- RSS FeedSubscribe
- « Previous PostA La Carte (4/20)
- Next Post »CrossReference (Episode 4)
A Jealous Love
- 04/20/11
- 31
The sentiment that Jesus has unconditional love for all of us has become standard fare in many evangelical churches. The speaker assures the congregation that Jesus loves them to such an extent that he died for them. He assures the audience that Jesus is just waiting for them to turn to him and to reciprocate the love he already has for them. Some people go even further in their claims to unbelievers. I remember once reading an article by Rick Warren printed in Ladies Home Journal. In this article, titled "Learn to Love Yourself!," Warren wrote the following: "God accepts us unconditionally, and in His view we are all precious and priceless." The article closes with these words: "You can believe what others say about you, or you can believe in yourself as God does, who says you are truly acceptable, lovable, valuable and capable." Nowhere does he qualify these statements. Instead they are offered as blanket statements, encompassing all of humanity.
Is this how the Bible portrays God's feelings towards those who do not believe? It’s worth a glance at just a few of the many passages that speak of God's position towards the unregenerate.
Psalm 5:5 says that "The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers." The NIV translates this as "you hate all who do wrong." Psalm 11:5 tells us that "The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence." And turning to the New Testament, John 3:36 reads "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." The Bible clearly portrays God as one whose wrath burns against both sin and sinner. His righteous anger burns against all unrighteousness, and against all who are unrighteous.
In The God Who Justifies, James White writes the following. "Theologians should be those enraptured by the beauty of the unchanging object of their study: the eternal, immutable God. But theologians are people, and they are influenced, to greater or lesser extents, by the society and era in which they live. The cultural decay of modern times has inspired many a theological denial of biblical truth, most often when that biblical truth speaks to something that is unfashionable. One such issue...is the oft-repeated biblical phrase 'the wrath of God.'" White goes on to say that while we most often associate God's wrath with the Old Testament, where he commanded the Israelites to utterly destroy the pagan nations, in reality his wrath is most clearly shown in the New Testament. Were you to ask where in the Bible we see the clearest picture of God’s wrath, I would have to point to Jesus' final hours, from the Garden of Gethsemane to his death on the cross. After all, what but the need for satisfaction of God's wrath, could compel the Father to send his Son to such a horrible, painful, death?
Readers Digest has (used to have?) a monthly column entitled "That's Outrageous" where readers can submit stories about miscarriages of justice. These stories often feature criminals who have committed crimes, yet have found either a corrupt judge or a loophole in the system that has allowed them to escape justice. When we read this, do we react with adulation towards the judge who let the person escape justice, or do we react with an exclamation of "that's outrageous!"? Of course we react with shock and outrage. This is a natural reaction—we expect and demand justice for all who violate the law. Yet when it comes to God, we seem to want him to be something just a little less than human. We expect God to look upon human evil and wink his eye or turn his back, loving the one who has blatantly, purposely violated his rules and flaunted this sin before him.
There are some words we use all the time, but we can never expect to hear from God. Among them are "we can't blame him..." and "it's not his fault..." When a young man commits a terrible crime, we are quick to excuse his actions because of a tough past or abusive parents, but God never excuses sin. When a woman deserts her husband and children, we may look to her past and find all sorts of reasons that she should not be held accountable, but God does not do this. He holds each of us accountable for every one of our actions. There is never an excuse for violating his law. God cannot and will not turn his back on even the tiniest sin. It is against his very nature to do so. Every sin demands an accounting.
Perhaps part of the problem is that we have misunderstood God's love. Perhaps we have interpreted God's perfect love, through our imperfect, changing, emotional, sentimental, untrustworthy love. To paraphrase Leon Morris in The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, when the Bible speaks of God's love, it does not refer to a warm, fuzzy sentimentality, but a love that is so jealous for the good of the one who is loved that it blazes out in wrath against all evil. The writers of the New Testament had no concept of a love that did not react in the strongest fashion against all sin. He writes "Perhaps the difficulty arises because we are making a false antithesis between the divine wrath and the divine love. We are handicapped by the fact that we must necessarily use terms properly applicable to human affairs, and for us it is very difficult to be simultaneously wrathful and loving." But God is able to be both perfectly loving and wrathful. Unlike us, he is not given to outbursts of emotion or to irrationality. His wrath is as perfectly and completely manifested as his love.
