Does God Love Everyone?

A difficult aspect of answering (seemingly) uncomplicated questions is the complexity that may be required to answer them sufficiently. In other words, it may take three hundred pages of scholarship to answer a simple four-word question. The subject of this essay exemplifies this dilemma. It asks, does God love everyone? Before answering, important distinctions should be acknowledged if one is to provide a biblically sound conclusion. Therefore, certain presuppositions and distinctions pertinent to the question will be examined with the intent of producing an answer faithful to the Scriptures. In short, my answer is, yes, God does love everyone, but God’s love has diverse expressions towards various people. This will be argued in three moves: (i) by establishing biblical precommitments that define how the question should be approached; (ii) by examining distinct ways God’s love is expressed in Scripture; (iii) and by addressing some objections to this conclusion. My aim here is to provide a brief introduction to this issue that helps avoid unbiblical conclusions. 

Biblical Presuppositions

In a popular book critiquing Calvinism, Jerry Walls states what he believes the dividing line is between Calvinists and Arminians: “The deepest issue that divides Arminians and Calvinists is not the sovereignty of God, predestination, or the authority of the Bible. The deepest difference pertains to how we understand the character of God. Is God good in the sense that he deeply and sincerely loves all persons?” (Walls, Does God Love Everyone?: The Heart of What's Wrong with Calvinism, 80). Walls is correct; The fundamental dispute is over the nature of God. The problem lies in how this question is approached. God’s goodness and his love are judged by “the sense that he (God) deeply and sincerely loves all persons” which is surely loaded with the author’s assumptions of what deep and sincere love should be. Walls has a standard by which he decides if God is loving.  In another work, the same author and his colleague declare, “If love will not employ all available means to rescue someone from ultimate loss, it is hard to hear the announcement of universal love as good news” (Walls & Dongell, Why I Am Not a Calvinist, 55). This is an example of starting with presuppositions the Bible does not adhere to. In contrast, in order to know if God is loving, students of Scripture should examine how God defines his love in Scripture and adjust their standards to fit that revelation. My starting point is the presupposition that the Bible’s descriptions of God’s love are also the standards of God’s love. Therefore, it is imperative to avoid demanding that God must meet external qualifications.

Alongside a biblical starting point, defining the nature of God’s love should be done in light of all God’s attributes and his unique “otherness.” Narrow fixations on God’s love that downplay or dismiss all that God is pervert the whole counsel of God concerning himself. Any account of God as love should include the reality that God is also transcendent, holy, just, etc. As D.A. Carson writes, 

One of the most dangerous results of the impact of contemporary sentimentalized versions of love on the church is our widespread inability to think through the fundamental questions that alone enable us to maintain a doctrine of God in biblical proportion and balance (Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, 15).

Inquiring about God’s love cannot be done faithfully without a holistic picture of all he has revealed himself to be. The acceptance or denial of these precommitments strongly influences how the question of God’s love for all people will be answered. 

Love’s Diversity

With those precommitments in mind, the way forward is to examine how the Scriptures speak of God’s love in order to provide a clear answer. Carson lists five distinct ways God’s love is presented in Scripture (Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, 16-21). His summary will frame the discussion here. First (#1), there is God’s “intra-Trinitarian” love where the Father uniquely loves the Son (John 3:35; 5:20), and the Son uniquely loves the Father (John 14:21). Second (#2), there is God’s “providential” or benevolent love for all creatures (Psalm 136:25; 145:9; Matthew 5:45; Luke 6:35; Acts 14:17). Third (#3), God’s love is expressed in his “salvific stance toward his fallen world” where he calls all people to repent and turn to him for salvation (Ezekiel 33:11; Matthew 11:28-30; John 3:16; 1 John 2:2). Fourth (#4), God has a “particular, effective, selecting love toward his elect” (Deuteronomy 7:7-9; 10:14-15; Malachi 1:2-3; Ephesians 1:3-14; 2:4-6; 5:25). Lastly (#5), there are times when God speaks of his love conditionally to his people, calling them to remain or abide in his love through obedience (Exodus 20:6; John 15:9-10; Jude 21).

The diversity of God’s love revealed in these examples eliminates the possibility of restricting what his love is to a single definition. Does God love everyone? Yes, he loves all human beings by way of his providential blessings and his salvific posture toward the world as a whole. Donald Macleod helpfully illustrates Christ’s' love for all people through his incarnation: 

…there was also a bond between Him and all whose human nature He shared. The burdened and weary were His people in a way that no other species could ever be, and He had entered fully into their experience. Apart from sin, nothing human was alien to Him, and that included not only the burdens and the sorrows and the injustices which were their lot, but the weakness they experienced in trying to deal with them (Heb. 4:15). He was both an insider participating fully in the human condition, and an outsider observing it with compassion. What was unique was that He brought not only compassion, but also the power to give relief. What is astonishing is that He can offer it to the whole world (Compel Them to Come In: Calvinism and the Free Offer of the Gospel, 26).

Yet there are biblical categories of God’s love that do not apply to all people (or any people). God’s intra-Trinitarian love between the Father and Son (and Holy Spirit) is an eternal and unique bond. It is also clear that God’s love toward his elect (whether Israel or the church) is an exclusive category. How does God describe his love toward Israel? 

