Does God Love Everyone?

God Loves Everyone

We know that God loves everyone. God loves me and God loves you. God loves my neighbor and God loves my pastor. God loves all of us without condition, just as we are. If God loves everyone, then God loves Hitler also. God loves child molesters and rapists and terrorists and abortion doctors just as much as he loves you and I and Christ, his beloved Son. Christ loves everyone in the world that hates him and mocks him and blasphemes his name just as much as he loves his bride, the Church. God loved Esau even though the Bible says he hated Esau (Malachi 1.2). God loves those who shed innocent blood, those with haughty eyes and a lying tongue even though Proverbs 6.16-17 says he hates these people. God is love and therefore God loves everyone equally.

Obviously, this reasoning is incorrect. The Bible says that “God is love,” (1 John 4.8) and “For God so loved the world…”, yet we cannot simply toss aside verses that profess God’s hatred for a person or a group. We must investigate further and attempt to reconcile scripture when scripture seems to contradict itself. This doctrine that teaches that God loves everyone raises serious questions. Why is repentance necessary if God loves us as we are, sin and all? How can Christ possibly have the same love for his bride that he has for sinners who hate him eternally? Why does Scripture explicitly teach that God hates anyone (Malachi 1.3)? How can God allow a man to perish eternally in hell if he loves him? If God grants repentance, then why doesn’t he grant repentance to everyone he loves?

Other practical issues emerge. The church has been preaching the universality of God’s love for well over a hundred years, and yet the church struggles to remain relevant. Church attendance falls[1] while the world constantly calls our authenticity into question.[2] Is attendance down because we have convinced everyone so well that God loves them, that they no longer believe they need a Savior? Why do they need a Savior that tells them how to live if he loves them just as they are? Why do we need to be saved from our sins if our sins do not affect God’s love for us?

But God does not love us, at least not outside of Christ. How can he? We are sinners and he hates sin. If he hates sin, he most certainly hates the heart of the person that commits sin, that loves sin and everyday lives eagerly to commit sin. The Psalmist says, “You hate all who do iniquity” (Psalm 5.5, New American Standard Bible). Every one of us commits iniquity (Psalm 53.1-3; Jeremiah 17.9). If God loves righteousness and hates wickedness (Psalm 45.7), then God loves only One, and that person can only be Christ. God’s mercies may be over all his works (Psalm 145.9), but all the wicked he will destroy (Psalm 145.20). God may be good to all, but his goodness does not necessarily equal love.

God’s Universal “Love”

Theologians use many different verses to prove that God loves everyone, but John 3.16 consistently stands apart from them all.

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

God loves the world. In the New Testament, however, this verse alone connects God’s love with the entire world explicitly. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy that he “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2.4). Peter tells us that God does not wish for any to perish, “but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3.9). God asks Ezekiel, “Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked, rather than that he should turn from his ways and live?” (18.23), and then he answers himself, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live” (33.11). The apostle John declares that “God is love” (1 John 4.16). John Frame quotes Frances Turretin to describe God’s universal love:

There are three degrees of one and the same love…First, there is the love of benevolence by which God willed good to the creature from eternity; second, the love of beneficence by which he does good to the creature in time according to his good will; third, the love of complacency by which he delights himself in the creature on account of the rays of his image seen in them.[3]

John Frame adds, “God’s love extends to everyone, but in different ways…God loves everything that he has made, including his enemies…Although only believers receive eternal life, God’s love in sending Christ is directed to the world as a whole.”[4] Henry Thiessen  believes that God “is unlike the gods of the heathen, who hate and are angry,” and that God “cannot hate what he has made.”[5]

Turretin describes three degrees of love, but while Frame confers this love on everyone, Turretin narrowly confers it only to the elect. He adds

By the love of benevolence, he loved us before we were; by the love of beneficence, he loves us as we are; and by the love of complacency, he loves us when we are (viz., renewed after his image). By the first, he elects us; by the second, he redeems and sanctifies us; but by the third, he gratuitously rewards us as holy and just.[6]

