How are we to make sense of this? How do we reconcile God’s
love and hate? How does he love anyone at all? What do we know about God’s
love? We know that God loves his Son, we know that God loves Israel, and we
know that God loves his Church.
God loves Christ.
After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the
water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God
descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the
heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”
Christ is the image of God, the firstborn of creation. He is
the only Son of God. All things have been created by him and in him all things
hold together. He is the head of the Church, and all the fullness of God dwells
in him. Through him, we have been reconciled to God.
Christ
emptied himself of his God-form and took our form. He humbled himself by dying
on the cross for our sins, and every person will bow to him and confess that he
is Lord.
God
loves Christ because Christ is worthy of his love, he reflects the Father, and they
share a relationship.
Jonathan Edwards describes the many excellencies of
Christ—infinite highness and infinite condescension; infinite justice and
infinite grace; infinite glory and lowest humility; infinite majesty and
infinite meekness, and so on.
If “the
worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love,”
then God
loves Christ because Christ deserves his love. God only loves that which
deserves his perfect love; to love anything corrupted by sin, any person
tainted by rebelliousness, is to deny his holy nature. His righteousness and
holiness require wrath and judgment on the sinner, but since Christ is
perfectly holy and righteous as his Father, God loves Him.
Among the nations, we know that God loves Israel and only
Israel. God chose Abraham and established a covenant with him, and through him,
created a nation. God did not choose Abraham because he was exceptionally
righteous or faithful. Abraham acted cowardly on numerous occasions, displaying
a remarkable lack of faith for a man set apart by God. He lied about his wife (Genesis
12.11-13; 26.7); he refused to believe that God would give him a son, and
instead God chose Abraham to bless “all the families of the earth” through
Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 12.3; 18.18; 22.18; 26.4; 28.14), and by
this, glorify his great name (Isaiah 42.8; 43.7; 48.9-11; Jeremiah 16.21;
Ezekiel 20.9, 14, 22). Not to bless humanity, but to glorify himself, did God
choose to love Israel. God intended to bless “all the families” (Genesis 12.3)
and “all the nations” (Genesis 18.18), and people from “all tribes and peoples
and tongues,” (Revelation 7.9) but never “every man” or “every person.” God did
not establish a covenant with the Ammonites or the Amalekites or the
Philistines, but only with Israel, because he never intended to love every person
on earth.
The psalmist says, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his lovingkindness is everlasting” (Psalm 136.1). This psalm describes God’s
actions on behalf of his people with whom he established a covenant, and no one
else.
To Him who smote the Egyptians in their firstborn, For His
lovingkindness is everlasting,
And brought Israel out from their midst, For His
lovingkindness is everlasting,
With a strong hand and an outstretched arm, For His
lovingkindness is everlasting.
To Him who divided the Red Sea asunder, For His
lovingkindness is everlasting,
And made Israel pass through the midst of it, For His
lovingkindness is everlasting;
But He overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, For His
lovingkindness is everlasting.
To Him who led His people through the wilderness, For His
lovingkindness is everlasting;
To Him who smote great kings, For His lovingkindness is
everlasting,
And slew mighty kings, For His lovingkindness is everlasting:
Sihon, king of the Amorites, For His lovingkindness is
everlasting,
And Og, king of Bashan, For His lovingkindness is
everlasting,
And gave their land as a heritage, For His lovingkindness is
everlasting.
The psalmist celebrates God’s judgment on the Egyptians (cf.
Exodus 7.4), and the destruction of the enemies of Israel (Numbers 21.21-24,
33-35). He presents these actions as evidence of God’s love for Israel. How can
we say that God “loved” these other nations in any sense of the word?
God speaks tenderly to Israel, and even when she worships
other gods, he promises her redemption and forgiveness.
‘Fear not, O Jacob My servant,’ declares the LORD, ‘And do
not be dismayed, O Israel; For behold, I will save you from afar and your
offspring from the land of their captivity. And Jacob will return and will be
quiet and at ease, and no one will make him afraid. ‘For I am with you,’
declares the LORD, ‘to save you; For I will destroy completely all the nations
where I have scattered you, Only I will not destroy you completely. But I will
chasten you justly and will by no means leave you unpunished.’
