Does God Love Everyone?

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Striving for superior theology and denominational unity one joke at a time.

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Your Calvinist podcast begins now. Your Calvinist is on the air.

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I'm Keith Foskey and I am your Calvinist and I want to thank you all for being together with me today in our inaugural episode of the

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Your Calvinist podcast. Now this isn't the first podcast I've ever done. Of course I've had conversations with a

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Calvinist for the last several years, but as we talked about towards the end of last year, we're rebranding a little bit, doing a little bit of renaming.

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We're gonna change a little bit of how we do the show, just making it a little bit more fun.

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We're gonna ask some fun questions and bring in a little bit of humor, but we're still going to focus on some important issues and today we're going to be focusing on a very important issue with my good friend

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Dr. Michael Schultz. Now Dr. Michael Schultz is the senior pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Lewisburg, Kentucky.

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He serves as the associate professor of church history at Forge Theological Seminary. He enjoys spending time with his wife, playing with his daughters, and eating

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Mexican food. So I know that we are not only friends but brothers. I met

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Michael last year at the From Shadows to Substance conference and I got an opportunity to hear him preach and I must say going away from that conference

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I was very encouraged having heard what he had to say, not only with his precision in his preaching, but also the passion of his preaching.

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I was very thankful to hear a man who cared about the Word of God, cared about preaching with integrity, and to give a sound exposition of God's Word in a conference.

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So Michael, thank you for being on the show today. It's a pleasure to be here, brother. I'm glad to have been invited and hope that people will be encouraged and see our fervor for the

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Lord and just to have Christian community and conversations as Calvinists with people that we would have never met had we not gone to different conferences and gotten together with other people of like minds.

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So glad to be here. Absolutely, absolutely. And last year

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I did have an opportunity to interview you and if anyone wants to see, that's actually part of a larger interview section that I did at the conference where I put together the different interviews that I did with the different speakers.

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So if people want to go back and hear about what you preached about, I'll put a link to that particular interview, which includes also the other men from the conference, which are men like Kevin Hay and Haps Addison and some of the other preachers,

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Claude Ramsey, good friends of the show and solid Bible teachers. Did you get to see that interview that I posted with us that had us together?

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Or maybe you didn't? Yeah. And that feels like it was forever ago, but it was, yeah, that was a long time.

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And it wasn't even a whole year ago, was it? I guess right now, coming up to the year mark, because it was February of last year.

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So today we're going to be talking about the subject of the love of God, and we're going to be asking the question, does

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God love everyone? Does God love everyone? But before we get to that question, I want to have a little fun with Michael and allow the audience to get to know you a little bit better.

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And the reason why we're talking about that subject is because this year, he and I both are going to be preaching at the

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Calvinism Conference in Tullahoma, Tennessee in February. He has the subject of preaching on the love of God.

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And so here's what I want to ask you, Michael, and this is really just, it's one of those things we call the would -you -rather question.

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All right. So you are a historic premillennialist, am I correct? Yeah, I am.

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Okay, you're a historic premillennialist. Okay, so would you rather, and I'm assuming that means you don't believe in the pre -tribulation rapture, is that correct?

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Correct. Okay, all right. So would you rather debate the pre -tribulation rapture with Dr.

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John MacArthur, or would you rather debate premillennialism with James White?

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If you had to choose one of those, and one of them was going to happen, you were either going to choose to debate the rapture with John MacArthur, or to debate

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James White on postmillennialism versus premillennialism, which one do you feel most confident that you would do well and come out on top?

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Not even a thought. I'd rather MacArthur. I'd take MacArthur all day. Because I think that MacArthur is going to stick with just strictly trying to expound on the text.

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And so he'll be proof texting and going here and there. I feel like if I went into it with James White, he's going to get into nuances and things that are much deeper water than I'm able to swim in.

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So yeah, I would, I'd be glad to do either of those things. But Dr. MacArthur, I feel like would be better for my skillset to engage.

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Wouldn't really enjoy doing that with either of them because they both kind of drowned me. But yeah, that'd be probably my choice.

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Awesome. Awesome. Well, I thought that would be a fun question. Well, before we go on into the show, I have pre -recorded a little thing that I want to show the audience.

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This is going to start being part of every one of my podcasts, just a reminder of some of the housekeeping things we have here at the

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Your Calvinist podcast. So I'm going to play this video real quick, and then we'll be right back to the show. Hey guys,

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I just want to quickly say thank you for watching this episode. And if you're enjoying it, please hit the thumbs up button.

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If you're not enjoying it, hit the thumbs down button twice. Also, if you haven't already, please subscribe to the channel.

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It really helps us out. And some of you've asked about how to support the channel. If you'd like to support us, you can go to buymeacoffee .com

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slash your Calvinist and leave a donation. Most importantly, we want to make sure that everybody who hears this podcast, hears the gospel.

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The word gospel means good news. And that good news has to be preceded by some bad news.

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And the bad news is this, that we are all sinners. Sin is breaking God's law. So we stand guilty before the

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Lord of the universe. But the good news is God sent His Son into the world to pay the penalty for everyone who would believe in Him.

