Posted on 08/01/2005 8:16:45 PM PDT by buckeyesrule
Does God So Love the World?
by: John MacArthur
Love is the best known but least understood of all God's attributes. Almost everyone who believes in God these days sees Him as a God of love. I have even met agnostics who are quite certain that if God exists, He must be benevolent, compassionate, and loving.
All those things are infinitely true about God, of course, but not in the way most people think. Because of the influence of modern liberal theology, many suppose that God's love and goodness ultimately nullify His righteousness, justice, and holy wrath. They envision God as a benign heavenly grandfather-tolerant, affable, lenient, permissive, devoid of any real displeasure over sin, who without consideration of His holiness will benignly pass over sin and accept people as they are.
Liberal thinking about God's love also permeates much of evangelicalism today. We have lost the reality of God's wrath. We have disregarded His hatred for sin. The God most evangelicals now describe is all-loving and not at all angry. We have forgotten that "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31). We do not believe in that kind of God anymore.
We must recapture some of the holy terror that comes with a right understanding of God's righteous anger. We need to remember that God's wrath does burn against impenitent sinners (Psalm 38:1-3). That reality is the very thing that makes His love so amazing. Only those who see themselves as sinners in the hands of an angry God can fully appreciate the magnitude and wonder of His love.
In that regard, our generation is surely at a greater disadvantage than any previous age. We have been force-fed the doctrines of self-esteem for so long that most people don't really view themselves as sinners worthy of divine wrath. On top of that, religious liberalism, humanism, evangelical compromise, and ignorance of the Scriptures have all worked against a right understanding of who God is. Ironically, in an age that conceives of God as wholly loving, altogether devoid of wrath, few people really understand what God's love is all about.
How we address the misconception of the present age is crucial. We must not respond to an overemphasis on divine love by denying that God is love. Our generation's imbalanced view of God cannot be corrected by an equal imbalance in the opposite direction, a very real danger in some circles. I'm deeply concerned about a growing trend I've noticed-particularly among people committed to the biblical truth of God's sovereignty and divine election. Some of them flatly deny that God in any sense loves those whom He has not chosen for salvation.
I am troubled by the tendency of some-often young people newly infatuated with Reformed doctrine-who insist that God cannot possibly love those who never repent and believe. I encounter that view, it seems, with increasing frequency.
The argument inevitably goes like this: Psalm 7:11 tells us "God is angry with the wicked every day." It seems reasonable to assume that if God loved everyone, He would have chosen everyone unto salvation. Therefore, God does not love the non-elect. Those who hold this view often go to great lengths to argue that John 3:16 cannot really mean God loves the whole world.
Perhaps the best-known argument for this view is found the unabridged edition of an otherwise excellent book, The Sovereignty of God, by A. W. Pink. Pink wrote, "God loves whom He chooses. He does not love everybody." [1] He further argued that the word world in John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world…") "refers to the world of believers (God's elect), in contradistinction from 'the world of the ungodly.'"[2]
Pink was attempting to make the crucial point that God is sovereign in the exercise of His love. The gist of his argument is certainly valid: It is folly to think that God loves all alike, or that He is compelled by some rule of fairness to love everyone equally. Scripture teaches us that God loves because He chooses to love (Deuteronomy 7:6-7), because He is loving (God is love, 1 John 4:8), not because He is under some obligation to love everyone the same.
Nothing but God's own sovereign good pleasure compels Him to love sinners. Nothing but His own sovereign will governs His love. That has to be true, since there is certainly nothing in any sinner worthy of even the smallest degree of divine love.
Unfortunately, Pink took the corollary too far. The fact that some sinners are not elected to salvation is no proof that God's attitude toward them is utterly devoid of sincere love. We know from Scripture that God is compassionate, kind, generous, and good even to the most stubborn sinners. Who can deny that those mercies flow out of God's boundless love? It is evident that they are showered even on unrepentant sinners.
We must understand that it is God's very nature to love. The reason our Lord commanded us to love our enemies is "in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45). Jesus clearly characterized His Father as One who loves even those who purposefully set themselves at enmity against Him.