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers… (Deuteronomy 7:7-8).

Clearly this love is particular to an exclusive people God has graciously set his affection on. Jesus describes praying for a distinct group of those the Father loves (John 17:26) that is set in contrast to the world: “I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours” (John 17:9). Paul argues that God’s predestination and adoption of “us” exclusively as “sons” was done “in love” (Ephesians 1:4-5; see also 2:4-5). This effective and gracious love that seeks out a particular people is unambiguously presented as a central aspect of divine love. Therefore, it is evident God does love all people but does so in diverse ways. 

Answering Objections

A common rebuttal to biblical texts expressing God’s particular, electing love is to juxtapose them with supposedly contradictory passages. For example, 2 Peter 3:9 says God “is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance,” and 1 Timothy 2:4 states God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”* 

*Sidenote: There is a strong exegetical case for these passages avoiding universal scope, but for the sake of argument (and brevity) I will accept the interpretation of these passages as universal in scope. But here are a few quick points. On 2 Peter 3:9, who is “any” referring to (what is its antecedent)? The audience of 2 Peter is the church (2 Peter 1:1), and the grammatical antecedent of “any” is “you” and “beloved” in the sentence (2 Peter 3:8-9). This restricts the “any” to the beloved (i.e. the Christians Peter is encouraging to persevere).

These passages are presented as a defeater for particular, electing love (#4) because they clearly do not fit such a definition. What is the problem here? The objection starts with the presupposition that God’s love can only have one definition, and a choice must be made that asserts certain biblical texts to the diminishment of others. Of course, the texts one asserts usually favor the definition most suitable to external standards of what one believes love must be. Walls exemplifies this: 

...true love must seek the true flourishing and ultimate well being of the beloved as much as it properly can. If theological compatibilists want to insist that God loves unbelievers he may not have elected for salvation, then they must deny this, which means they will be using the concept of love in a deeply idiosyncratic sense (Jerry L. Walls, “Why No Classical Theist, Let Alone Orthodox Christian, Should Ever Be a Compatibilist,” Philosophia Christi 13, no. 1 (January 2011): pp. 75-104, 98).

Yet this objection falls flat when the diverse ways of God’s love in Scripture are exposed. Passages such as 2 Peter 3:9, 1 Timothy 2:4, and even John 3:16 are seen not as contradictions to Ephesians 1-2, John 6, or Romans 8 because they can be categorized under different aspects of God’s love (#3 and #4). The biblical data simply rejects the restraints embedded in this objection. 

A related objection stemming from the assumptions of the previous one is the idea that these descriptions of God’s love feel out of step with human conceptions of love. The misstep here is to assume the way God loves must be equivalent to the way we love. Again, this presupposition ignores necessary precommitments. The doctrine of God, including the Creator/creature distinction, insists that God is in a category of his own. Though there is a connection between our love and his, there is a profound otherness to God that includes his love. By accounting for a robust doctrine of God, univocal reasoning concerning God’s love and ours must be rejected. For example, consider how the apostle John speaks of humans loving the world and God loving the world. God is positively described as loving the world by sending the Son (John 3:16), yet humans who love the world are negatively described by John as lacking love for God (1 John 2:15)! In short, God’s love for the world and our love for the world cannot be the same thing. His otherness does not allow us to evaluate his love according to anthropocentric conceptions. There is much more to say about the uniqueness of God, but the love discussion in John’s corpus illustrates the concept. 

Though God’s otherness takes priority when evaluating his love, there are analogies between God’s love and ours that actually compliment the idea of diverse affections. Think about parents of children. Though they have a genuine care and love for all children in their community or neighborhood, it is obvious they love their own children in a distinct way; Loving your own child is quite different from having love for children in general. It is obvious there is a diversity of loves that vary here, yet no one protests this. It is morally acceptable for parents to have a different and greater love for their own child than the neighbor’s kid down the street.  Parents can genuinely say they love all children while acknowledging there is distinction in the kinds of love they have for different children. It seems completely appropriate for God to be allowed the same idea. The point here is not to vindicate God. It is to expose the inconsistency of the objection to God’s diversity of love as described above. That same objection is irrational when turned around and applied to humans. 

Conclusion

Does God love all people? Yes. God is love (1 John 4:8), and the Bible describes the unified love of God as expressed in diverse ways that simply assert distinction without ever insinuating contradiction. This conclusion rests on the ability of Scripture to sufficiently set its own definitions and the inclusion of the whole doctrine of our transcendent God. Objections to this conclusion usually reject these preconditions and consequently mishandle the biblical data.

Sources:

Carson, D.A. The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. Wheaton: Crossway, 2000. 

Macleod, Donald. Compel Them to Come In: Calvinism and the Free Offer of the Gospel. Christian Focus, 2020. 

Walls, Jerry L. Does God Love Everyone?: The Heart of What's Wrong with Calvinism. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2016. 

———. “Why No Classical Theist, Let Alone Orthodox Christian, Should Ever Be a Compatibilist.” Philosophia Christi 13, no. 1 (January 2011): 75–104. 

Walls, Jerry L., and Joseph R. Dongell. Why I Am Not a Calvinist. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004.