If God Loves Everyone Equally, Why Does He Have a Chosen People, Israel? (Part 1) [Class Summary]
My homework for this Sunday's class was to answer the question "If God loves everyone equally, why does He have a chosen people, Israel?"
There's an unspoken assumption smuggled into this question...do you see it?
Assumption Spelunking
A good rule of thumb when entering into dialogue with another person is to ask yourself, "What is this person assuming that may or may not be true?" So, I solicited responses from the class to see what assumptions (true, false, or even undecided) they could find in this simple little question. The big one that jumped out at me (and several of the students) was this notion that God loves everyone equally. Once we identify the assumptions, the next thing we want to do is to ask "You seem to be assuming that God loves everyone equally. Do you have a biblical basis for this assumption?" This is crucial. Unless we come with solid biblical support, we don't have an answer...we have an opinion. In this class, I'm not really interested in opinions—I'm interested in what the Word of God says. Now, if God's Word is silent on the matter at hand, then we can have our opinions, but we need to make sure that we're voicing them as such..."The Bible doesn't say anything about this, but I think ____________. What do you think?" But the Word of God is not silent on this particular issue, so let's see what it says, shall we?
One student offered up John 3:16 as support for the notion that God loves everyone equally. However, one of the parents in the class offered that "He loves us equally in (or through) Christ Jesus"...which is a wrinkle that I hadn't thought of, to be quite transparent with you. I put both John 3:16, and this parent's offering on the table for a minute because I wanted to bring out some very clear Scriptures which would help us understand the "foggy" passages:
Malachi 1:2,3 — Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated
Psalm 5:5, 6 — The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity. You destroy those who speak falsehood; The Lord abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit.
Psalm 11:5 — The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, And the one who loves violence His soul hates.
There is no ambiguity here. God clearly hates some people and some actions...but yet "God so loved the world..." and then again, "God is love" (1 John 4:16). So do we have a contradiction on our hands? No, because God cannot lie (Numbers 23:19; Hebrews 6:18), and it is impossible for God to contradict (or "deny") Himself (2 Timothy 2:13). So, when we have what appears to be a contradiction between passages in the Word of God, the problem cannot be with the Word of God; rather, the problem must be with our (mis)understanding.
“When God throws the beast, the false prophet, death, Hades, and all those whose names are not written in the book of life into the lake of fire to be tormented day and night forever and ever...that, too, will be a perfect expression of His love.”
The scriptures unambiguously state that "God is love" but also that "God hates." Note that the Bible does not say (in 1 John 4:16) that God has love...it says that He is love—it's an essential part of who He is. There is nothing that God does that is not done in, with, and through love. Do you understand the implications of this? Since God is perfect in every way, and His very nature is love, and since God never acts contrary to His nature, then when He created Man, that was a perfect expression of His love. When He pronounced judgment upon Adam, Eve, and the serpent, it was a perfect expression of His love. When He turned His back on His Son as He hung on the cross, it was the perfect expression of His love. And when, in the end, God throws the beast, the false prophet, death, Hades, and all those whose names are not written in the book of life into the lake of fire to be tormented day and night forever and ever (Revelation 20:10ff)...that, too, will be a perfect expression of His love.
"Whoa. That's heavy." — Marty McFly
I think part of our difficulty with "God is love" vs "God hates" is because we tend to view love and hate as mutually-exclusive opposites, e.g. "You either love or you hate Jar Jar Binks...there is no in-between." I do not think that this is a biblical perspective on these two emotions. I don't think that the opposite of love hate—I think the opposite of love is apathy; similarly, I don't think that the opposite of hate is love...I think it is, once again, apathy. In Scripture, I see evidence of God's love, and I see evidence of His hatred of people and deeds...but I can think of no place in Scripture where God says "Meh." One can hate and love at the same time, but one cannot hate-and-not-care or love-and-not-care at the same time: hate and love are emotions and apathy is the lack of feeling or emotion—thus, apathy is the opposite of both love and hate.
