Hi, Jay.
First, thanks for posting this. I definitely had to do a little research before forming my reply, and it was very illuminating.
Yes, I did know that there are other words for "love" in the Bible. And you're right, God does place conditions on man. But those conditions have nothing to do with how much He loves us. He will judge us and punish us if we don't turn from sin and live for Him. But He loves us, even if we aren't living up to the "standards and conditions" that He has placed upon us. If you are a parent, you set rules (standards of conduct) for your children. If those rules are broken, your child receives punishment. But you do not love your child any less for disobeying you.
Romans 5:8 says, "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." He loved us, even though we were sinners and disobeyed Him. In my research however, I admit I was a bit taken aback by such verses of scripture as
Psalm 5:5. "The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity." So I decided to research that word for "hate" in the Hebrew that
Psalm 5 is written in. What I found is that it doesn't quite have the same meaning and connotations that we give to the word "hate" in English.
When the Bible mentions loving one thing and hating another in Hebrew, it suggests a preference for one over the other. "... yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau..." (
Malachi 1:2-3) And "prefer" doesn't just mean liking one thing more than another. "Prefer" also means to give something higher priority, to choose something over something else.
So if we go back to
Psalm 5:5, that word for "hate" in Hebrew is "sane'," pronounced saw-nay. It means "to distance oneself" or "to not prefer". The same word for "hate" that is used in that verse is used in
Malachi 1:2-3 to describe God's preference for Jacob over Esau.
God does not hate any of us in the way you or I would say we hate, despise, or loathe someone. God does SEPARATE himself from those who are "workers of iniquity." But His love for us is not in any way diminished.