Does God Love Everyone? # 1

[A very interesting and thoughtful sermon!! A must read!!]


Does God Love Everyone? # 1

1. John 3:16

2. 2 Peter 3:9

3. The Holy Spirit Will Not Be Resisted

4.  Why Preach to Every Creature?

One of the most popular beliefs of the day is that God loves everybody, and the very fact that it is so popular with all classes ought to be enough to arouse the suspicions of those who are subject to the Word of Truth. God's love toward all His creatures is the fundamental and favorite tenet of Universalists, Unitarians, and Theosophists, Christian Scientists, Spiritualists, Russellites, etc. No matter how a man may live in open defiance of Heaven, with no concern whatever for his soul's eternal interests, still less for God's glory, dying perhaps with an oath on his lips - notwithstanding, God loves him, we are told. So widely has this dogma been proclaimed, and so comforting is it to the heart which is at enmity with God - we have little hope of convincing many of their error. That God loves everybody is, we may say, quite a modern belief. The writings of the church fathers, the Reformers, or the Puritans will (we believe) be searched in vain for any such concept. Perhaps the late D. L. Moody - captivated by Drummond's The Great Thing in the World - did more than anyone else in the last century to popularize this concept. It has been customary to say God loves the sinner though He hates his sin. But that is a meaningless distinction. What is there in a sinner but sin? Is it not true that his "whole head is sick" and his "whole heart faint," and that "from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness" in him? (Isaiah 1:5-6). Is it true that God loves the one who is despising and rejecting His blessed Son? God is Light as well as Love, and therefore His love must be a holy love.

To tell the Christ-rejecter that God loves him is to cauterize his conscience, as well as to afford him a sense of security in his sins. The fact is, the love of God is a truth for the saints only, and to present it to the enemies of God is to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs (Matt. 15:26). With the exception of John 3:16, not once in the four Gospels do we read of the Lord Jesus, the perfect teacher, telling sinners that God loves them! In the book of Acts, which records the evangelistic labors and messages of the apostles, God's love is never referred to at all! But when we come to the Epistles, which are addressed to the saints, we have a full presentation of this precious truth: God's love for His own. Let us seek to rightly divide the Word of God and then we shall not be found taking truths which are addressed to believers and misapplying them to unbelievers. That which sinners need to have brought before them is the ineffable holiness, the exacting righteousness, the inflexible justice, and the terrible wrath of God.

Risking the danger of being misunderstood, let us say - and we wish we could say it to every evangelist and preacher in the country - there is far too much presenting of Christ to sinners today, and far too little showing sinners their need of Christ, that is, their absolutely ruined and lost condition, their imminent and awful danger of suffering the wrath to come, the fearful guilt resting upon them in the sight of God. To present Christ to those who have never been shown their need of Him, seems to us to be guilty of casting pearls before swine (Matt. 7:6). If it be true that God loves every member of the human family, then why did our Lord tell His disciples, "He who has My commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves Me: and he who loves Me shall be loved of My Father...If a man love me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him" (John 14:21, 23)? Why say, "He that loves Me shall be loved of My Father," if the Father loves everybody?? The same limitation is found in Prov. 8:17: "I love them that love Me."

Again we read, "You hate all workers of iniquity" - not merely the works of iniquity. Here then is a flat repudiation of present teaching that God hates sin but loves the sinner: Scripture says, "You hate all workers of iniquity" (Psalm 5:5)! "God is angry with the wicked every day" (Psalm 7:11). "He who believes not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God" - not "shall abide," but even now - "abides on him" (John 3:36). Can God "love" the one on whom His "wrath" abides? Again, is it not evident that the words, "The love of God which is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:39), mark a limitation, both in the sphere and objects, of His love? Again, is it not plain from the words, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated" (Romans 9:13), that God does NOT love everybody?? Again, it is written, "For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives" (Heb. 12:6). Does not this verse teach that God's love is restricted to the members of His own family? If He loves all men without exception, then the distinction and limitation here mentioned is quite meaningless. Finally, we would ask, is it conceivable that God will love the dammed in the Lake of Fire? Yet, if He loves them now,He will do so then, seeing that His love knows no change. He is "without variableness or shadow of turning" (James 1:17).

~A. W. Pink~

(continued with # 2)