Now, let's head back to John 3:16. I asked the class, "If God loves everyone equally, then why doesn't He save everyone?" Little did I realize what I was getting myself into with this question. What happened next is recounted to the best of my ability...I have no audio or written record of the precise words used, so I'll do my best to capture the sentiments expressed.
Walking Into a Theological Minefield
A serious young lady responded, "But He does." I understood this to mean "But He does save everyone," so I asked her what she meant by this. She responded with "Everyone has to make a choice for himself."
Oh boy. Where do I start? If you're new to Christian theology, you might not understand my reaction here. Theological giants far mightier than I have waged epic battles of words for the past two millennia over the question of "predestination vs. free will,"—does God choose us without our input, or do we have to decide to follow Jesus like the old song says?—and here I am, with about 60 wet eyeballs ranging in age from about 12 to 40-something, and I'm supposed to explain this to their satisfaction and to the satisfaction of our Lord (James 3:1). Ha!
I still have more study to do in this area of theology, and I'll probably write a gigantic, boring blog post about this some day to fully flesh out what I see in Scripture, but here's where I stand today, in a large nutshell...not quite as big as a coconut, but certainly larger than an almond:
In Romans 9, Paul uses language that is decidedly "predestinal" (if that is even a word):
"...God's purpose according to His choice...not because of works, but because of Him who calls" (Romans 9:11)
"I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy..." (Romans 9:15)
"...it does not depend on the man who wills...but on God who has mercy." (Romans 9:16)
"...I raised you [Pharaoh] up..." (Romans 9:17)
"...He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires." (Romans 9:18)
"...The thing molded will not say to the molder, 'Why did you make me like this,' will it?" (Romans 9:20)
"What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wratch and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?" (Romans 9:22)
"...vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory..." (Romans 9:23)
"even us, whom He also called..." (Romans 9:24)
"I will call those who were not my people, 'My People.'" (Romans 9:25)
"...That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness..." (Romans 9:30)
But in the very next chapter, it seems that Paul is arguing that there is an element of our will or our choice involved in our salvation:
"...they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God" (Romans 10:3)
"...if you confess...and believe...you will be saved..." (Romans 10:9)
"...Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed..." (Romans 10:11)
"...Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:13)
"How will they call on Him in whom they have not believed...have not heard...how will they hear without a preacher?" (Romans 10:14)
"...they did not all heed the good news..." (Romans 10:16)
"...All the day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people." (Romans 10:21)
Then, in Romans 11, Paul seems to bounce back and forth between God's sovereign choice...
"I have kept for myself...men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.' (Romans 11:4)
"...remnant according to God's gracious choice." (Romans 11:5)
"...those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened." (Romans 11:7)
"God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes to see not and ears to hear not..." (Romans 11:8)
...and man's willful rejection of God:
"...they were broken off for their unbelief" (Romans 11:20)
"...if they do not continue in their unbelief, [they] will be grafted in..." (Romans 11:23)
...and then back to predestination again:
"From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God's choice they are beloved..." (Romans 11:28)
"for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29)
And then, just when you're hoping that he'll pull back and curtain and show us what we've won, Paul drops a MOAB on us:
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. — Romans 11:33-36
So here's where I come down on this: Paul spent three years in the desert being personally discipled by Jesus (Galatians 2:11-18), and wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 3:14-16; 2 Timothy 3:16). If such a man as that could not figure out how God's sovereign election and man's responsible will work together, then I'm not going to get too worked up if I can't figure it out, either. But if I'm going to err, I'm going to err on the side of God's sovereignty every time, because I know that God will not share His glory with another (Isaiah 42:8), and I do not want to find myself standing before Jesus and having Him ask me, "Why did you try to rob me of my glory by claiming for yourself some hand in your salvation?"
I flat ran out of time, so I didn't even get to the "chosen people, Israel" part of the question. So, we're going to have to pick that up next week. But I want some help with this, so I assign the following...
Homework
I'm going to leave this one more or less wide-open...go as deep as you like in your evaluation!
What does it mean for Israel to be "chosen" by God?