God loves Israel even though she betrays him. He says, “Is
Ephraim my dear son? Is he a delightful child? Indeed, as often as I have
spoken against him, I certainly still remember him; therefore my heart yearns
for him; I will surely have mercy on him” (Jeremiah 31.20). We do not see love
like this for any other nation. God chose Israel, he led her to Egypt and
delivered her, he gave her an inheritance, and he chastised her when she
strayed. He did all of this only for Israel. As for the nations who worshipped
other gods, he condemned. Why did God not command the Israelites to convert the
other nations? If God loved them as he loved Israel, he must have wanted to
redeem them as well.
God promised Abraham that he would father a great nation,
and that through him, “All the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis
12.3). God promised the blessing of salvation through Abraham and his
descendants to everyone. Puritan John Gill interprets this to mean, “not every
individual of all the families or nations of the earth; but that as many as
believe in Christ, of all nations, are blessed in him.”
God
desires to bless “all the families of the earth,” but this does not include
every man, woman, and child to ever be born. God blesses us through a
relationship with him, and he does not initiate a relationship with everyone.
He did with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but not with all of Abraham’s
descendants. God did not establish a covenant with Ishmael, Abraham’s first son,
nor with Esau, his grandson.
Noah had three sons, and God ignored all the generations
after Noah, from Shem to Arpachshad, to Shelah, to Eber, to Peleg, to Reu, to
Serug, to Nahor, and Terah, until Abram. God did not begin a covenant with any
man until nearly four hundred years after Noah.
God
ignored the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaim,
Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites (Genesis 15.19-20). God not
only ignored these tribes, but he promised Abraham that he would give him their
land by military conquest (Exodus 23.23). He did not command Moses to convert
these other tribes to his covenant, to intermarry with them, or even to make
treaties with them, but to destroy them completely (Exodus 23.31-33; 34.12-17;
Deuteronomy 7.2-5; Numbers 33.52). God favored the Israelites to such a degree
that he destroyed any other nation that threatened to turn her from him.
In the New Testament, Christ speaks to Nicodemus and tells
him, “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.” While John
Wesley assumed that this verse refers to all men and women to ever live,
earlier Puritans understood it to refer only to the people that God has chosen
for himself, much in the same way that he loved Israel in the Old Testament. Thomas
Watson says,
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.
God cannot love any sinner outside of a covenant because God
is holy. He must hate the sinner if there is no atonement. Nicodemus understood
this. When Christ began to describe those God loves, he would have expected
Christ to say, “For God so loved Israel,” but I doubt he would be completely
surprised to say “the world,” since God made this promise to Abraham. I can
guarantee he would have been surprised to hear Christ say, “For God so loved
every person in the world, regardless of his covenant status…”
If God had declared his love for all sinners, both in and
out of the sphere of his election, he would have simultaneously declared a
fundamental shift in his holy character. If God suddenly declares that he loves
both sinner and saint equally, then why did he destroy the nations of the Old
Testament? Why did he destroy Egypt? Why did he condemn Assyria (Isaiah 10.5-34),
instead of seeking her redemption as he did with Israel so many times after she
worshipped other gods? Why did God swear to “utterly blot out the memory of
Amalek” (Exodus 17.14)? Why did he hide knowledge of himself from “the wise and
intelligent” (Matthew 11.25)? Why did he give revelation of himself to the
disciples and not to the crowds (Matthew 13.11)?
