God Loves Sinners is a common fallacy in the churches today. If you ask any Christian whether this statement is true or false, most will say true. Nowhere in Scripture is this phrase stated or implied and only by a misunderstanding of scripture is this phrase implied (John 3:16). While God does not love sinners, He commends and shows His Love toward sinners in benevolence. Some Christians refer to this as “common grace” or “beneficent love“. God is proactively seeking to bring sinners back to Him in repentance.
God commends His Love toward sinners. Complete love involves mutual acceptance, whereby both giving and receiving are involved. God’s Love is no exception. Only those who receive in faith His offer of forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ get accepted by God, and this acceptance in the Family of God points to another great doctrine of the Christian faith, the Doctrine of Adoption (Romans 8:15, Gal 4:5, Eph 1:5).
“…but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” KJV Romans 8:15
“To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” KJV Gal 4:5
“Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will…” KJV Eph 1:5
What is love without acceptance? Any so-called act of Love that does not involve acceptance is cheap, and insincere, and disappointing. Just as a gift has no value until it is accepted, neither is the Love of God realized until one accepts God’s Pardon. God wants sinners to accept His Love by believing in His Son, Jesus Christ, as their Lord and Savior. God demonstrated the unwavering proof of His sincerity in offering His Love toward sinners by the predetermined act that made it possible for sinners to be reconciled to a Holy God, the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. In doing this, God is Just in offering mercy to those who believe in Jesus. God is still commending His Love toward sinners, and will do so until the end of this church age.
God does not love sinners, but He does show His Love toward sinners. This is not a subtle, insignificant difference. It means everything in being able to expound some of the major doctrines of Christianity. True love involves acceptance. The only way for man to experience this kind of love is by believing in Christ so that He can be adopted into the Family of God. This is the great Doctrine of Adoption. God is benevolently demonstrating His Love toward sinners in the hope that they will want to enter into His Family so that He can fully love them as His Children. God shows sinners His Love by His incredible patience and forbearance with them by not executing judgment on them immediately, but rather He gives sinners a space of time to consider and repent. He also is kind toward them, giving them physical blessings on earth: food, clothing, shelter, and wholesome pleasures. He even delivers them out of some of their troubles when they cry out to him, even though they forget about Him when their troubles are over. He shows pity to the heathen nations who are ignorant of His Ways. Finally, God allows sinners to hear about Him and His offer of salvation, for God does not take pleasure in the death of a sinner, but is willing that all should come to believe in His Love toward them through the sacrifice of His Son.
“…knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” Romans 2:4 (KJV)
“For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.” Psalms 86:5 (KJV)
“Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live:…” Ezek 33:11 (KJV)
“And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?” Jonah 4:11 (KJV)
“17 Fools because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted. 18 Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; and they draw near unto the gates of death. 19 Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses. 20 He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions. 21 Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!” Psalms 107:17-21 (KJV)
“28 Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. 29 He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. 30 Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven. 31 Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!” Psalms 107:28-31 (KJV)
If God loves sinners, then how can sinners experience His wrath when they die? What kind of love says I love you one moment, but you experience His Wrath the moment you die. In fact, telling people that God loves them distorts the Gospel message and actually makes God look capricious, two-faced, and unrighteous. I heard a foul-mouthed comedian mock Christians in this way (paraphrase is mine):
“Oh yeah, how bout them Christians? Has any of them come up to you today and tell you today that Jesus loves you? Yeah, Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you. Then you die, and Jesus says, Go to Hell, Go to Hell.” [at this point scornful laughs from the audience]
How ironic and how horrifying that a scornful remark against Christians might be a justifiable one! If our message really does say God loves you one moment, then hates you the next, do we really expect people who hear this message to respect the One we seek to represent? They do not have the Holy Spirit to discern the faults with our erroneous message, so they have no choice but to increase their hatred for the God we have presented to them.
Now why would Christians distort this message from “repent and believe the Gospel” to “God loves you”? Without stating their motives, since only God knows them, I will state the obvious: saying God loves you is not offensive to people, while telling them they need to repent is offensive. Christians can avoid persecution by altering the message to “God loves you”. In every generation, there are Christians who want the benefits of salvation, but are unwilling to endure the persecution that comes with it, so they alter the message so as not to offend the world.
Interestingly, there is a book, Unchristian, by David Kinnaman and David Lyons, that focuses on just this: what Christians can do to mitigate the ever increasing evil way the world looks at Christians. One scripture that proponents of this false statement use is John 3: 16, which states that God so loved the world that He gave His Son so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. The Greek word for world here is kosmos, which refers to God’s Creation of the earth and everything within it, including man. Thus, the created man or the fact that man exists, not the state of man (sinful), is the focus of what God “so loved”.