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Jesus came into the world, lived a perfect life, and He died a substitutionary death for everyone who will believe.

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And He calls us all to repent of our sin, to turn from our unbelief, and trust in Him as Lord and Savior.

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And if you've never done that, I encourage you to do so today. Now back to the show. So Michael, here's what

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I want to ask you today. I want to go through a few questions that you and I've talked about before the show.

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And the first one goes back to the topic of the conference. We're going to be doing the Calvinism Conference in Tullahoma, which is being hosted by Jeffrey Rice and Haps Addison and the people there at the church there in Tullahoma, the

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Reformed Baptist church. And you have been tasked with preaching on the subject of the love of God and Calvinism.

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So I want you to just tell me why that topic was assigned to you. Did you choose that?

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Did they ask you to do that? Was that something that was just on your heart? How did you get that one?

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Yeah, so Jeff reached out and he started asking me if I would have any interest in speaking again, which of course

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I do. I loved that conference last year. The lineup was phenomenal, and the Spirit of God just—you could feel that these were people that you wanted to be around.

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Just felt great to be there, and so I immediately was like, yeah, absolutely. I'll come back if you'll have me. And so he said, we'll start thinking about a topic, and this is going to be the conference kind of overview.

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And I was preaching through First John at the time, and I was having great difficulty finding

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Reformed or Calvinist teachers to study on First John.

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You know, if you want to study Romans, we got you covered. Genesis, we got you covered.

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But you get into First John, and the guys that I generally go to had very little, and so I was noticing that this book that has multiple purposes and multiple teachings in it but just flows with the love of God was something that not very many guys had gotten into, and actually what really solidified for me that I wanted to ask for this subject was

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I went to YouTube, and I typed in Calvinism and the love of God, and there were five videos that were the top.

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I only remember four of the guys who were in those videos, but it was Leighton Flowers, William Lane Craig, Frank Turek, and Dave Hunt, and those were four of the top five, and that was under the search

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Calvinism and the love of God. And so, you know, those four guys, not one of them are

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Calvinist, and so I was watching those, and it's guys that are discussing how the

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Calvinists misconstrue the love of God or disbelieve in the love of God, and a lot of their criticisms, quite honestly, were legitimate.

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There is a real problem in the Reformed Calvinist community with misunderstanding or misconstruing or in some cases altogether denying the love of God, and so I felt like that was very important that we really need to get in this conversation and recognize that God does love and that God is love, because if you look up on YouTube, and I tried this, if you look up God hates sinners, you'll get

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John MacArthur, Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, R .C. Sproul, Votie Bauckham. Calvinists will flood your feed if you look up God hates, but if you look up God loves, you'll be hard -pressed to find one, and so that's a shame because we are completely forfeiting that entire end of the conversation, and although it's true that God hates, we're not choosing to tell the whole truth.

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We're neglecting one truth while we present another one, and I hope we really get over that, that we present both sides of that, so that's why

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I chose that topic because I think it's very important for us as Calvinists to start talking about that. I tell you, what you just said, that two minutes of the show is actually worth the time to listen today because I didn't realize that.

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I've never YouTubed or Googled those phrases, but what you just told me is so eye -opening.

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I pray this show might make it to the top of that list if people search Calvinism and the love of God because that's what we're here to talk about today, and maybe we can challenge some of those misapprehensions and misunderstandings and assumptions.

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So boy, that's interesting to know and good to hear. Well, not good to hear, but I mean good that we're actually talking about it, good that you know about that and you're going to be preaching about that.

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So you kind of already alluded to this. Calvinism often gets—Calvinists, as it were, often get the love of God wrong, and you said sometimes our opponents or those who are disagreeing with us actually point out some of the areas that were wrong.

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Where would you say that Calvinism often gets the love of God wrong the most?

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And I know that's a broad question. It may take us several minutes to unpack, but what are some of the things about God's love that we often do get wrong?

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So the classic complaint that Calvinists have is that for, say, 300 years, the

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Christian banner was, Jesus loves you, and that's been problematic in a lot of ways, because you do end up with people—like

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I have a friend at our church that always brings this up, that he was at a revival once where a woman who was a lesbian came in, and she asked the pastor if he approved of her sexuality, and he said no, and she said, well, it's okay that you don't because Jesus loves me.

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And that mentality has been a problem, that Jesus just loves you so much no matter what.

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That has been a problem, but what Calvinists have gotten wrong in trying to push against that is accepting the definition of love that was presented in that movement, and so what we've gotten wrong—is that a

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Buc -ee's cup? Sorry, I was muted, so I had to unmute myself.

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Yes, it's a Buc -ee's cup. I'm a Buc -ee's fan, and that's funny that you mentioned that. I wasn't trying to point it out, but yes,

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I'm drinking my unsweetened tea, which I know is a Southern heresy. I'm drinking unsweetened tea from a

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Buc -ee's cup, so yeah, that'll be a good nice short video that I can post. Are you a

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Buc -ee's fan? If you're not sponsored—oh yeah, I love Buc -ee's. Yeah, if you're not sponsored, Buc -ee's, if you're out there,

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Conversations with a Calvinist is the show that you need to be really pushing across your footprint.

