who does God love?

i've written this before but now i'm stuck. God loves everyone. God hates everyone. Which is true? God hates sinners because they defy him. they live in hatred of him, but he has chosen some to love, to bless, to deliver from his wrath, and the rest he will leave in sin to perish forever.

God can only love the sinner through covenant because his wrath must be satisfied before he can love them, and only the believer receives deliverance from God's wrath. God only loves those whom he elects because only those place their trust in Christ. we see this in the old testament with Israel and we see this in the new testament with believers. Romans 8 describes the benefits of God's love and this cannot in any way apply to the sinner. God loves us because we believe and we believe because he loves us.

God loves Christ because Christ perfectly displays God's nature, because he pleases him, because he is his Son. God loves Israel because he has chosen them to be his, to be in relationship with him, and to be delivered from their sin, same as all Christians. when Christ said, "For God so loved the world," he echoed God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 12.3, "In you all the families of the earth will be blessed." we saw little of this promise fulfilled in the old testament, but when Christ spoke to nicodemus, he initiated a new covenant to include "all the families" and "all the nations" of the world. in no way did he mean to include all men in this love, for God cannot love the sinner.

norman geisler reasons that since God is infinite and God is love (systematic theology, 586), that he necessarily loves everyone. God is not infinite in everything. he is "limited' by his nature, and he is "limited' by sin. he cannot love sin and he therefore cannot love the sinner (Psalm 11.5; 5.5; Proverbs 6.16-19). you cannot establish doctrine by these semantic word games. God does not love sinners, but he does love us (Romans 5). if we look closely, we will find that every scripture that appears to declare universal love for every man actually limits the scope of God's love to the believer, or to (spiritual) Israel, or to the elect chosen before the foundation of the world.