At this point, however, an important distinction must be made: God loves believers with a particular love. God's love for the elect is an infinite, eternal, saving love. We know from Scripture that this great love was the very cause of our election (Ephesians 2:4). Such love clearly is not directed toward all of mankind indiscriminately, but is bestowed uniquely and individually on those whom God chose in eternity past.
But from that, it does not follow that God's attitude toward those He did not elect must be unmitigated hatred. Surely His pleading with the lost, His offers of mercy to the reprobate, and the call of the gospel to all who hear are all sincere expressions of the heart of a loving God. Remember, He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but tenderly calls sinners to turn from their evil ways and live.
Reformed theology has historically been the branch of evangelicalism most strongly committed to the sovereignty of God. At the same time, the mainstream of Reformed theologians have always affirmed the love of God for all sinners. John Calvin himself wrote regarding John 3:16, "[Two] points are distinctly stated to us: namely, that faith in Christ brings life to all, and that Christ brought life, because the Father loves the human race, and wishes that they should not perish." [3]
Calvin continues to explain the biblical balance that both the gospel invitation and "the world" that God loves are by no means limited to the elect alone. He also recognized that God's electing, saving love is uniquely bestowed on His chosen ones.
Those same truths, reflecting a biblical balance, have been vigorously defended by a host of Reformed stalwarts, including Thomas Boston, John Brown, Andrew Fuller, W. G. T. Shedd, R. L. Dabney, B. B. Warfield, John Murray, R. B. Kuiper, and many others. In no sense does belief in divine sovereignty rule out the love of God for all humanity.
We are seeing today, in some circles, an almost unprecedented interest in the doctrines of the Reformation and the Puritan eras. I'm very encouraged by that in most respects. A return to those historic truths is, I'm convinced, absolutely necessary if the church is to survive. Yet there is a danger when overzealous souls misuse a doctrine like divine sovereignty to deny God's sincere offer of mercy to all sinners.
We must maintain a carefully balanced perspective as we pursue our study of God's love. God's love cannot be isolated from His wrath and vice versa. Nor are His love and wrath in opposition to each other like some mystical yin-yang principle. Both attributes are constant, perfect, without ebb or flow. His wrath coexists with His love; therefore, the two never contradict. Such are the perfections of God that we can never begin to comprehend these things. Above all, we must not set them against one another, as if there were somehow a discrepancy in God.
Both God's wrath and His love work to the same ultimate end-His glory. God is glorified in the condemnation of the wicked; He is glorified in every expression of love for all people without exception; and He is glorified in the particular love He manifests in saving His people.
Expressions of wrath and expressions of love-all are necessary to display God's full glory. We must never ignore any aspect of His character, nor magnify one to the exclusion of another. When we commit those errors, we throw off the biblical balance, distort the true nature of God, and diminish His real glory.
Does God so love the world? Emphatically-yes! Proclaim that truth far and wide, and do so against the backdrop of God's perfect wrath that awaits everyone who does not repent and turn to Christ.
Does the love of God differ in the breadth and depth and manner of its expression? Yes it does. Praise Him for the many manifestations of His love, especially toward the non-elect, and rejoice in the particular manifestation of His saving love for you who believe. God has chosen to display in you the glory of His redeeming grace.
[1]Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1930), 29-30.
[2]Ibid., 314.
[3]John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, William Pringle, trans. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979 reprint), 123.
Adapted from The God Who Loves © 2001 by John MacArthur. All rights reserved.
• Grace to You (Thursday, July 21, 2005)
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How could anyone possibly know what God knows, or when He knew it?
Foreknowledge means much more than "knowing ahead of time."
To be God He must always have been omniscient.
He did not "grow" into omniscience. Otherwise there would be a time when He wasn't God.
Omniscience means knowing everything.
Yes, I know that. I was responding to your question to those people about when God knew something. What kind of an answer did you expect from them?
Omniscience means knowing everything without exception for all eternity.
I expect them to state that omniscience means knowing everything without exception from eternity.