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Amen. So back to the point, though, we accepted this definition of love that taught that what it means when we say,

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God loves you, is that God is pleased with you, or that God is delighted with you, and that's one element of what historically has been called the love of God.

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That's historically what they called the love of complacency, and there are some good videos by R .C.

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Sproul on that, or if you prefer to read, Francis Turretin really addresses that really well.

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The love of God has historically been broken into three different aspects. What they called the love of beneficence, which is what

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I would call his love of character. This is the God is love kind of thing, where God simply without any outside influence—that's the way

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A .W. Tozer worded it is uninfluenced—it's regardless whether there was a creation or not, or what the creation does, or what's going on, regardless of any outside influences,

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God is love. That's his character, his personality. I think I've heard R .C. Sproul use the phrase, that's

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God's disposition. He has a disposition of love. Is that similar to what you're talking about?

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Yeah. Okay. Yep, absolutely. In the modern term, you might use the term attitude, although that's a little bit more fluid than we would want to attribute to God, as if God's attitude could change, but that's the mindset.

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It's God's disposition, character, and that's always love.

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That's always, in a real sense, unconditionally God's sort of love.

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There's a second element that historically has been called God's love of benevolence, and this is

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God's expressive love. It's how that he shows love to people, and this is what you find in Matthew 5, where Jesus says

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God pours his love on the just and the unjust, and the wicked and the good by making the sun to rise on them and the rain to fall on them.

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That's expressional. It's how God shows love to people. Then that third aspect was the love of complacency.

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That's where God is pleased with you. He's delighted with you. That would be the love at the baptism of Jesus, where he says, this is my beloved son in whom

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I'm well pleased. It's the way I love Mexican food. It brings me joy.

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I don't love it because of who I am, and I don't love it because I pour my love on it. It makes me happy, right?

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Yeah. Amen. Okay. I thought you— So when we think about— I want to make sure you didn't have any— No, I'm good.

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No, no, we're good. We're good. So please continue. So when we as Calvinists get kind of uncomfortable with people saying

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Jesus loves you, it's because we're operating as if that means God is pleased with you or Jesus is pleased with you, and that would be incorrect to say to people who are outside of the redeemed, because we know it's impossible to please

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God without faith. Okay? So God can have no pleasure in someone who doesn't have faith. We know that.

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But is it true that God does not pour his love on people who are unredeemed?

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Is it true that God in his own character is not love towards everything, including the unredeemed?

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And that's not the case. When God addresses anything, you will find in him entirely everything that could rightly be called love, and when he expresses anything towards his creation, including wrath, including hatred, you will find it done from a place of love.

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And so I really think we need to be very careful in saying God doesn't love anything.

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That would be a mistake in my opinion. Okay. And that kind of leads us to the question, and the question is, do

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Calvinists believe God loves all people? I think we have to be careful anytime we say, do Calvinists believe

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X? Because Calvinism is not a monolithic system, even though most people who identify themselves as Calvinists hold to the five points of Calvinism.

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But outside of that, there's not necessarily a monolithic view, particularly on this subject.

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There are probably people who would disagree with what we're saying today. At least some Calvinists would. But we would say, or at least what you're saying, is that there is a sense in which

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God does demonstrate his love to everyone. And in that sense, we can say God loves everyone, but God is not necessarily pleased with everyone.

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And in that sense, this reminds me of something, and I don't know if you ever heard about this, but Rick Warren a few years ago was speaking at a conference where he was talking to a group of businessmen.

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Now, these weren't necessarily Christians. It was a businessmen's conference. And he was telling a story about how he would watch his son sleep and how he would say, you know, just how proud he was, how pleased he was.

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And he would say, that's my boy. And then he looked at these businessmen and he said, that's the way God looks at you.

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God looks at you when you're being a businessman or when you're doing things. He says, that's my boy.

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And it sounded like Rick Warren was saying, God is pleased with you, whether or not you have faith or not, because you are, as it were, his boy.

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And so we would say, or you're saying, that's not the case, that God isn't pleased with everyone.

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Right. Yeah, that's precisely right. And, you know, it's regrettable some of the things that Rick Warren has said, because that guy has gotten a lot of stuff right, but he's kind of been influenced by the culture surrounding him,

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I think. I've never met him, so I'm talking out of school here. But yeah, that's exactly the issue, is that when

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I look down on my children when they're asleep and I say, I love that girl, it is genuinely me saying,

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I take so much pleasure in her. I delight in her. She makes me happy.

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That figure in that bed is everything to me. And that is the love of complacency.

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That's not the love that we can honestly say God has for everything.

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And I think it's very easy to get there, because we know the Bible says, without faith it is impossible to please

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God. So how could someone who has no faith please God in that way? I don't think that many people are going to argue about that.

