Is God Loving or Demanding

I’ve grown up in a Christian family surrounded by God’s word and fellow believers. I have always heard that God is love. I have never once though of God as demanding and unfair. I guess when one understands that we belong to God, He has the right to set rules. If you look at the Garden of Eden, it talks about God walking with them in the cool of the evening. However, as the hearts of people change, they change the image of God to match what they want and not what God’s word reveals. I believe that God’s Spirit lives within us and the deeper our walk with God, the sharper our conscience is. Those that desire to walk in the ways of the world still have a deep desire to know God, but due to the hardness of their hearts, their understanding is numb. As a way of justifying not needing to follow God, I heard someone recently speaking of how demanding and unfair God was. Their reasoning? If God was love, how could He put an ultimatum on our relationship. This comes from the concept that all who don’t walk with God will be eternally condemned. The claim was that God has conditional love and demands full allegiance or He will condemn us to Hell. They went on to say how can it be a relationship when God is threatening punishment if we don’t do what He wants. It is an interesting concept, but it forgets one very important fact... because of sin (starting with Adam and Eve), we already are headed to hell. The wages of sin is death and we are already guilty. God is not telling us to love Him or else. He is throwing a lifeline. He knows we are already drowning in sin and tells us if we come to Him, we will be saved. That paints a whole different picture. If someone is in a building that is fully engulfed and they are on the second or third story with no stairway available to escape on, they cannot save themselves. Now imagine that the fire department puts a ladder up to the window and calls for that individual to come to them so that they can be saved. Would we say the firemen are being unreasonable or putting an ultimatum on their life? No! A person would have to be foolish not to accept the firemen help. It is not ultimatum, it is God offering to save us. Father, too often we don’t see the dire consequence or our worldly. Rescue us from our own selfish desires and draw us nearer to You. Amen