'It has been customary to say God loves the sinner though He hates his sin. But that is a meaningless distinction. What is there in a sinner but sin? Is it not true that his “whole head is sick” and his “whole heart faint,” and that, “From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness” in him? (Isa 1:5-6).
Is it true that God loves the one who is despising and rejecting His blessed Son? God is Light as well as Love, and therefore His love must be a holy love. To tell the Christ-rejecter that God loves him is to cauterize his conscience as well as to afford him a sense of security in his sins. The fact is, the love of God is a truth for the saints only, and to present it to the enemies of God is to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs. With the exception of John 3:16, not once in the four Gospels do we read of the Lord Jesus, the perfect teacher, telling sinners that God loved them! In the book of Acts, which records the evangelistic labors and messages of the apostles, God’s love is never referenced at all!
But when we come to the epistles, which are addressed to the saints, we have a full presentation of this precious truth—God’s love for His own. Let us seek to rightly divide the Word of God and then we shall not be found taking truths which are addressed to believers and misapplying them to unbelievers. That which sinners need to have brought before them is the ineffable holiness, the exacting righteousness, the inflexible justice, and the terrible wrath of God.
Risking the danger of being misunderstood, let us say—and we wish we could say it to every evangelist and preacher in the country—there is far too much presenting of Christ to sinners today (by those sound in the faith), and far too little showing sinners their need of Christ, i.e., their absolutely ruined and lost condition, their imminent and awful danger of suffering the wrath to come, the fearful guilt resting upon them in the sight of God: to present Christ to those who have never been shown their need of Him, seems to us to be guilty of casting pearls before swine. If it be true that God loves every member of the human family then why did our Lord tell His disciples “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father...If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him”(John 14:21, 23)?
Why say “he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father” if the Father loves everybody? The same limitation is found in Proverbs 8:17: “I love them that love me.”
Again; we read, “Thou hatest all workers of iniquity”—not merely the works of iniquity. Here then is a flat repudiation of present teaching that, God hates sin but loves the sinner; Scripture says, “Thou hatest all workers of iniquity”(Psa 5:5)! “God is angry with the wicked every day”(Psa 7:11). “He that believeth not on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”—not “shall abide,”but even now—“abideth on him”(Joh 3:36).
Can God “love”the one on whom His “wrath” abides? Is it not evident that the words “the love of God which is in Christ Jesus”(Rom 8:39) marks a limitation, both in the sphere and objects of His love? Again; is it not plain from the words “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated”(Rom 9:13) that God does not love everybody? It is written, “For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth”(Heb 12:6). Does not this verse teach that God’s love is restricted to the members of His own family? If He loves all men without exception then the distinction and limitation here mentioned is quite meaningless.
Finally, we would ask, Is it conceivable that God will love the damned in the Lake of Fire? Yet, if He loves them now He will do so then, seeing that His love knows no change—He is “without variableness or shadow of turning”!'
A.W. Pink, 'The Sovereignty of God'
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