Really? How much more?
OK, I understand.
I recognize the need to establish a logical order, and it is somewhat similar to the infra/supra distinction. However you are drawing false conclusions from it.
In order to choose something (or someone) it is necessary to have knowledge of that which is being chosen from. I cannot choose to have vanilla ice cream without first knowing that it's an available option. Likewise, God must first have knowledge (in this case, foreknowledge) of an individual's existence (which of course necessarily implies a prior decision to create) before He could choose that individual.
HOWEVER, you are proceeding further in stating that it is a particular aspect of the knowledge of that individual (specifically, the foreknowledge of faith at some point in that individual's life) which leads Him to choose that individual.
When you say that "it is not possible that He did not know who would believe" in the way you are presenting it completely undermines the validity of needing to establish a logical order since you are essentially insisting foreknowledge of faith must necessarily precede all other decisions by God in the logical order. That's the only way you could say that there was not a point (logically) where God did now know who would believe.
To apply your position consistently, I could say that it is not possible that He did not know that those who would believe were those whom He had chosen to bring efficaciously to faith in Christ. Thus election was according to foreseen faith which faith He sovereignly brought about.
God's actions and decisions would then also have to be co-existent with that knowledge, meaning that God's knowledge of who would believe could be in the context of His efficaciously bringing it about (as in the Reformed view).
Thanks, Stuart.
Who said anything about Him dispensing with His Knowledge? Read what I said again. What I said was it does not follow that His knowledge of who would believe was the basis for His choice of them to salvation. You are saying that he chose them because He saw that they would believe. That's circular reasoning.
Nor do I see how deciding can precede knowing, unless we are willing to state that God (1) makes decisions without information, or (2) God was incapable of acquiring information that did not yet exist.
Again, you are failing to see or assimilate what I said. I never said He makes decisions without information, because that is a clear fallacy when speaking about God, for it is impossible for Him to "not know" anything. Number 2 is obviously false as well, because it is impossible for Him to not be able to acquire information that does not yet exist. Remember, we're speaking of His decision in eternity. Don't bring it into temporal time, because that's not when He made His choice of who to save. Also, information which does not yet exist in His perception is impossible, because information that does not exist is not information, because if it did exist, exists, or will exist, He already has known it from eternity. He perceives and knows all there is, and has perceived and known it from all eternity.
God certainly can know who will believe (He knows all of mankind, and has always known them, that is, know that they exist), and yet base His choice of whom He will save on His own Good Pleasure, and not their foreseen faith. Inevitably, your view winds up with man's choice of God driving His choice of them to salvation, which is putting the effect before the cause, the cart before the horse. It is logically impossible.
Fru, I think you've written a very honest post.
However, here's just one thing to reflect upon that sums it up for me. In personalizing this, I would use my own name, but let me use yours.
"When did God NOT know that Fru would be a believer?"
Why do you assume that God acts in accordance with what we call logic?
Do the exercise I asked of Fru at #373 using your own name, and I think you'll get a sense of what I'm saying.
We'll discuss a bit more later about why it was impossible for God to decide without knowledge.
"When did God NOT know His decision to bring xzins to faith in Christ?"
Look it up.
God has ALWAYS known of my salvation. Always. Likewise, He has always known of his grace applied before I believed that convicted me and overwhelmingly prompted me to faith in Christ, knowing that I would not resist and draw back.
He has always known of your salvation as well.
Therefore, when did He NOT know of His love for you?
OK
2 entries found for foreknowledge.
fore·knowl·edge  ( P ) Pronunciation Key (fôr-n l  j, f r-, fôrnl -, fr-)n.
|
| Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
foreknowledge
n : knowledge of an event before it occurs [syn: precognition]
| Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University |
If you will understand that the reason you didn't draw back and resist was because His Grace made it a certainty that you wouldn't, then you will begin to see clearly.
As long as you hold out for an ability (free will) that could thwart His purpose, you are speaking unscripturally.
Free will, as most understand it, and as it is often used in these discussions, is nothing more than a manifestation of the spirit of rebellion.
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