Another scripture used to support this false statement is Romans 5: 8, which states that God commended his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The emphasis is on the word, commended, again beckoning the sinner to respond to God by receiving the Gift of eternal love. Other scriptures used to support this false notion that God loves sinners are the scriptures that tell Christians to love their neighbors and even love their enemies. The rationale is this: If God tells us to love our enemies, doesn’t He love them too then? While this rationale is logical on the surface, it misses the kind of love that is in view here. Like I said earlier, complete love involves mutual acceptance, but there is an incomplete type of love in which one of the parties refuses to be accepted. This is what is in view here. The Christian is told to love his enemies, even though those enemies do not accept that love in return. The goal here is to bring conviction to the enemy that they are wrong, if perchance the Lord might grant them repentance.
“20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. 21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:20-21 (KJV)
Summarizing, the misunderstanding that comes from the saying that God loves sinners is that there is some kind of implied acceptance, where there is none. Unless the Christian witness qualifies this statement of Love from the Father, it does give a false assurance to the hearer’s ears, and makes God’s Love appear ambiguous and capricious.
I think you’re making a few dangerous statements here.
“Thus, the created man or the fact that man exists, not the state of man (sinful), is the focus of what God “so loved”.”
The truth cannot be that our God could possibly love the created man OR his existence except for the elect, whether their election is fated or foreknown (the differences between Calvin and Arminius are about the gearbox; the crankshaft still works no matter what we think the transmission looks like). His love for the Cosmos can only be for general creation. God wants to redeem it, or at least rectify its existence or memory before he destroys or scraps it, something only God himself could hope to do. Saving some of us and using us for an eternal purpose shows that God still loves the world which produced us, even when we ruined it and made it by all means worthless garbage.
Whereas you said, “God shows sinners His Love by His incredible patience…” this is true for the elect, it is not true at all for reprobate sinners. The purpose of this sort of ‘love’ is to lure them into complacency, to magnify their guilt and ripen them for judgement. It’s not love at all, but favor. God gave the Canaanites 400 years’ prosperity in a land of milk and honey so that their iniquity might be complete, before they were subject to Joshua’s incomplete cleansing campaign, an illustration for all mankind. He blesses the reprobate for the express purpose of gloriously compounding their guilt and subjecting them to greater torment in hell, just as the learned scholar of the Bible who leaves the faith will receive many stripes, while the ignorant peasant from a second-world regime will receive fewer (not that it matters; they are without excuse and their torment is infinite.)
God’s ‘love’ for the reprobate is not even to be construed as a hologram. It simply isn’t real, neither offered, nor received, nor returned. The comforts of his grace are meant to glorify his justice- his unending rage and hatred for those who are not chosen in the end. He has foreseen or planned their unending misery while still rightfully blaming them for it. Sentimentals call it a “debt trap.” We call it Justice.
Well it is obvious you are a Calvinist, something I condemn as one of the most insidious, deceitful, damnable, and demonic-inspired seductions in the church age, especially this time. Saying that God is only concerned about the “elect” confuses everything since you do not have the same foreknowledge as God to understand what you are talking about! Yet that’s exactly what Calvinists do: they act like they can see from eternity’s perspective just as well as God can. What audacity, recklessness, and self-righteousness! So you broad-brush everything into a simplistic reasoning like this: God loves the elect, but hates everyone else. You have totally disregarded the scriptures that attempt to correct you like Isaiah 55:9 – “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
And of course you totally ruin the gospel message itself that explicitly says Christ died for all. But I allow you to post here so that your heresy is exposed.
Good! So you do know that Calvinism is a load of BS.
I have a hobby of writing comments on blogs and pushing Calvinist doctrine to its logical conclusions to see how far I can bend an author’s conscience until it snaps or bends over into the dust. You can see how ridiculous it becomes when I parody the logic of the doctrine and ignore the explicit contradictions that Calvinists insert to justify it.
However, no matter what I said, there will be those whose future is hell, and those whose future is heaven. Calvinism has this right. However, why do you believe that the love that God extends toward sinners is not really love because it isn’t returned? I can illustrate how love unrequited is effective from someone who is a pantocratic, omnipotent, omniscient super-genius that God is with just a concerned parent’s love that is effective.
Say I have a kid who got himself hooked on meth. I love him. He steals from me to get more dope. He’s hopelessly addicted to it just like the western church sees sin. Possession of methamphetamine or operating a vehicle under its influence is illegal, so it comes with a sentence and punishment, just like sin.
Suppose I contacted my legislator or a judge and convinced them to up the sentence for small-amount possession from, say, 6 months, to 1 year and 6 months, which is about how much time it takes to (physically) recover from a methamphetamine addiction. I call the cops on my kid, and get him in prison. Tough love they call it, and I know the kid will be anything but loving in return for what I did. I put him in the slammer. He’s now a convicted criminal. The boy’s addiction, deprived of the dope, hits the breaking point, and the crash now consumes him. He is miserable now. He is literally incapable of pleasure. All his dopamine receptors are burnt out like lightbulbs. He now knows it fully and truly: The High is a Lie. Justice has been served, too. Served up on a concrete and steel-doored platter with soap on a rope.