God does not love every person in Creation. It is a miracle
that he loves any of us at all. No one deserves his love and if God loved the
sinner apart from election and the guarantee of the atonement, then he would be
a sinner. God has directed every promise of love to his people, to those who
believe in him, who submit to his will, and who trust in his name. There is no
passage, verse, word, or promise in scripture that is excepted from this. Every
promise of love in scripture must first be qualified by his holiness, his
hatred of sin, and hatred of the sinner, and second by his election of a
special group of people to enter into covenant with him, to receive his love,
to be holy, and to trust in him. Love only exists in a relationship—every kind
of indiscriminate “love” is not love, but is instead adultery. Only the
covenant that God establishes with us can possibly mitigate the sin that he
hates in the sinner that he hates. There is no such thing as love outside of
Christ and his sacrifice. Everyone outside of Christ receives only wrath.
The Lord keeps all who
love him
But all the wicked he
will destroy.
Arminians believe that God loves all men equally because he
desires all men to be saved. If we read the New Testament carefully, we cannot
possibly apply the love of God in all of its depth and magnificence to the
unbeliever.
And we know that God causes all things to work together for
good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For
those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of
His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom
He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified;
and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
God has
planned the benefits of his redemption for those he loves from the beginning of
Creation. He has called those he loves, foreknown us, predestined, justified,
and will glorify us. This is God’s love for us, not from the time we chose to
believe, but from the beginning! This cannot possibly apply to the unrepentant
sinner who perishes eternally, but Arminians believe that God’s love for us
equals his love for the unbeliever.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who
is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us
all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a
charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who
condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at
the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from
the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written,
“For Your sake we are being put to death all day long;
We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him
who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God does not waiver in his love for us and nothing we or
anyone else does can separate us from his love, but if God loves everyone
equally, then this verse applies to everyone, everyone belongs to him and will
eventually be saved regardless of their faith or repentance. Scripture does not
teach this, however. God only loves his own.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be
holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons
through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to
the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the
Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our
trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In
all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according
to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration
suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in
Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained
an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all
things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to
hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after
listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also
believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given
as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own
possession, to the praise of His glory.
To those whom God loves, he has revealed himself; he has
predestined, sealed, and redeemed them as his possession, and he has done this
since the beginning. In no way does this love apply to every person to ever
exist.
But what about John 3.16? Does this verse not emphatically
declare that God loves everyone?
The first problem with this interpretation is the word
“world.” The verse does not say that God loves “everyone,” but that he loves
“the world.” The second problem is God’s promise that he would bless “all the
families of the earth” through Abraham.
In the gospel of John, the exact phrase “the world” occurs
fifty times and its meaning varies according to the context. In John 1.9, it
means the physical earth.
There was the true light, which coming into the world,
enlightens every man.
In John 1.10, “the world” refers to either the physical
world or all the unbelievers in the world.
He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and
the world did not know him.
In John 1.29, it refers to Christians.
Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
In John 3.17, “the world” refers to the physical earth and
to those who believe.
For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the
world, but that the world might be saved through him.
In John 6.33, the phrase denotes believers.
For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven,
and gives life to the world.
Christ uses “the
world” in John 7.7 to refer to the world of unbelievers.
The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify
of it, that its deeds are evil.
The Pharisees use
“the world” in John 12.19 to refer to those who were following after Christ.
The world has gone after Him.
Depending on the
context, “the world” may have many different meanings. Sometimes it has
different meanings in the same verse! John Gill says, “Nothing is more
common in the Jewish writings, than to call the Gentiles
עלמא,
the world; and
כל עולס,
the whole world; and
אומת
העולס,
the nations of the world; hence the apostle Paul calls
them
κοσμος,
the world,
in Romans 11:12,15.”
This
is consistent with God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12.3: “In you all the
families of the earth will be blessed.” It is consistent with the fulfillment
of Abraham’s blessing in Revelation 5.9: “Worthy are you to take the book and
to break its seals; for you were slain, and purchased for God with your blood
men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.”
God loves “the world” in that he loves Jews and Gentiles, but not every
person in all of Creation. Before Christ, salvation belonged only to the Jews.
God had promised salvation to all people, but the Mosaic covenant only applied
to Israel. Christ now tells Nicodemus that salvation belongs also to “the
world,” meaning Jews and Gentiles, and then he immediately qualifies the phrase
to include only those who believe in him.
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.