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So yeah, I think we're on the same page Yeah. So the most famous verse in the

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Bible is John 3, 16, and it is a verse that is often used in the argument of Calvinism, because it begins with that very famous phrase, for God so loved the world, or if you translate it, in this way,

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God loved the world, or according to this manner, God loved the world. And I know you may have some thoughts on how to translate that, because we're going to talk a little bit later about how to translate the believing ones or the whosoever will believe, but in the phrase, for God so loved the world, what is your understanding of John's use of world there, and is this

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God's disposition of love, as we talked about earlier, or His loving nature, as opposed to His love of complacency?

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Yeah, so that's a great question, and we're not the first generation of Calvinists to debate it, and we're going to be far from the last.

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So the first of all, disclaimer, within the Calvinist community, which you've already addressed this, we're not monolithic, and so you will find unbelievably reliable Calvinist authors and theologians down through history that have entirely disagreed on this topic.

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So you kind of have to come at it with an open mind as to what this is going to mean, and we talked about this a little bit before we actually got onto the show of how that sometimes

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Calvinists are guilty of approaching Scripture with glasses on, these Calvinist -colored glasses, we might say, and I like to analogize it as if it's somebody who's trying to fit things in a suitcase, and you see them putting all their weight on the suitcase trying to get that zipper to close, and they just know, if I can get the zipper around this corner, it'll all be fine.

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It'll fit in there. And if you were watching, you just look and you go, that's not going to fit.

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Like, that clearly doesn't fit in there. And so sometimes when, say, an

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Arminianist reaches Romans 9, we get that picture. I've got to fit this

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Scripture into the bag. It has to fit somehow. And you're going, that doesn't fit that way.

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That just doesn't work. And we start doing acrobatics with the words and the lingo. Well, unfortunately, when many

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Calvinists come to John 3, we treat it like an Arminianist treats Romans 9. Suddenly, all the words don't mean what they mean, and it can't mean what it says, because it doesn't fit in our bag.

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And so we start doing that. So back to the question, whenever it says, for God so loves the world, who is the world?

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That's one of the first questions that comes in. And guys like A .W.

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Pink and John Gill, for that matter, have argued that world means elect, that this passage only addresses the people who are

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God's elect. And I disagree with them. And you're always on kind of quakey ground when you start saying,

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I disagree with John Gill. But you've got to take a stance at some point, and everybody's fallible.

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So Gill and Pink really forwarded that view that world here means the elect.

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I disagree. And to my credit, so did John Calvin. So in preparation for this,

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I looked up Calvin's commentary on John 3 .16. He says this, faith in Christ brings life to all, and that Christ brought life because the

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Heavenly Father loves the human race. So when he read world,

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Calvin took world to mean the human race. And later on he says the importance of the term world, which is used, is that nothing will be found in the world that is worthy of the favor of God, and yet he shows himself to be reconciled to the whole world when he invites all men without exception to the faith of Christ.

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So Calvin would be accused of not being a Calvinist by most people who believe world means elect because he sounds too

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Arminianist. This idea that God has been reconciled to the whole world, he uses the terms without exception, all men without exception, the whole human race, by offering them freely the gospel,

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Calvin wouldn't even be accused of being a Calvinist. So I really believe that when it says

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God loved the world, it means the world. It means everybody. I truly do believe that.

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Amen, amen, and I'm glad you explained that. Now I'm going to ask you something you probably don't want me to ask you, but I'm going to ask you anyway.

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What's the German word for world? Oh gosh.

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Yeah, you're going to ask me that. As soon as I look it up, it's going to be in my head.

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Yeah, on the spot. That's kind of a... Welt. Yeah, I should have known that. Yeah, Welt.

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W -E -L -T. My German, man, when I read it, I can read it and understand it because my

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MDiv, I looked mostly at German immigrants into Russia during the time of Empress Catherine the

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Great, and so all of the sources are still in German because nobody's ever translated them, and so I can read it great, and then somebody starts talking to me in German, and I'm like, oh no.

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It's a disaster. So it's even worse because my wife's family's all

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German. Yeah, her whole family's German, and her mother specifically, this

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Christmas, she called us on Zoom, and she speaks English, but I walked through, and I thought

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I'd get some brownie points, and so I said, Frohweinachten, Oma, and she goes, ja,

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Weihnachten, ja, ja, because I had said it wrong, and I was like, yeah.

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So that's what I get. My spoken and heard German is garbage, but I can read it.

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I can read it. Well, that's pretty amazing. That's pretty amazing. So going back to John 316, and I think your explanation of the world is great.

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I think pulling in Calvin is very helpful. Hopefully, people are listening to this and seeing that there's not a monolithic understanding among Calvinists about what that word world means, and I, like you,

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I think it's a pretty universal term. I think the question is not really in the first half of the verse as much as it is in the second half of the verse, for God loved the world that he gave his only begotten

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Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish. The question, I think, is no matter how we understand the word whosoever believes, paschapustun, however we interpret that, and we're going to talk about that in a moment, it all comes down to the point that even though God's love may be universal, his salvation is not.

