Our youth recently returned from an international youth gathering for our church body in New Orleans. It was an uplifting experience with a small twist. The youth gathering was protested by a small group from the now infamous Westboro Baptist Church. This one weird un-baptist congregation wanted to tell us that “God Doesn’t Love Everybody”. They also felt the need to inform us that there were “sinners” in our group. Are they right? Are they stating the obvious in the latter case?
What does God’s love and God declaring himself to be love mean?
Human beings were not ever created to be an object of God’s hatred or wrath. We were created in God’s image and His genuine desire was and is for the ultimate well-being of us all. That is love. Definitely, God knew that things were not going to happen according to design. He knew that Satan would rebel. He knew that Satan would corrupt humans and that it would affect every one of us. Does the fact that God foreknew these things mean that He made them happen? The answer is “no”. Though God is omnipotent (He can do anything), God works within a set of rules that He has created for himself. We can only infer that these rules exist and what they are. God could have cancelled creation, but either His desire or His rules dictated that He went ahead anyway. The freewill to love became the freewill to rebel against God.
Since humans are now sinful, does He hate them? The observation by the hate group that we have sinners in our midst is on one level obvious. Every human being is a sinner. They have sinners in their midst. They need to accept that. Did they mean we have unrepentant sinners in our midst? People who deny that they are sinners? That could be true too, but the evidence for that is harder to come by. We would still minister to them, because God still loves them. One of my favorite Bible passages is this:
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8 (ESV)
We also have this important passage to work into the mix:
3 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior,4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:3-4 (ESV)
God desires all people to be saved. Jesus’ life and death are sufficient for all people to be saved. But the reality is a relative few are saved. (Matthew 7:13-14). There is further qualification to the 1 Timothy passage. There was a group among the Jews who had evoked God’s anger at their behavior more than others. It seems that they openly defied God through idolatry and other injustices and coupled that with a strong self-righteousness. They were considered out of contention for salvation before they died. Isaiah was instructed:
9 And he said, “Go, and say to this people:
“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
10 Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy,
and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”Isaiah 6:9-10
Jesus quoted this passage and applied it to leaders in His time. Does God not love them anymore? I think it would be incorrect to think of it that way. The same could be said of those who died rejecting God’s forgiveness through Jesus. God mourns for those who are lost. You can be angered at people you love. We do that all the time. You can even break off relationship. It wasn’t that God didn’t want the best for them.
God’s love isn’t always manifested in people having eternal life with Him. It is manifested in Jesus living a perfect life for them and experiencing being forsaken on the cross for them. It is manifested in God trying to reach them to save them. The ugliness of our circumstances say nothing about whether God loves us. If you are human then you are loved, because eternal life was at least made possible for you. That cannot be said for Satan. It cannot be said for demons. It can even be said for the member of Westboro Baptist Church, though they run a dangerously misdirected course and clearly don’t understand the Gospel properly.
Giving Christ 