These “variations” of love essentially follow the same path, however. They all result in the salvation of the creature. Christ tells us that God “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5.45). Theologians refer to this as goodness or benevolence. God does not elect everyone. Frame incorrectly broadens the scope of God’s electing love, and Turretin confuses God’s benevolence with his love. Elsewhere, Frame uses Matthew 5.43-48 to declare that God “loves everything that he has made, including his enemies.”[7] This inference, however, does not necessarily follow from this passage. Jesus commands his audience to love their enemies, but this entire sermon served to contrast the Jews’ understanding of the Law against God’s perfect intent. Jesus preached this sermon primarily to demonstrate their ignorance of God’s Law and not primarily as a theological statement on God’s character. The sermon also described the behavior of those who wished to belong to the Kingdom of God. D. Martyn Lloyd Jones says, “The Sermon on the Mount is nothing but a great and grand and perfect elaboration of what our Lord called His ‘new commandment.’ ... Whenever Christ is enthroned as King, the kingdom of God is come...The great purpose of this Sermon is to give an exposition of the kingdom as something which is essentially spiritual.”[8] We know that Christ himself pronounced judgment against his enemies (Matthew 11.21; 18.7; 23-13-16); he called them fools and blind men (23.17), hypocrites (23.23), and vipers (23.33). We can hardly describe his attitude toward the Pharisees as “loving.”

Regarding God’s hate, the Psalmist tells us that God “hates all who do iniquity” (Psalm 5.5), and those who love violence, “his soul hates” (Psalm 11.5). Thiessen ignores the biblical testimony when he states that God cannot hate what he has created. Paul says, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1.18). God must hate not only sin, but the sinner, if he will remain holy. Psalm 145 repeatedly declares God’s majesty and his glory, and in this context, also declares “The Lord is good to all, and his mercies are over all his works” (Psalm 145.9). God’s goodness glorifies his name, and that is its purpose. R.C. Sproul distinguishes the different aspects of God’s love, referring to God’s goodness toward all as his “love of benevolence”, and his love toward the saints as his “love of complacency.”[9] Theologians call this goodness, “love”, but if God does not grant the faith that leads to salvation (Acts 5.31; 11.18), how can we truly call this love? God does not allow those he loves to perish forever. The end of Psalm 145 says, “The Lord keeps all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy” (145.20). God’s goodness glorifies him, just as his love for his people, and his hatred and wrath upon the wicked also do (Romans 9.17,22,23).

If we look again at scripture which professes God’s universal saving love for mankind, we find that this love may not be universal after all. Peter says that God does not wish to save all men. In speaking of those who stumble over Christ by disobedience, he says, “to this doom they were also appointed” (1 Peter 2.8). Paul makes a similar statement in Romans, when he says, “[God] has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires” (Romans 9.18). God has no desire to save everyone. In light of these verses, those that proclaim God’s love for all must be reevaluated. Peter addresses the members of the church in 2 Peter 3.9. He says, “God is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.” (emphasis added). God speaks only to Israel in Ezekiel 18 and 33. He says, “Hear, you Israelites,” (18.25), “Therefore, you Israelites,” (18.30) and “Why will you die, people of Israel?” (33.11). In 1 Timothy 2.4, “all men” refers to men both in authority and not. If God hardened Pharaoh (Romans 9.17,18), and he does not grant repentance to everyone, then obviously he does not desire all men and women throughout history to be saved.