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Salvation is not universal. So we can talk about the love of God extending to everyone, but the salvation of God extending only to those who believe.

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Now, you recently posted a comment on Facebook, and it really intrigued me because it was involving the phrase whosoever will believe, and you said that there many

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Calvinists have interpreted that the believer or the believing one, and you said that's not correct because it's a verb, and so can you explain where people get this wrong, and why you posted what you post, and how you think it should be understood?

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Yeah, so you mentioned the Greek, and if you translate the Greek literally over, it's a lot more clear if you translate it literally, and there are a lot of good versions that I think have gotten this very good.

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In particular, I actually like the Christian Standard Bible's rendering of this. Of course, I would as a Southern Baptist, but the

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CSB, I think, gets this pretty good because it renders it all those who believe, and pas hapistuan, it would literally mean that, pas being all ha, the, pastuan, believing ones.

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You could take it that way, but pastuan isn't a noun, okay, and it's a verb.

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It means those who believe, to believe. So, if we wanted, as Calvinists, to translate this,

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God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that all the believers wouldn't perish, I think we're imposing on the text here our own understanding of redemption, and that's not to say our understanding is wrong.

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It's to say this verse is not addressing that, and so, for instance, and there are guys who know

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Greek a whole lot better than I do. You probably do, but when I'm reading this, and I'm looking at those words, and we say, well, pas hapistuan, if it means all the believing ones, then this is a verse that says that God only loved the believing ones, and He only gave

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His Son for the believing ones. Well, I would say yes to the second, but no to the first.

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God did only give His Son for the believing ones, but did He only love the believing ones?

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And I don't think that's the point of the verse. So, when we try to render pas hapistuan, all the believing ones, rather than whoever will believe,

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I think we sidestep the point of the verse, and we make it about something it wasn't meant to be about.

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So, to me, in my understanding, John 3 16 is a verse that deals with the open, free, legitimate, sincere proclamation of the gospel that God gave

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His Son so that absolutely anybody and everybody who will ever believe will be saved and will not perish but eternal life.

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I really believe that's the point of the verse. That means the text is not addressing limited atonement, okay?

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So, if you take this proclamation of the death of Jesus as referring to limited atonement, then it would be wrong to say that He atoned for the sins of all of the people in the world.

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But when you understand, as I hope I'm correct in understanding, that this love of God is for the whole world, and that He manifested,

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He expressed His love for the whole world by sending His Son so that anybody and everybody who believes would be saved,

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I think that maintains what Jesus is conveying to Nicodemus, because He's talking to Nicodemus.

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The shocking part of this to Nicodemus would be He's allowing the Gentiles to be saved.

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Nicodemus would have been shocked by that, and I think that we as Calvinists need to process that the way that Nicodemus did, because if you're a

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Covenantalist, you believe that Israel and the Church are at least in some sense the same thing.

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And so, when we hear this, we're offended at the idea that God would freely offer the gospel to people who are not in the election, offer the gospel to people who are not in Israel.

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That's the same thing Nicodemus was offended at. So, the meaning of the verse hasn't changed, and the offense that it brings to us hasn't changed, that God has freely offered salvation to anyone who would believe by sending

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His Son in love. That doesn't change anything about Calvinist doctrine to say that. What are you thinking?

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Well, it actually brings up another question, and this might take us off into a different conversation just for a second, but that is the question of several years ago, a debate arose within Calvinistic circles about whether or not there is truly a good faith offer of the gospel given to all men, and is it true that a good faith offer of the gospel is extended to all men?

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And there were some who were saying, no, there is no good faith offer of the gospel given. Some of them were those who opposed

32:54

Calvinism, and some were Calvinists themselves who were saying there is no good faith. I remember having this conversation with a friend who took that position.

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In fact, he took issue with me because I said there is a good faith offer of the gospel extended to all men, and he disagreed with me.

33:11

I was fine. People disagree with me all the time. That's okay. I want to be right with God, not right with men, and right with God's Word.

33:18

So, I was fine with him disagreeing with me, but on this, would you say then that there is a good faith offer of the gospel that's extended to all men through the

33:30

Word of God? Yes. Yeah, and I would say you're not a Calvinist if you think there's not one.

33:37

You have left Calvinism, and let me support that because I'm a confessional

33:44

Baptist, so I'm not completely off the rails. I follow the 1689. And so, chapter 7, this is article 2 of the 1689

33:55

London Baptist Confession. It says, With man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the

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Lord to make a covenant of grace wherein he freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ.

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If you reject the free offer of salvation, you have rejected

34:17

Calvinism. So, this is not a new issue. A hundred years ago, they had this issue in Europe, the free offer controversy, and we're still having it, and I really think this is a big part of the issue, is that many of the guys in my generation coming out of seminaries now, we were raised in this young, restless, and reformed movement, and we're well -read, but we don't understand what we're reading.

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Many of us have abandoned that idea that God truly, sincerely, freely offers salvation to everyone, and it is their hardness that rejects it.

