Roadblocks to Trusting the Unconditional Love of God
Why the Gospel Often Feels Harder Than It Is
Stunning simplicity is often easiest for those who have not been steeped in religious systems. Ironically, those formed within Western Reformed theology often struggle the most to receive the gospel as genuinely good news.
I say this without accusation, and with empathy. I was there too.
Over centuries, many theological ideas developed in the Western church that were not central to the early Christian vision. These ideas were eventually institutionalised, systematised, and handed down as unquestionable Christian doctrine. The result is that many sincere believers now encounter serious internal resistance when they are invited to trust the unconditional love of God revealed in Jesus.
What follows is not an attack on people, but an honest look at concepts that often function as roadblocks.
1. Faith Redefined as a Religious Achievement
In Scripture, faith is fundamentally trust. It is resting in the faithfulness of God.
In Western Reformed frameworks, faith subtly becomes a mysterious inner quality that one must generate in order to unlock salvation. Instead of trusting grace, people are left anxiously examining whether they have believed correctly, sincerely enough, or consistently enough.
This turns faith into a work and shifts the focus away from God’s faithfulness toward human performance.
2. Love Reduced to One Attribute Among Many
The New Testament does not say that God merely has love. It says that God is love.
Western theology often treats love as one attribute that must be balanced against others, such as justice or wrath. This produces a divided picture of God, loving in one moment and punitive in another.
If love is God’s nature, then everything God does is love-flavoured. Justice, judgment, and correction cannot be separated from goodness and mercy. They must be restorative rather than retributive.
3. Justice Interpreted Through a Legal Lens
In the Hebraic imagination, justice means setting things right, healing what is broken, restoring what has been lost.
In Western thought, justice becomes primarily punitive. Wrong must be repaid. Someone must suffer.
This shifts the gospel away from healing creation and toward managing divine anger.
4. Wrath Recast as Divine Rage
Biblically, God’s wrath is His opposition to whatever destroys His beloved creation.
In Reformed theology, wrath is often portrayed as God’s anger needing to be satisfied by punishment. This creates an image of a God who must be appeased, rather than a Father who moves toward humanity in mercy.
Jesus does not shield us from the Father. He reveals the Father.
5. Penal Substitutionary Atonement
Penal substitution presents the cross as a legal transaction where the Son absorbs punishment from the Father in our place.
This divides the Trinity. One Person is portrayed as demanding punishment, another as offering compassion.
Scripture says something very different. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. The cross is not an internal conflict within God, but the unified self-giving of the Triune God to heal humanity and defeat death.
6. The Medieval Construct of Hell
Much of what people imagine when they hear the word hell comes from medieval theology, not from the biblical text.
Scripture uses multiple words with different meanings, such as Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and aionios judgment. These were later collapsed into a single idea of endless conscious torment.
This shift reframed God as an eternal torturer rather than a relentless healer whose judgments aim at restoration.
7. Inherited Guilt and Original Sin
Augustine’s doctrine of inherited guilt was built on a mistranslation of Romans 5:12 from the Latin Vulgate.
The Greek text says that death spread to all because all sinned, not that all sinned in Adam.
The early church taught that we are born mortal and corruptible, not guilty. Guilt is personal. Mortality is inherited.
This distinction matters deeply. Salvation becomes healing rather than legal acquittal.
8. Total Depravity as Ontological Worthlessness
While Scripture is honest about humanity’s brokenness, Western theology often goes further, portraying humans as utterly worthless and repulsive to God.
This makes unconditional love almost impossible to trust. One cannot rest in love if one believes God is fundamentally disgusted with human nature.
The incarnation tells a different story. God unites Himself to humanity without hesitation.
9. Election Turned Into Exclusion
Biblically, election is vocational. God chooses some for the sake of all.
In Reformed theology, election becomes selective salvation. God chooses a few and passes over the rest.
This undermines trust in God’s goodness and contradicts the consistent scriptural witness that God desires all to be saved and that Christ draws all humanity to Himself.
10. Salvation Reduced to an Afterlife Destination
The gospel becomes about escaping hell and reaching heaven.
In Scripture, salvation is union with God, the healing of humanity, and the renewal of creation. Eternal life begins now, not after death.
When salvation is reduced to geography, the heart of the good news is lost.
11. The Gospel Reduced to Information
Belief becomes assent to correct ideas rather than trust in a Person.
The gospel is not primarily information to accept, but revelation to receive. Jesus does not bring a new theory about God. He unveils who God has always been.
12. Scripture Elevated Above Christ
The Bible becomes treated as the final and flawless revelation of God, rather than as a witness pointing to Jesus.
This allows portrayals of God that contradict the character of Christ to be defended as biblical. Yet Jesus is the Word of God. Scripture finds its meaning in Him, not the other way around.
13. Sin Defined Primarily as Legal Transgression
Sin is treated as law-breaking requiring punishment.
In Scripture, sin is more often described as sickness, bondage, blindness, and death. The solution is healing, liberation, and resurrection.
14. Sovereignty Defined as Control
God’s sovereignty is reimagined as absolute control, even over evil.
Biblically, God’s sovereignty is revealed in self-giving love, patience, and the refusal to abandon creation. Love that coerces is not love.
Why These Ideas Become Roadblocks
Each of these concepts introduces fear where love should be. They make trust psychologically difficult and force people to override their deepest intuitions about goodness.
Most tragically, they make it harder to simply believe in Jesus.
The early church proclaimed victory over death, healing of the human condition, and the relentless love of a Father who never turns away. When those lenses are recovered, the gospel becomes astonishingly simple again.
And when the gospel is simple, it finally sounds like good news.
These are just some very broken-down down quick ideas that you can further look into.
Peace and Love
Andrew