So now we must ask why this matters. What does it matter if we believe God has full and unconditional love toward everyone? The problem is that a diminished view of the wrath of God indicates a diminished view of human depravity. A person who believes God's wrath does not abide on the sinner, must also believe that God does not hate his sin. This will inevitably lead to a diminished view of justification. What use is justification if sin is not really that important? It is no wonder that the doctrines of grace begin with Total Depravity. Only when we understand the desperation of man's condition can we understand the love and wrath of God. It may seem to us that it is easier and more effective to preach a gospel of universal love—a gospel where God loves and accepts us just as we are. But this is not the gospel of the Bible. Until we know our sin and God's wrath against it, we cannot know love. Until we know love, we cannot know the Savior.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
Releasing on April 1, The Next
Published in 2008, this book
This is a guide that calls men,
This review of the bestselling
New to the site? You can get
This is a guide written
Comments (31)
Excellent article, very well explained.
The more I understand God’s wrath and my total depravity, the more I bow in awe before God’s grace.
Thank you.
Well written, thought and heart worthy.The deception of “unconditional love” is it simply does not exist. All love possess conditions. Love cannot be love without an antithesis, or there would be no understanding of love.
In a Marriage ceremony it is not unconditional love you “vow” it is the promise of shared and reciprocated love based on a set criteria of expectations. That is the truth and mystery of the “great marriage” between us as the bride of Christ and our savior.
Christ=A Condition.Love=Price.
It is cute, quippy, and nice to explain unconditional love to people you “think” are only in need of “affirmation”, but all of us who even at our greatest act of righteousness can only amount to filthy rags, must understand: Salvation trumps Affirmation, and they are not mutually exclusive roads that lead to the other.
Great work Tim.
Profound truths Tim Challies…. I will be sharing this..
“It may seem to us that it is easier and more effective to preach a gospel of universal love…”
What is the alternative to “universal” love? Restricted love? Limited love? Is this what you’re proposing in place of “universal” love? God loves only those he has predestined to come to saving knowledge of him?
Great truth Tim. Thank you!
Tim, I see the bigger point, and agree with it just fine. But what, do we need to rewrite verses like John 3:16, so that they read, “For God so loved the world but so hated the people in it that he gave his one and only son, but not for any reason anyone could ever figure out?” Did God give his son because he hated sin or because he loved people?
Sam,John 3:16 does not state God’s motive in giving his son. The “so” in the verse means “in this way”. “For God loved the world in this way, that he gave his Son”. So while the giving of the Son was indeed an act of love, this specific verse does not speak to the argument that love was the primary motivation. We will find that God’s jealousy for his own glory is God’s primary motivation in sending his Son. That said, the love displayed is certainly an aspect of God’s glory.
You are right on with this reflection. I believe that one of the reason that we are losing so many of our young people is that we no longer teach them that they are sinners. They are loved no matter what so why follow Jesus we can do anything. Secondly they never seen anyone in the body of Christ broken over their sin and repenting. Seems like sin is not an issue so God’s wrath must be a outdated idea. We have a serious problem.
Total depravity is where it must begin in our study of love, sin and justice. If you deny total depravity, it is not a hard to deny eternal punishment.
But this message is very difficult to teach in today’s world, where even Christians think John 3:16 teaches universal love for every person who’s ever lived. Start back in John 1:1 and read through the end of Chapter 3, then it will be clearer.
Excellent post, Tim. I stand amazed that a righteous and holy God would choose to love a sinner like me.
I think looking at the context of John 3:16 (John 3:16-21) gives a more complete picture of God and His love for us. I have engaged several people on this topic, “the ‘unconditional’ love of God” and for some reason they always think they are saying that God is not prejudiced against anyone, regardless of who they are or what they have done. While this is true, I think the rest of the passage in John 3 tells us there is a major “condition” in order to receive the benefits of His (I prefer to say “unfailing”) love. That condition is faith/belief. Those who do not believe…well, here is how Jesus says it…16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
“God’s love…that is so jealous for the good of the one that is loved…” Good meditation for Holy Week. Think of the strength of the Father’s love for His Son. If the cross does not demonstrate His hatred for sin, nothing else can. And the fact that He used His Son for the propitiation of that wrath—will He not be jealous over the price His Son paid? All those clothed in Christ’s righteousness will surely be glorified. All those trying to stand in their own righteousness will surely be condemned.
Thanks for your comment, Mark. Yes, I have understood that the verse should read something like, “For God loved the world in this way: he gave …”. However, that still leaves the question of who God loves and who he does not love insufficiently addressed by the approach of this post.
But, then, I don’t buy into Reform theology to begin with, so I should expect there to be only a certain amount of seeing this in the same way between us.
