Does God love everybody? Does He love everyone in the same exact way? Before we rush in to answer, we need to research the biblical data. Emotions tend to run high when it comes to these questions because they go to the very heart of something intensely personal to us all, drug our very view of God.
From what I can glean of the Scriptures, I think it would be easy to prove that God has a measure of love for His Son that he does not have for Satan and the demons. That’s fairly obvious of course, but once stated, it does show that although God is love, He possesses the ability to love with differing degrees.
However one interprets the phrase “Jacob I loved, Esau I have hated” (Romans 9:13) I can see no way to avoid the conclusion that God had a different measure of love for one twin above the other.
I believe John 3:16 clearly reveals that God does love the world. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” I have written elsewhere concerning John’s use of the word “world.” He uses it at least 10 different ways in his gospel. Yet I believe the most natural interpretation of “world” in his famous verse (from what I can gather of the context) is that it refers to all the people on planet earth, rather than the elect. I believe the text teaches us that such is God’s love for the human race that He has given them His Son as the Savior. That does not imply a universal redemption for everyone in the world however, for as the rest of the verse teaches, the giving of the Son was for the purpose that the believing ones would in no way perish but instead have everlasting life. God gave His Son as the world’s only Savior. Only through Jesus will anybody be saved in this world, and yet, there is no possibility of a believing one perishing.
Elsewhere in the same chapter, in verses 35 and 36 we read, “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
Just as a man is expected to have a different degree of love for his wife than every other man’s wife, or his child, rather than everyone else’s child, or his mother rather than the dog next door, so God has different degrees of love. God set His love on Israel in a way He did not for Egypt. He explains this love in Deut 7:
“6 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 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, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
God loved Jacob in a way He did not Esau and this love manifested in his unconditional election (Romans 9:6-13). So God has a love for His elect sheep that is different in dimension to those who are merely goats. In John 17 He says, “I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.”
There is much to consider on this topic. I would recommend Dr. R. C. Sproul’s book “Loved by God” as a great resource in this regard.
It is interesting that today I read the following from Tommy Clayton, Content Developer and Broadcast Editor at Grace to You.
I can still remember the chair I was sitting in years ago when I read a life-changing page in John MacArthur’s book The God Who Loves. In an economy of words, John exposed, confronted, and changed my thinking on one of the most critical areas of theology, the nature of God. My understanding of God’s love—specifically His love for the non-elect—was never the same.
For months, I had been wrestling with the question of whether God’s love extends beyond those He chose for salvation. “Does God love all humanity, even the Judas Iscariots and Adolf Hitlers of the world?” At the time, I couldn’t answer that question with any degree of certainty. And although I was sitting under sound biblical teaching, I had begun entertaining the idea that God’s elect have a monopoly on His love. I couldn’t reconcile the idea of God loving His enemies with the following texts:
• Psalm 5:5, “You hate all workers of iniquity.”
• Psalm 7:11, “God is angry with the wicked every day.”
• Psalm 26:5, “I have hated the assembly of evil doers.”Beyond those troubling texts, I was grappling with God’s explicit statements about hating Esau found in Romans 9 and Malachi 1. “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.” You have to admit, that’s a hard verse to refute. God’s hatred was unrelated to Esau’s conduct or character. It was rooted in His eternal, sovereign purposes.
The more I pondered those verses, the more resistant I became to acknowledging God’s love to all humanity. I failed to see the tragic effects such thinking had on my evangelistic fervency. I had adopted a self-righteous mindset, thinking God was absolutely repulsed by unbelievers—probably just as repulsed as I was. I became blind to all the Scriptures speaking to God’s steadfast love and compassion for the lost. Somewhere along the way, my love and compassion for sinners waned.
I was convinced in my own mind. God loves the elect and hates the non-elect. End of discussion.
But then, I read the following words by John MacArthur:
Scripture clearly says that God is love. “The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works” (Ps. 145:9). Christ even commands us to love our enemies, and the reason He gives is this: “In order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). The clear implication is that in some sense God loves His enemies. He loves both “the evil and the good,” both “the righteous and the unrighteous” in precisely the same sense we are commanded to love our enemies.
In fact, the second greatest commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk. 12:31; cf. Lev. 19:18), is a commandment for us to love everyone. We can be certain the scope of this commandment is universal, because Luke 10 records that a lawyer, “wishing to justify himself … said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (Lk. 10:29)—and Jesus answered with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The point? Even Samaritans, a semi-pagan race who had utterly corrupted Jewish worship and whom the Jews generally detested as enemies of God, were neighbors whom they were commanded to love. In other words, the command to love one’s “neighbor” applies to everyone. This love commanded here is clearly a universal, indiscriminate love.
