God loves everyone.
I make a point of saying so because I have recently come across a couple of blog posts stating emphatically that he does not. (Even if I agreed, it is beyond me why anyone would feel the need to rub it in; but anyway . . .)
God loves everyone. This has nothing to do with the meaning of the words “world” and “all.” I know those all-inclusive words are seldom meant to be universally-inclusive (as I have written elsewhere). John 3:16 does not prove universal anything.
I know that God loves everyone for one simple reason: he commands me to love everyone. The entire Christian life, i.e. everything related to sanctification, can be summed up as becoming more like Christ (Romans 8:21; 2 Corinthians 2:16). Sin is nothing other than not being like God (Romans 3:23). So the following syllogism applies:
God is making me to be like him.
God commands me to love everyone.
Therefore, God loves everyone.
I don’t claim that God loves everyone in the same way. I certainly don’t love the generic everyone in the same way as I love my wife. And marriage, of course, is the right comparison to make here, because I am talking about the difference between the love of God for his chosen, the love of Christ for his bride, and his love for everyone else. I don’t bestow the same favor on the entire world as I do on the one I have chosen for my own. But to say, then, that I don’t love the rest of the world at all does not follow, nor should it.
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2 Comments:
#1 || 09·11·09··09:59 || Victoria
I am convinced that your thoughts on this are very biblical--the Lord Jesus taught us to love our enemies--that takes a grace that can ONLY come from God. If God graces us to love our enemies then in some sense He must also love His enemies.
#2 || 09·11·09··10:01 || Victoria
And of course every unbeliever is His enemy!
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