Sam, the Bible is not silent on who God loves:
“He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him…Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” - John 14:21,23
In short, the Father loves those who love Jesus. Therefore, the Father’s love has one condition: true love of the Son. True love is shown through producing evidential fruit.
Michael,
So you would disagree with what John MacArthur writes here?
“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 these mercies flow out of God’s boundless love? Yet it is evident that they are showered even on unrepentant sinners.
I want to acknowledge, however, that explaining God’s love toward the reprobate is not as simple as most modern evangelicals want to make it. Clearly there is a sense in which the psalmist’s expression, “I hate the assembly of evildoers” (Ps. 26:5) is a reflection of the mind of God. “Do I not hate those who hate Thee, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against Thee? I hate them with the utmost hatred; they have become my enemies” (Ps. 139:21-22). Such hatred as the psalmist expressed is a virtue, and we have every reason to conclude that it is a hatred God Himself shares. After all, He did say, “I have hated Esau” (Mal. 1:3; Rom. 9:13). The context reveals God was speaking of a whole race of wicked people. So there is a true and real sense in which Scripture teaches that God hates the wicked.
So an important distinction must be made. God loves believers with a particular love. It is a family love, the ultimate love of an eternal Father for His children. It is the consummate love of a Bridegroom for His bride. It is an eternal love that guarantees their salvation from sin and its ghastly penalty. That special love is reserved for believers alone.
However, limiting this saving, everlasting love to His chosen ones does not render God’s compassion, mercy, goodness, and love for the rest of mankind insincere or meaningless. When God invites sinners to repent and receive forgiveness (Isa. 1:18; Matt. 11:28-30), His pleading is from a sincere heart of genuine love. “‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’” (Ezek. 33:11). Clearly God does love even those who spurn His tender mercy, but it is a different quality of love, and different in degree from His love for His own.”
(http://www.gty.org/Resources/Questions/QA184)
“Unlike us, he is not given to outbursts of emotion or to irrationality.”
What bible are you reading? ;)
In 2007, I wrote a piece based on the question, “Does God accept us as we are?” I closed by suggesting the answer: “It depends on what you think you are?” As you articulated, what we “are” is the problem. Only when we come to this full recognition do we cry for salvation: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me…” (Romans 7:24). (http://thinkpoint.wordpress.com/2007/09/17/does-god-accept-us-as-we-are/)
@Michael: “the Bible is not silent on who God loves”
Indeed not.
1 John 2:2: “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
Romans 5:6-8: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Ezekiel 33:11: “As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live;”
Sam,I would not disagree with JM. Of course there are different kinds of love But would you disagree with Jesus in John 14?
There’s Creator to creature love, and Father to adopted son love. Yet when universalists and unbelievers speak of God’s love, they are trying to mesh these two together, and put Divine love above every other attribute.
@JPH,
Is there someone disagreeing with those verses? Or are you imposing a different view of “world” than John had in mind from the context? Of the 74 times John uses the term “world” in his writings, does it always mean the same? If no, please distinguish.
Nearly a third of the text of Acts is made up of speeches and sermons of the apostles as they are empowered by the Holy Spirit to bear witness to the good news of Jesus Christ. Acts documents the spread of the gospel by evangelistic preaching of the early church leaders and provides us with several examples of evangelistic sermons. Perhaps it is surprising that the word ‘love’ does not occur once in the book.
In Testaments of Love, Leon Morris asks, “How do we harmonize the assurance that ‘God is love’ with the assertion that ‘our God is a consuming fire’? Most of us never think about such problems, and in the end our idea of love is indistinguishable from that of the world around us.”1…
From Love, Prayer and Forgiveness: When Basics Become Heresies http://tinyurl.com/y9p4vez
Just wrestled through some of these issues with my Titus II group last night while discussing Martha Peace’s Attitudes of a Transformed Heart. This was a great follow up to our discussion. Thanks Tim!
I applaud you Tim for clearly defining that God is both a God of love and a God of justice. There are far too many preachers out there who make God’s love a syrupy mix of universalism and cheap grace. Since I have been reading Dr. R.C. Sproul’s book on “The Holiness of God” I have come to a far better understanding of his justice. Yes, if we really want to know His love we must understand our depravity, and what He did for our salvation. Thank you brother!
Ah the most honest and thought provoking article i have ever read, not afraid of just telling the truth in the most real sense.
Thanks and I praise the Lord for you!
Really good words. He is jealous for us - not in a way that is palatable to us, I believe, but in a better, bigger, purer, more ravenous and complete way. We shouldn’t take that love for granted, but I think we do a lot of the time. As if God is required to love us. I think this sentence of yours is key: “Until we know our sin and God’s wrath against it, we cannot know love.” Yes - the more I stare at my own depravity the more the weight of His redemption becomes beautifully heavier.