“What is love without acceptance,” you asked? That’s love without acceptance. I gave the boy another chance. He doesn’t love me for it. He hates me! He can’t help but hate me. He’s seeped in meth; he isn’t capable of love. But in two years he gets his brains back. It still has holes in it. His MRI shows empty spots where the damage was permanent. I’m not Jesus; I can’t bring that dead tissue back to life.
A concerned parent’s love was unacceptable to his child, but he didn’t stop me from loving him, and it didn’t make my love ineffective.
How much more, then, is God’s love effective to those who don’t love him back?
Truly, Calvinism is not far off from your assertion. Assume universalism isn’t true, and assume that God doesn’t refuse to know where we end up (open theism). Why does God, to whom alone is immortality (1Tim.6), give it to those in hell? Is God truly so demanding: that he decided neither to reform, purify, nor euthanize the damned, but to sustain their spirits in consciousness, refusing to withdraw his hand, or even actively sustaining them in eternal life in the eternal fire, rather than actually destroying us? Does God decide to never smelt the sin out of them and recover the precious metal, but quarantine it into an eternally sustained monument of the failure of Love? Let’s use the two verses in Revelation that point towards eternal torment, and morph everything else in the Bible around it, shall we?
“Fear not he who can destroy the body but not the soul. I say to you, fear he who can destroy both body and soul in hell, but will not: rather he will sustain your soul forever in the fire. Yes, fear him!” Why do we adhere to Augustine’s Manichean fragments in his philosophy rather than that of the earlier fathers? You can see how ridiculous it becomes when I parody the logic of the doctrine.
I don’t like your “in sin”- cerity. Yet I will do what God does to everyone, bear with them as a show of His “Love In Action” toward them without regard to them loving Him back. In fact, that is my response to your recent post in which you assumed erroneously that I was saying that God is not showing any love to the sinner in his current unregenerate state. Did not I mention “common grace” and “His beneficence”? God still shows acts of love toward His Creation: long-suffering, slow to anger, pitifulness, or as Jesus stated, “…for He makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” So your hypothetical statement about you having a son that you continued to love despite him treating you terribly and not loving you back perfectly lines up with how God is acting towards all of His Creation, the good and the bad, which is a far cry for how the Calvinist sees God with respect to the unrighteous and the wicked. So to sum up, there are various aspects of God’s Love:
1. God’s love as displayed to His Creation in general as the Creator (which plays along with your father/son hypothetical), and
2. God’s love to those who receive it which makes God not only their Creator, but their Redeemer, Lord, and Savior.
Only the latter one is love truly complete in which total acceptance is achieved.
Regarding your other “stuff” about universalism, open theism, and God’s way with man in this life and the next, I am reluctant to address since it dives into areas that are not completely revealed through the scriptures. These subjects are a lot like how Calvinism and all the other “isms” evolve: Speak in complexity to your hearers until they cannot retrace their steps and just assume that the dotted lines of the false teacher’s reasonings upon them must be true. Beware of your own trust in your own reasonings and your willingness to go down complex paths of the mind. That is Satan’s realm of excellence.
This all requires that the love of an omnipotent being be ineffective, or unreal. This is why theodicies of hell are impossible, and the earliest fathers are probably more right about hell than the doctor of grace.
If God’s love does not reform the most grievous sinner against his will, just as the parent detoxifies the addict against his will, then the amount of God’s ‘love’ for them clearly isn’t enough to save them, and might as well be the parody that I described: an impotent mockery of love, not that which desires the best for someone, but a trap to augment their guilt.
I put my son through 18 months of hell to save him. God doesn’t bother with the saving part, just the hell part.
That’s how unsaving common grace and beneficence work- they lure the wicked into complacency until they come to a sudden, dreadful end, thus Psalm 73 is not about empires and armies, but about individual souls. If all that God’s ‘love’ does to those who eventually go to hell is give them a little happiness on earth before they are tortured for all eternity, then it is miserably impotent, or it’s fake. All that longsuffering was just God biding his time so he can really get a nice shot at them. God is certainly omnipotent, and the Psalms tell us a lot about how God feels about the wicked. If these Psalms are about individual souls, it’s not unreasonable to assume that God’s love for them is not real, since it doesn’t bring the best for them, but truly brings about the infinitely worst. Being destroyed or reformed is not the worst that can happen. Tartarus is.
What I’m saying is: infinite, willfully sustained punishment annuls all love. In any sort, in any way, no matter how much benefit previously, no matter how ostentatious, that love is still divided by one, impotent and temporal, while the hate is divided by zero, perfect and eternal, making any love absolutely worthless.
Either everyone is saved, or those not saved were never loved, because love can act, and succeed against the recipient’s will. It doesn’t have to be accepted. Indeed, if we are depraved by Original Sin, it can’t be willfully accepted.