Consider this: Jesus perfectly fulfilled the law in every respect (Matt. 5:17–18), including this command for universal love. His love for others was surely as far-reaching as His own application of the commandment in Luke 10. Therefore, we can be certain that He loved everyone. He must have loved everyone in order to fulfill the Law. After all, the apostle Paul wrote, “The whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal. 5:14). He reiterates this theme in Romans 13:8: “He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” Therefore, Jesus must have loved His “neighbor.” And since He Himself defined “neighbor” in universal terms, we know that His love while on earth was universal.
Do we imagine that Jesus as perfect man loves those whom Jesus as God does not love? Would God command us to love in a way that He does not? Would God demand that our love be more far-reaching than His own? And did Christ, having loved all humanity during His earthly sojourn, then revert after His ascension to pure hatred for the non-elect? Such would be unthinkable; “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever” (Heb 13:8) (John MacArthur, The God Who Loves, 102-03).
John’s simple explanation of those Scriptures compelled me to rethink my position on God’s love. Jesus was God. Jesus loved His neighbors—even His non-elect neighbors. Jesus was a friendto sinners. Jesus loved His enemies—all of them. How could I have missed that? What caused me to overlook such clear, vital truths about the character of God? The answer is pride, that hideous sin lurking in all of us, waiting for the opportunity to express itself.
If you wrestle with some of the verses I listed, or struggle to reconcile God’s love with his wrath, I’d recommend you pick up a copy of John’s book The God Who Loves.
So back to the opening two questions:
(1) Does God love everybody?
I would say “in a certain sense, yes.”
(2) Does He love everyone in the same exact way?
I would say “no, just as His love for Jacob was different from His love for Esau, and just as His love for Israel was different from His love for the other nations, so God has a different measure of love for His elect people than He does for others.”
“For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” – 1 Thess 1:4,5
When I read the title “Does God love his enemies?” my first thought was, what is meant by the word love. There is a tendency to attach to much emotion and feelings into the word love. A dictionary definition of love is a profoundly tender, passionate affection, deep and enduring emotional regard for another person. But if we are honest here, that will never be the how one feels towards a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against us; an adversary or opponent (a dictionary definition of enemy). The world loves out of the soul but the true child of God is to love out of the spirit.
Here is a question to ponder. Was the love of Christ in the four gospels more of a love of the spirit or of the soul? And here is something you will never find Christ doing in the gospels. Jesus never told anyone face to face, looking them in the eye “I love you.” Did he ever tell someone directly “I love you”? Perhaps, but it cannot be proven by the Scriptures. I suspect if it did happen it was a very rare occurrence and hidden from others. I believe John took notice of Christ never using the verbal expression “I love you” with an individual for he writes in his first letter, “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” Christ never went around verbally expressing his love to the people he encountered but demonstrated his love through the many works he did for them. If you were dying and your mother was at your beside wouldn’t you want to tell her “I love you.” And yet Christ uttered no such words to his mother as she beheld him nailed to the cross. But what he did (the deed) was make sure she would be taken care of after his death.
Consider this from John 3:16 and what he might have written, “For God so loved the world that he was deeply grieved and infinitely sadden that all have sinned and are going to hell,” Would such feelings have been proof of God’s love for mankind? And if so then what good would God’s love have been to mankind if all it did was to cause him emotional pain and grief? But John did write, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” I think most read this as God’s love being what caused him to give his only begotten son. I am ok with that. But I read this a little different. It is the deed, the giving of his only begotten son, which gives substance and validation to the declaration of God’s love for the world. In other words, don’t just tell me you love me, show me you love. Do something that demonstrates your love is more than just words. Jesus asked Peter “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?” Peter’s response was “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.” Christ responded “Feed my sheep.” I believe this was Christ way of telling Peter, “Ok, you say you love me, now give substance and validation to those words by feeding my sheep.”
I am not saying we should not tell people that we love them. After 44 years of marriage I still enjoy coming up behind my wife and putting my arms around her, and nibbling on her ear, and whispering “I love you.” And I think she still enjoys me doing that by her response. But real love must have an outlet, a way to express or demonstrate its validity. Perhaps we would be better off searching the Scriptures to find how God demonstrates or validates a love for his enemy (thus proving his love towards them) than to start with the verbal expression of love and grind at whether it is inclusive of his enemies.