Reevaluating John 3.16 reveals a similar distinction between those who trust and those who do not. In this chapter, Christ describes unbelievers as “condemned,” lovers of darkness, and evildoers (3.18-20), but “the world” is “saved” (3.17) and “loved” (3.16). We know that God grants repentance (Acts 11.18) and therefore faith is a gift (Ephesians 2.8) for those he will love (Romans 5.8). God decides who will be saved (John 1.13), but D.A. Carson does not believe we can limit the scope of the phrase “the world” in John 3.16.[10] The scope of this phrase varies in the book of John depending on the context, however. In a single verse, “world” may mean the physical world or simply those who do not believe in Christ (1.10). In the same chapter, the scope of “the world” only includes those who place their trust in Christ, as John the Baptist says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1.29). In John 4.42, 6.33, 6.42, and 8.12, the scope of the phrase again includes only those who trust in Christ. In chapter 15, Christ limits the phrase to those who hate him and his disciples. Christ tells his disciples, “The world has hated Me... the world hates you” (15.18,19). Of John 3.16, Leon Morris says, “The Jew was ready enough to think of God as loving Israel, but no … Jewish writer maintains that God loved the world.”[11] Nicodemus expected Christ to say, “For God so loved the Jews,” but instead he said, “For God so loved the world.” Christ brackets “the world” with two repetitions of “whoever believes” in him, and later in verse 17, he says that he did not come “to judge the world, but that the world might be saved.” In every instance in this passage, “the world” refers to those who believe in Christ, and not merely the Jews, but Gentiles also. John later repeats this in his first epistle when he says, “He is the propitiation for our sins [Jews]; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world [Jews and Gentiles]” (1 John 2.2). Christ intended not to expand the scope of God’s love to include believers and unbelievers, but specifically the Gentiles and Jews who would believe in him. In John, as in the rest of scripture, God loves his people exclusively.

God Loves His Bride

The Hebrew word hesed best describes God’s love for his people. The New American Standard Bible translates hesed as “lovingkindness” in Psalm 136, which repeats the phrase “For His lovingkindness is everlasting” as it describes the great works of the Lord in relation to creation (4-9) and his deliverance of Israel (10-22). “God’s covenantal relationship with his people” is the basis for God’s hesed.[12] Baer and Gordon say, “Divine hesed is abundant…hesed fills the earth (Psalm 33.5; 119.64).”[13] God’s hesed “rises above” his wrath through its “superior quantity and permanence.”[14] God’s lovingkindness reaches to humanity in general[15], but we find “the importance of a prior commitment or bond.”[16] God’s lovingkindness “demands service, fear, and even a corresponding exercise of hesed in return.”[17]

God loves Israel alone in the Old Testament. God chose Israel to be the object of His love, and none of the other nations (Deuteronomy 7.7-8). God led her through the wilderness (Psalm 68.7; 78.15), conquered Canaan for her (Joshua 24.11-13), and established her kingdom (2 Samuel 5.12). God performed none of these works for any other nation. When Israel ignored God’s commands and worshipped other gods, God disciplined her out of love (Hosea 2.8-13), yet promised her a future salvation (Jeremiah 24.6,7; 29.10-14). God used the other nations as tools to chastise her (Jeremiah 26.8-11), but he never entered into covenant with them. God belonged to Israel alone, yet in spite of this overwhelming evidence of God’s exclusive love for his chosen people, Christians still insist that God loves the entire world in this same way. If God suddenly loved a people outside of a covenant, unholy (not separate from the world), and openly hostile to him, this would signify a great change in God’s character from Old Testament to New Testament, but John tells us that God loves the world that believes in him (John 3.16). Paul also tells us that God has expanded his love to include the Gentiles (Acts 28.28), and it is in this sense that God loves the world.

A Special People

Speaking at a concert to a small congregation, Rich Mullins described how believers witnessed to him before he became a Christian:

I remember when I was a kid, and people would always say—you know because I was one of those typical depressed adolescents. I wrote poetry. That’s how morose I was as a kid—people would go around saying, “Oh, cheer up, man because God loves you!” and I would always say, “Big Deal! God loves everybody. That don’t make me special.”[18]

I loved this video clip, but as I listened to it, I have always wondered, “Aren’t we special? Isn’t that the whole point of Israel? Isn’t that the point of love, that someone is special, and that others are not?” If a man loves every woman that he knows in the same way he loves his wife, how can he say he loves his wife at all? If a man loves any and every woman, he becomes an adulterer. His wife is not special, and neither is anyone else.