35:02

Yeah, so I think that is at the heart of this issue, why we get into this problem with love. Yeah, you're definitely right there.

35:08

Awesome. There are passages that Calvinists will run to, and we've talked a lot about John 3, 16, and I agree with what you've said.

35:20

I think there is a right understanding of it that allows for that universal offer of the gospel, but there are passages that people would run to, and they would say, here's where I can prove

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God doesn't love everyone, and they would go to such as Romans 9, 13, Jacob I have loved,

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Esau I have hated, or they might run to Psalm 5, where it says that God hates the wicked.

35:45

So how do you address that if someone brings that to you and says, here, Michael, or here,

35:50

Dr. Schultz, here's my Bible, and my Bible says God hates the wicked.

35:58

How do you respond to that? Yeah, so it's very true. You don't reject it for one.

36:04

You don't reject that God hates sinners, because that's purely scriptural. Psalm 5, 5, like you mentioned,

36:09

God hates sinners. Psalm 7, 11, God is angry with the wicked every day. So you don't go to the point where the,

36:19

I'm going to call it the liberal wing would go, where you say, well, God doesn't hate anybody. That's also wrong.

36:26

What I would say is it's a problem for us to say that God cannot hate and love people at the same time.

36:34

I think that's a real mistake, and here's why. So Matthew 5, when

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Jesus is talking to His disciples about loving their enemies,

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He says, you've heard it said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be the sons of your

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Father who is in heaven. And so He says, if you want to look like your Father, you should do this.

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Love people that you hate. And He teaches that right on the heels of this weird teaching about not retaliating.

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And so He says, if somebody asks you to carry their gear for a mile, carry it too.

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And what He's referring to there is a law in the era of the Romans where Roman soldiers could compel anybody they wanted to to carry their luggage for up to a mile without compensation.

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And there was nobody that the Jewish people hated more than Romans. They were their enslavers.

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So when Jesus tells a group of Jews, if a soldier who's a

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Roman asks you to carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles voluntarily. Because if you want to be like your

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Father, you pour love on people that you hate. Now, does Jesus say, stop hating them?

37:56

No. He says, love your enemies. Well, by definition, an enemy is somebody that you can't stand.

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An enemy is not somebody you're in love with or somebody that you're enamored and delighted with and take pleasure in. An enemy is your enemy.

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But He says, love your enemies and you'll be like your Father. So is it true that God can hate someone?

38:16

Yeah, absolutely. Does that mean God does not love that person? No, it doesn't.

38:22

God still loves that person and He hates them at the same time. So you mentioned Romans 9,

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Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. Yeah, absolutely. God absolutely had hatred for Esau and poured hatred on Esau.

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But did God not also show love to Esau? Esau's people multiplied just like Jacob's did.

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And Esau married and had an inheritance. And there was tons of ways that you can see

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God pouring love on Esau. And that doesn't mean God stopped hating him.

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When God hates someone, He's capable of pouring love on them in the same way at the same time. And for that matter, so are we.

39:06

I'm going to use this example, and this will hit with some and not with others. I don't know of anybody that absolutely and entirely is sold out and in love with Donald Trump.

39:18

Okay? There are a lot of things about this guy that many of us go, oh man, that ain't good.

39:27

You know? But at the same time, in the exact same way, there are a lot of things that a lot of people look at him and they go, yeah,

39:36

I love that. I like that he does that. I like that he says that. I like that that's his attitude and his disposition.

39:42

And we don't feel any conflict about that. And maybe some of us who are parents have children who are wayward children.

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They might've gotten strung out on drugs or alcohol, or they've left the Christian faith or whatever. And we understand that that's still our kid.

39:56

We love them, but we absolutely hate the person that they are. We wish they would change.

40:03

We hate that person that they are, but we love the person that they are. And we understand that.

40:09

We can get that. I love my daughter, but I hate who she is right now. We don't feel any conflict about that.

40:18

So I think it's very overly simplistic of us to think I'm capable of loving and hating someone at the same time, but God's not.

40:26

I think that's way too oversimplified. And I think a thought to add to that would simply be, and I appreciate what you said for sure.

40:35

I would also add that when Christ calls us to love our enemies, that's verbal.

40:44

Love is something that we do and something that God does. God loves those who are wicked in the ways that he demonstrates his love towards them.

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And the way you mentioned about Esau, God still showered certain loving kindness upon him and his inheritance and his descendants and all of those things.

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And so there is a way in which we can see God's love poured out even on the unbeliever.

41:12

And so that again goes back to what love is. Love is something that God does as well as who he is and what he is, but also something that he expresses in different ways.

41:26

When you're sharing the gospel and however you,

41:32

I don't know if you open air preach or if you go out and hand out tracts, I know this is things that our church does and different churches do different things to go out and share the gospel.

41:41

Some people still go door to door. It's been a while since I knocked on doors. I don't know if you do that, but I appreciate people who do.

41:49

I love the fact that people go out and go in the highways and the hedges and seek to share the gospel.

