all – but our love? We do love him, of course, and with a passion. But does who he is and what he has done and continues to do make him deserving of our love?

Unconditional love
It’s the word ‘deserve’ that I have a problem with, of course. My point is that there should be no link between loving someone – especially God – and them having done anything to deserve that love. If we have learned to love God having first experienced his love of us, then there should be no link whatsoever between the two for we know that God’s love is unconditional; it isn’t linked with anything we’ve done to deserve it. And that’s how we should love him in return.

So … if we have the concept in our heart of God deserving our love, have we misunderstood what God’s love is all about?

Any thoughts?