Clearly God’s Love and His Wrath go hand in hand. God is 100% love and 100% just. He is also the justifier. If you don’t know His Justice- you don’t even know you NEED His love. Yes, the Good News is good news to those who come to know that they need forgiveness and are forgiven. Personal Testimony: I heard and practiced in a church where Jesus on the Cross was shared- His love was shared but one day I watched an end times movie and the Spirit opened my eyes and showed me my sinfulness and impending judgment- THEN did the LOVE of Christ make sense to me! No one can put God in a box and say this is the way to win non-believers for the Kingdom! This is the way the Spirit worked it in me. It is by the guiding of the Holy Spirit that gives us the words to share right into the need of that person!
Here a just a few that speak to the rest of the story. My friends, is it love when we don’t share “the rest of the story”?
Chapter 20 RevelationJudgment at the Throne of God 11Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. 12And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. 13And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. 14Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.Revelation 215AndHe who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new “And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” 6Then He said to me, “It is done I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. 7”He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. 8”But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”Revelation 22The Final Message 10And he said to me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. 11”Let the one who does wrong, still do wrong; and the one who is filthy, still be filthy; and let the one who is righteous, still practice righteousness; and the one who is holy, still keep himself holy.” 12”Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. 13”I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” 14Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city. 15Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.Romans 1 18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.Romans 5:8-10 8But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.Ephesians 5 5For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7Therefore do not be partakers with them;Colossians 3 5Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. 6For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come [a]upon the sons of disobedience, 7and in them you also once walked, when you were living in themRevelation 15 1Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels who had seven plagues, which are the last, because in them the wrath of God is finished.
Tim,
You said: “The problem is that a diminished view of the wrath of God indicates a diminished view of human depravity. A person who believes God’s wrath does not abide on the sinner, must also believe that God does not hate his sin. This will inevitably lead to a diminished view of justification.” Amen! Amen!!!!
Regarding God’s wrath… I think it was Pastor John Piper who said: “The only safe place from the wrath of God is in God.”
When we list the attributes of the Holy Father that we believe in, worship, and read about in Scripture; all of them must be preceded with the adjective “perfect.” I doubt that the finite and sinful can fully appreciate the razor sharpness of what Holy perfection is objectively, or what Holy perfection really means. Of God’s many attributes, we can say with certainty that He is: Eternal, Holy, Immutable, and Just… There are many more of course, but for now let us focus on His perfect Justice or Justness for the moment.
If God is perfectly Just, (and we know He is) then when He displays and pours forth His wrath, it must therefore be a wrath that is perfectly justified. Meaning that the objects of His wrath are owed every bit that they receive. No more, no less! From a quantitative perspective, God cannot deliver more wrath than that which is due or His Holy (perfect) justice would be sullied. At this point it should also be noted that God can choose to withhold wrath that is due and still not be, in any way, unjust. To withhold wrath is not an act of injustice, it is an act of mercy!
It is in God’s very nature and His character to be perfect in every way. There are not many things that God cannot do, but one of them would be to violate His perfect character, or to change His very nature, His very essence. All the attributes of God are immutable! So, if God has wrath stored up for a sinful mankind, then this wrath must be fully discharged to satisfy His perfect justice. There simply is no other solution! Fortunately, our Holy Father sent His “Only Begotten Son” to live among those who deserved His full and unmitigated wrath! Yet it was His Son who bore the terrible wrath that we so deserved. He who was without sin, bore the sin of us all…
I don’t think it is humanly possible to fully appreciate the Wrath that was due us; likewise how can we fathom the magnitude of the gift given to us through the sacrificial Blood of the Son! Like all of the attributes of God the Father; His grace, His mercy, and His Love are infinite!
Soli Deo Gloria!
In Christ,
That is the first verse I thought of when I read this post. John 3:16 is te pennacle of the New Testament and God’s love. He sent His Son out of love for the world. Also if Jesus is the atonement for all sin Colossians 2:13-14 what sin is God taking His wrath out on?
I really am trying to understand so if anyone can explain please do.Thanks,Julie Moore
In my haste I made the following error in the second to last paragraph of my comment above: “bore the sin of us all…”
It should have read:
“bore the wrath for us all…”
My apologies, Dan…
As we celebrate the Resurrection, I am reminded of the one thing that Jesus’ told us would be the way in which the world would know that we are his disciples—our love for our fellow Christians.