41:56

But the question that I have is when you're sharing the gospel with someone and you are unfamiliar with their background, you don't know who they are, you don't know whether or not if they're a believer, but you're sharing with them the gospel, do you use the phrase,

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God loves you, or Jesus loves you? Personally, no,

42:17

I don't. I don't. And not because I believe that that would be untrue to say, but because I believe the way they would understand it would be incorrect.

42:29

So I addressed earlier, most of us when we hear this statement, Jesus loves you or God loves you, we would take it to mean

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Jesus is pleased with me. He's already delighted with me. He loves me how I am. And so I don't use that term for that reason.

42:44

So I would present the gospel saying, you know there's something wrong with you.

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We're not happy. We're not satisfied. We know our world is not okay, and you know that.

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And the only way that your life is ever going to make sense is if you come to the place where you understand

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God is above us, and He is the answer to our problems, and He sent

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His Son to die on a cross so that if anyone would believe in Him, He would have salvation, and your hope would be set in heaven.

43:17

And so all of the sins that we've committed were placed on Christ on that cross, and when

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He said it's finished, He meant it. So all of your sins have been taken by Jesus Christ, and if you'll believe in Him, He will save you.

43:31

So I would say that. And that last part, some people would become uncomfortable with, because it gets into telling someone who's lost that their sins have been atoned for.

43:42

And I'm willing to walk that bridge, but I do understand the hesitance on the love of God, telling somebody

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God loves you, Jesus loves you. I will say, if I heard an open air preacher or somebody sharing the gospel say, you know,

43:58

God loves you a lot. He really loves you. I wouldn't try to correct them, because that's no less than what

44:08

John says, that God loved the world. So it's not incorrect. I just would want to make sure the person understood what that means, that it was expressed, that God has shown

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His love by giving His Son so that if anyone would believe, they wouldn't perish. That's what

44:25

I would want to clarify. Yeah, I think that's a really good point, that the problem today is understanding what love is.

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And when you tell someone God loves them, their automatic assumption is that God is pleased with who they are or what they are doing.

44:42

And something I point out to our church, because we teach people when we go out to evangelize, and we give instruction, you know, as people need, you know, to learn how to do it.

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And they go with others who have been out there more and done it. I say one of the reasons why I don't say that phrase is typically that's not what we see the apostles doing.

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When the apostles are going in the book of Acts and in the other writings that we have, we don't see them saying,

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Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That's not the gospel. What we see is the call to repentance and faith, to turn from your and to turn to Christ, because He is the only one who can save.

45:23

So I think today has been super... Before we move on real quickly, can I comment on that? Yeah. So it's very true that the apostles don't go out saying

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Jesus loves you. They also didn't go out telling everybody that God hated them. And what we're in our current day experiencing is an overcorrection where, yeah, we want to be very clear.

45:48

The apostles didn't go out saying, Jesus loves you and has a great plan for your life. And they also didn't go out saying,

45:54

God hates you, and you're going to go to hell. And if you repent, then maybe

45:59

God will let you into heaven, but He'll still mostly hate you. Because that's what we get from many preachers today.

46:08

It's just a beating to listen to these sermons, because you just leave feeling like garbage, because all you're told is

46:15

God hates you and has every right to hate you, and you should love Him for even showing you the smallest bit of grace because He hates you.

46:24

And that's not the gospel. So it's an overcorrection that I think we're really having to work on fixing.

46:35

And that's true. And I appreciate you saying that and even considering just how much of that...

46:43

People seem to be fascinated with the preachers who are so willing to be so hard in their words and, oh, this guy's so great, because every time

46:55

I listen to him, I feel like such a dog. And every time I finish hearing a sermon, I feel like I have to question my salvation.

47:03

I actually said something to somebody one time. They said, every time I listen, this guy makes me question my salvation. I said, well, is that a good thing?

47:11

Is that positive that every time that there's never grace, it's always condemnation?

47:18

And are we not to live in light of Romans 8, 1, which says that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus?

47:25

Are we not to find some comfort in the fact that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our

47:38

Lord? Are we not to find some comfort in that? So yeah, I think that's very true and something that we ought to remind folks of.

47:48

Well, I do want to... I'm going to ask you one last thing, and I want to begin to draw to a close. I'm so encouraged by this.

47:54

I really hope that people will listen to this. I hope that people will take what you have said to heart, especially other preachers, because I know that I'm getting something out of this as a preacher, and I hope other preachers do as well.

48:05

But I want to take an opportunity to ask you now, what one big takeaway from today, if you're talking to preachers or even lay people who are listening to this podcast, what's the one big takeaway about the love of God that you would want them to know?

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Our rejection of the love of God is the central reason that anyone will go to hell.

48:28

That's the reason. John 3 .18 says, "...this

48:33

is the condemnation, that light came into the world, and the world loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

48:42

When God poured His love on us, we respond by pouring our love on darkness, and that's why we're condemned.

48:51

So the beginning of all soteriology, of all ideas of how we are redeemed, is the love of God.