Christ brackets his
statement of God’s love with the phrase “whoever believes.”
Whoever believes will in him have eternal life…whoever
believes in Him shall not perish.
God loves his people. Whereas before Christ, God redeemed
only the Jews, now the Gentiles enjoy the benefits of salvation. When Christ
says, “For God so loved the world,” he expands God’s covenant of love to now
include Jews and Gentiles. If we look closely at the verses previously thought
to declare God’s love for all men, we can easily see that they only include
those whom he has chosen for salvation, his Church. Not only do we see that God
loves only his people, but we see that God hardens the hearts of those he does
not love and prevents them from trusting in him.
Does 1 Timothy 2.4 say that God wants all men to be saved?
[God] desires all men to be saved and to come to the
knowledge of the truth.
In context, this verse tells us that God desires not only
common people, but “kings and all who are in authority” (2.2) to be saved. It
does not tell us that God desires all men everywhere in all of Creation to be
saved.
Let’s look at 2 Peter 3.9.
The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count
slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all
to come to repentance.
If we assume that God wants all men to be saved, then we can
easily ignore the first part of the verse: “[God] is patient toward you.” Peter
says that God does not want any of his people to perish, including those predestined
from the beginning of the world to be his children (Romans 8.29, 30; Ephesians
1.5).
Ezekiel expresses the same idea in chapter 18 of his book.
“Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked,” declares
the Lord God, “rather than that he should turn from his ways and live?”
God declares his desires to Israel and not to the entire world.
He does not want any of his people to perish, but to repent. At the beginning
of the chapter, he addresses Israel (18.1), and again and again he speaks to
Israel.
Hear now, O house of Israel!
Are my ways not right, O house of Israel?
Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel.
For why will you die, O house of Israel?
What about 1 John 2.2?
He Himself is the
propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those
of the whole world.
If Christ is the propitiation of “the whole world,” as in
every person on earth, then every person on earth has been forgiven, but we know
this is not true. John says that Christ is “our” propitiation, but who is “us”?
In the first two verses of this book, John says
What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have
seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands,
concerning the Word of Life…we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the
eternal life.
“We” includes the Jews who were eyewitnesses of Christ’s
life. John is writing to Jews who witnessed the life of Christ along with him,
and again, he mentions “the whole world” to include all the Jews and Gentiles
who will believe in Christ from their proclamation of the Gospel, but not every
person in the world.
In both testaments, God prevents men from turning to him. In
Exodus, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart.
I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people
go.
But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that I may multiply My
signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt.
But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his
heart and did not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
God hardened the heart of the king of Heshbon in order to
give his land to the Israelites.
But Sihon king of Heshbon was not willing for us to pass
through his land; for the Lord your God hardened his spirit and made his heart
obstinate, in order to deliver him into your hand, as he is today.
God hardened of nearly
all the nations that Israel conquered.
For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, to meet Israel
in battle in order that he might utterly destroy them, that they might receive
no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.
God keeps ordinary individuals
from repentance as well as rulers of nations.
Now Eli was very old; and he heard all that his sons were
doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who served at the doorway
of the tent of meeting. He said to them, “Why do you do such things, the evil
things that I hear from all these people? No, my sons; for the report is not
good which I hear the Lord’s people circulating. If one man sins against
another, God will mediate for him; but if a man sins against the Lord, who can
intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for
the Lord desired to put them to death.
In Matthew 13.11,
Christ tells his disciples that God has granted only them the knowledge of his kingdom.
To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the
kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.
We see this again in Matthew 11.25.
I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you
have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little
children.
In John 9.39, Christ tells the Pharisees that they are spiritually
blind because God has judged them.
For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not
see may see, and that those who see may become blind.
God hates all sinners, yet he has
chosen some to love and to receive the blessing of redemption. This is
unquestionably an unpleasant idea, but it is also unquestionably biblical. From
the beginning of Scripture to the end, we see that God planned to redeem the
whole world, as in “all the families of the earth” and men and women from “every
tribe and tongue and people and nation.”
