Elder D. Todd Christofferson said in “Abide in My Love’: “The Bible tells us that “God is love.”[i below] He is the perfect embodiment of love, and we rely heavily on the constancy and universal reach of that love. As President Thomas S. Monson has expressed: “God’s love is there for you whether or not you feel you deserve love. It is simply always there”[ii].
(Note: Scripture references in blue can be accessed by clicking on the Roman Numerals, but you will need to scroll down until you reach the highlighted verse or verses.)
There are many ways to describe and speak of divine love. One of the terms we hear often today is that God’s love is “unconditional.” While in one sense that is true, the descriptor unconditional appears nowhere in scripture. Rather, His love is described in scripture as “great and wonderful love,”[iii] “perfect love,”[iv] “redeeming love,” [v] and “everlasting love”[vi]. These are better terms because the word unconditional can convey mistaken impressions about divine love, such as, God tolerates and excuses anything we do because His love is unconditional, or God makes no demands upon us because His love is unconditional, or all are saved in the heavenly kingdom of God because His love is unconditional. God’s love is infinite and it will endure forever, but what it means for each of us depends on how we respond to His love.
Jesus said: “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love”[vii].
To “continue in” or “abide in” the Savior’s love means to receive His grace and be perfected by it [viii]. To receive His grace, we must have faith in Jesus Christ and keep His commandments, including repenting of our sins, being baptized for the remission of sins, receiving the Holy Ghost, and continuing in the path of obedience[ix]. God will always love us, but He cannot save us in our sins[x].
“And thus mercy can satisfy the demands of justice, and encircles them in the arms of safety, while he that exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed to the whole law of the demands of justice; therefore only unto him that has faith unto repentance is brought about the great and eternal plan of redemption”[xi].
Repentance, then, is His gift to us, purchased at a very dear price.
…. Beyond rendering the penitent person guiltless and spotless with the promise of being “lifted up at the last day”,[xii] there is a second vital aspect of abiding in the love of God. Abiding in His love will enable us to realize our full potential, to become even as He is[xiii]. As President Dieter F. Uchtdorf stated: “The grace of God does not merely restore us to our previous innocent state. … His aim is much higher: He wants His sons and daughters to become like Him”[ixv].
To abide in God’s love in this sense means to submit fully to His will. It means to accept His correction when needed, “for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth”[xv]. It means to love and serve one another as Jesus has loved and served us[xvi]. It means to learn “to abide the law of a celestial kingdom” so that we can “abide a celestial glory”[xvii]. For Him to be able to make of us what we can become, our Heavenly Father pleads with us to yield “to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and [put] off the natural man and [become] a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and [become] as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father”[xviii].
Elder Dallin H. Oaks observed: “The Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts—what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts—what we have become”[ixx].
Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve, spoke on the October 2016, Saturday afternoon session of General conference, a talk titled ‘Abide in My Love’
Note: [i] 1 John 4:8. Glorious and reassuring as the love of Jesus Christ is, it is not His only attribute. His “character, perfections, and attributes” (Lectures on Faith [1985], 38) also include justice, truth, and invariableness; He is the same God yesterday, today, and forever (see Lectures on Faith, 41). Without these and the other traits and qualities that He possesses to absolute perfection, He would not be God.
