What exactly is unconditional love?
Unconditional love is love that keeps on loving someone even if they hurt them, reject them, disappoint them, anger them, or even betray them. It is love that loves someone even when that person doesn't seem to deserve that love at all, or be worthy of it in any way. Rob Bell once said, "Agape [God's love] doesn't need a reason." (I read this quoted in Feel by Matthew Elliott, whose book inspired this post, so I don't know the original source.)
Does that mean that unconditional love has no regard for who the beloved is as an individual? If I love you no matter what, does that mean that your personality and actions and character mean nothing to me? More importantly, if God loves us unconditionally, does that mean He loves us as general amorphous beings, not finding anything special or delightful in the individual aspects of our personality, character, body, emotions, mind, or so on? If God loves me without any reason at all, then I am totally and utterly worthless in reality and in His eyes, and His love would seem to be more of a duty - or a way to make Himself look good - than a genuine, heartfelt, sincere love. And if that were true (which I do not believe), life would be so incredibly empty. Can you imagine living your whole life for God and never once receiving sincere love from Him? Never once experiencing His delight in you as His beloved child?
And yet that is the logical conclusion of thinking that God's love does not respond to or delight in anything in us. Have you ever thought about how He created you wonderfully, taking the time to form you before you were born, making you specifically as an individual in precisely the way that pleased Him? Have you ever read Ephesians 1 and wondered at how often God's pleasure is referenced? He redeemed us because He loved us with a love that delights in us and longs to find even more pleasure in us as we learn to walk with Him in righteousness and returning love. He compares His relationship with us, His Church, to that of a husband and wife, and He gives us the Song of Solomon to show us what that kind of love ought to look like. This is passionate love, delighting in the beloved, treasuring every aspect of her even as she feels unworthy to be so valued and cherished.
That is the love with which God loves us. He made us, and even though we are tainted with sin, He loves us each individually for the specific qualities that define who we are - that He gave to us. To put it very simply, VeggieTales had it right when they said "God made you special, and He loves you very much." All the worth we have, all the reasons God has for loving us, are things He gave to us in the first place, but they are still a part of who we are as unique beings. I mean, He created us, after all! But He loves each and every one of us as He created us, regardless (and here is where the unconditional part begins to come in) of how we have squandered or despised or destroyed the person He made us to be. Yes, He loves everyone - but He loves each of us as an individual because of all the things that make us the individual that we are.
He delights in you, you know. All the little things about who you are - the way you laugh when you see a baby smile, maybe, or your desire to protect the people you care about, or your joy in nature - bring Him pleasure, and He loves you because of them. He created you with those things according to His purpose, for His joy. You are His great treasure, for whom He died and with whom He desires to spend all eternity! And no matter how far you fall, or how many mistakes you make, or how long you rebel, or how hard you have to struggle, He will never stop loving you.
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