Thomas Watson, 17^th century Puritan, describes our state before we believe:

Before this covenant there was nothing but enmity. God did not love us, for a creature that offends cannot be loved by a holy God; and we did not love him, since a God that condemns cannot be loved by a guilty creature; so that there was war on both sides. But God has found out a way in the new covenant to reconcile differing parties, so that it is fitly called the covenant of peace.[19]

We read the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son (Luke 15), but we ignore the implication of the meaning of being lost. For something to be lost, it first must belong. The sheep belongs to the shepherd. The coin belongs to the woman. The son belongs to the father. God’s children are God’s children, and he loves us and us alone. If he loved the children of another, we could not say that he honestly loved us. God’s love should always strengthen us to live holy lives, not just by the greatness of mercy he has shown us, but by the fear that it inspires, for as the author of the epistle to the Hebrews said, “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10.31).

Bibliography

Bradley, Jayson. “All Christians Are Hypocrites”, May 23, 2016. Retrieved from https://relevantmagazine.com/god/all-christians-are-hypocrites.

Bruce, F.F., General Editor. New International Commentary of the New Testament: John, by Leon Morris. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1971).

Frame, John. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief, (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2013)

Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. Studied in the Sermon on the Mount, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981).

Mullins, Rich. “Rich Mullins – Step by Step (Sometimes by Step) Live.” Published at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OW-gjjwsag on January 26, 2012.

Outreach Magazine, “7 Startling Facts: An Up Close Look at Church Attendance in America”, April 10, 2018. Retrieved from https://churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/139575-7-startling-facts-an-up-close-look-at-church-attendance-in-america.html.

Robinson, Jeff. “Does God Love Everyone the Same?”, adapted from D.A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2000). Retrieved from https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/does-god-love-everyone-the-same/

R.C. Sproul, “Is it biblical to say that God loves everyone?”, adapted by Nathan Bingham, June 28, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.ligonier.org/blog/biblical-say-god-loves-everyone/

Thiessen, Henry C. Lectures in Systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979).

Turretin, Frances. Institutes of Elenctic Theology: Volume 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1992).

VanGemeren, Willem A., General Editor. New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology: Volume 2, D.A. Baer and R.P. Gordon, “hesed” (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997).

Watson, Thomas. Body of Divinity, (Carlisle: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1890).

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[1] Statistics report between 20-40% of Americans regularly attend church. Specifically, only 23-25% of Americans attend church 3 out of every 8 Sundays. From Outreach Magazine, “7 Startling Facts: An Up Close Look at Church Attendance in America”, April 10, 2018. Retrieved from https://churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/139575-7-startling-facts-an-up-close-look-at-church-attendance-in-america.html.

[2] Relevant Magazine describes the struggle of the Church to maintain a consistent witness to the world and remain honest at the same time: Jayson Bradley, “All Christians Are Hypocrites”, May 23, 2016. Retrieved from https://relevantmagazine.com/god/all-christians-are-hypocrites.

[3] John Frame, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief, (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2013), 236, quoting Frances Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology: Volume 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1992), 242.

[4] Ibid, 237.

[5] Henry C. Thiessen, Lectures in Systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979), 86.

[6] Frame, 236 again quoting Turretin, 242, emphasis added.

[7] Frame, 237.

[8] D. Martyn Lloyd Jones, Studied in the Sermon on the Mount, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981), 15-16.

[9] R.C. Sproul, “Is it biblical to say that God loves everyone?”, adapted by Nathan Bingham, June 28, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.ligonier.org/blog/biblical-say-god-loves-everyone/

[10] Jeff Robinson, “Does God Love Everyone the Same?”, adapted from D.A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2000). Retrieved from https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/does-god-love-everyone-the-same/

[11] F.F. Bruce, General Editor, New International Commentary of the New Testament: John, by Leon Morris. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1971), 229.

[12] Willem A. VanGemeren, General Editor, New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology: Volume 2, D.A. Baer and R.P. Gordon, “hesed” (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 211.

[13] Ibid, 217.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid, 211.

[16] Ibid, 213.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Rich Mullins, “Rich Mullins – Step by Step (Sometimes by Step) Live.” Published at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OW-gjjwsag on January 26, 2012.

[19] Thomas Watson, Body of Divinity, (Carlisle: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1890), 154.