We agree in important ways. Broad is the path that leads to destruction, narrow the way to life.
But we continue to disagree on the question of God’s love. Let me try to explain what I am getting at by doing some simple thought experiments. Go back to my first question:
For whom did Jesus die? Good people, or sinners?
Luke 19:10 For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
Does Christ anywhere teach that he came to seek and to save those whom he hates? If they are sinners, he must, according to you, hate them. Then why does he seek them out? Why does he propose to save them? You speak of a perverse notion of love, but this presents a perverse notion of hate:
Matthew 9:13 But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
If God calls sinners to repentance, doesn’t that mean, according to you, that he is inviting people he hates to forsake their sins and receive His forgiveness and enjoy Him for eternity? A very peculiar hatred this is! Don’t you think?
And again:
Mark 10:21 Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.
Now how can this be? How can Jesus love this rich young ruler, so proud of his conformity to the formal law, yet a rebel against God at heart, inwardly a vile sinner trapped by the temptation of earthly riches? Doesn’t Jesus know he hasn’t repented yet? Of course he knows. And this young man will walk away from Christ the Savior still in his sin, sorrowful but unrepentant. And yet Jesus loved him. Not after his repentance, but before.
And again, the prodigal son:
Luke 15:20 And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
What is the picture here? A father who hates his wastrel son for all his wicked wasting, and then suddenly, upon seeing him, completely switches over to loving him? Does this sound like a man who five minutes ago was filled with hatred toward his wayward son?:
Luk 15:22-24 But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.
Does this sound like a conditional love father? Jesus spoke to us in terms we could understand through common human experience. Does this sound like a father who was full of hate one minute and full of love the next? Maybe to you, but as a dad myself I hear in him the joy welling up from a heart of enduring love and longing that had hoped this day would come, and when it did, it was time to party hard.
This is the meaning of the Gospel:
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
Ah, now there’s your “might be.” But notice, is it the salvation that seems to be uncertain, or the love of God that is uncertain? No, the love of God for sinners is definite, because it is what moved God to send His Son to save us in the first place:
Ephesians 2:4-6 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
And in what condition did he find us? Dead in sin. And what was in His heart toward us while we were still dead in our sins? Do you see hatred in this passage? I don’t. I see “his great love wherewith He loved us.” When did He love us? After we repented? No, while we were still dead in our sins. This is the miracle of the Gospel, that God should love us unto death, while we were still rebels, and draw us out of our sin and condemnation into newness of life, eternal life in Christ, by His amazing grace.
This is, IMHO, the classic dialogue between Calvinism and Arminianism with the two being unable to find common ground.
Seems to me neither “ism” is entirely correct, and the paradoxical biblical treatment reflects two different viewpoints on the same reality which would be something like this:
On some eternal plane, all can choose. Embrace Satan and go where he goes, or embrace the Lord and be pulled free of Satan and go to where the Lord is.
On the plane of this mortal coil, we see the choice, and its consequences, play out. Appeals to accept salvation, which appear as events in this mortal plane, speak to the eternal plane.
I do know one thing. I can not engineer my own salvation. All I can do is embrace its efficacious Source in a response of love, however feebly and clumsily that begins. And when that is genuine, “no one shall snatch me out of His hand.” I couldn’t do it, because on what leverage would I lean to that end? Satan? He’s beaten now. By wallowing in sin I can gain myself misery, but no longer eternal hell.