The Love of God

God Must Provide the Answer

To this question I must needs have the answer. I must have God's answer. Man cannot convince me. A human answer cannot possibly satisfy me. Nothing less will do than the answer from the mouth of God Himself. Then only will I have peace, when I hear His own voice, "My son, my daughter, I, Jehovah God, love you!"
Let this personal question be before your consciousness as you contemplate this Word of God. For not only is it true that you urgently need an answer to this question, but it is also true that as this Word of God comes to you, you shall be confronted by that question and shall have to give an answer to it. You cannot escape it.
In the second place, and in closer connection with the preceding than is sometimes thought, this question is important with respect to the content of the preaching of the gospel. When the gospel is preached, the question, "Whom does God love?" must be answered. And again, the answer must be that of the Scriptures. Only that answer may be proclaimed as the gospel of Jesus Christ. The text says that God loved the world. And by far the most common explanation which is given of this expression, "the world," is that this means that God loves all men, every individual member of the human race. This is the open teaching of all Arminian, free-will pulpits. We have all heard this kind of preaching many times, if not in our own church, then via radio or television. According to this position, God loved all men. Because He loved all men, God gave His only begotten Son. God's only begotten Son died for the whole world, that is, for all men, thus making provision for all men to be saved. The gospel is for all sinners. And now it is up to the sinner to believe or not to believe, to embrace the love of God or not to embrace it, to be saved and to have eternal life, or to perish. The opposite position is that of the Reformed faith, sometimes called Calvinism. It holds that as far as men are concerned, God does not love all, but only His elect, that is, those whom he has sovereignly chosen in Christ Jesus from before the foundation of the world. It teaches, further, that Christ died only for His own sheep, that is, those whom the Father gave Him. Furthermore, the Reformed faith maintains that when the gospel of Christ crucified is proclaimed, the gift of faith is sovereignly bestowed only upon the elect through regeneration and the efficacious calling, that then the elect repent and believe and have everlasting life. In a word, we proclaim that the love of God is absolutely sovereign and particular, not general and conditional, in its origin, its revelation, its operation, and its fruit.

Pastor David Marcel
www.christianholinessministry.org