49:03

And if we refuse to acknowledge how wonderfully loving God is, we remove the central reason anybody's condemned, and we remove the central reason anybody is redeemed.

49:18

And just as a wrapping up point here, I want to say this. No one should be talking about the love of God more than Calvinists.

49:28

Because let me read you these passages. This is Ephesians 1 .4. In love,

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He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ. The doctrine of predestination is grounded in the love of God.

49:48

How about regeneration? Ephesians 2 .4 -5. God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which

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He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, has made us alive together with Christ by grace you've been saved.

50:05

Why did God regenerate us? Because He loved us. Why did God predestinate us? Because He loved us.

50:12

Nobody should be talking about love more than somebody who believes in monergistic regeneration than somebody who believes in predestination.

50:22

No one should be talking about the love of God more than us. So the central point that I want to get across is all soteriology begins and ends with the love of God.

50:34

And if we're neglecting so great a doctrine, we're neglecting everything. That is awesome.

50:42

That is powerful. Thank you, Michael, very much. So I want to close with asking you to do two things for me.

50:50

Number one, I want to ask you to tell people, if they are in your area, how they might be able to find you and find your church.

50:56

And also speak for just a moment about the seminary where you teach. That way, if people are interested,

51:02

I know you're a professor there, and you love to teach, and if people are interested in wanting to be a part of that, can you just give us just a couple minutes on those information, and then we'll draw to a close.

51:14

Yeah, thank you so much, Keith. Dr. Foskey. I've never heard anybody call you Dr. Foskey, and people just probably don't know because you're such a humble guy about it.

51:23

But thank you for the opportunity to come on and talk. It's a pleasure talking with you and just getting to be your friend. But as far as my church goes,

51:33

I pastor Antioch Baptist Church in Lewisburg, Kentucky, and we're a small country church, 60 people on a

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Sunday, which I'm very comfortable with. I know everybody in my church, and I talk with them.

51:47

I have all their phone numbers. So if you want to come worship with us, we'd be glad to have you. We are pre -millennialist, okay?

51:58

So if you're coming from a church or a community where you are a headstrong, theonomic post -millennialist, you are welcome to come, but you may not enjoy it because we have a different idea of how things are going to wrap up, but we would love to have you and your optimism.

52:21

We welcome everybody, and so glad to have anybody that wants to come out.

52:26

Lewisburg, Kentucky is where we're located just out in the woods. You can find me. As far as Forge goes,

52:34

Forge is an incredible opportunity for anybody that's seeking theological education that doesn't have the money for a typical seminary and doesn't have the time to be a full -time student.

52:48

So actually, I'm going to be presenting a little bit about Forge at the Laborer's Conference in April that you're going to be speaking at, so look forward to seeing you there.

53:01

But Forge is a great opportunity. So a little bit about us. Forge started in 2015, so it's not an upstart kind of thing.

53:08

We've been here a few years. We're a confessionally

53:14

Protestant, reformed seminary, so all faculty members have to affirm either the

53:20

Westminster or the London Baptist Confession, as well as a series of other creeds and confessions throughout

53:25

Christian history. All of our courses are intended to teach within the reformed

53:30

Protestant faith, and most everything that we offer is through distance education.

53:36

So you don't have to leave your home church. You don't have to leave your current place of ministry to be a student. We offer everything from certificate programs up to the doctoral level, and the way that we do our courses is we want everything to be applicable in the local church.

53:53

So when you complete a course, you're going to be asked by your professor, how will what you learned in this course be applied in your local church context?

54:03

So that question will be in every course. Now, it's obvious in a systematic course how you're going to use those things, but for instance,

54:09

I teach a course on Luther and Calvin, where we study their life, their upbringing, their childhood, and all the way through their education and through their death.

54:18

And at the end of that course, I'm going to ask you, how will what you learned in this course be used in your local church context?

54:25

And so I really think that's valuable. We want you to be trained in the ministry.

54:30

The big perk at Forge, and this is going to sound unreal to many of you who are shopping for theological education, is right now our tuition, if you're in our certificate through master's programs, we charge $60 a month.

54:47

If you're in our doctoral program, it's $80 a month. And our courses are asynchronous, which means you can begin them whenever you want.

54:57

You have 20 weeks to complete them. If you don't complete it in 20 weeks, you fail. But if you complete it in those 20 -week periods, you can take as many or as few courses as you want at a time.

55:08

And however quickly or slowly you complete your degree is up to you. So a lot of people can afford something like that a lot better than, say, like a $5 ,000 a semester tuition.

55:21

So that really offers a lot of access to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it.

55:28

Theological reliability, academic rigor, and financial accessibility is really what we're aiming for at Forge, and I'm very proud to be a part of it.

55:37

Amen, brother. Well, thank you for sharing that. I hope that people will find some interest in that, especially folks who were like me.

55:45

When I went to seminary, I went to a local seminary because not only could I not afford to and do a bigger seminary,

55:53

I also didn't have the ability to just uproot myself and leave. I had a family. I had a church that I was serving in.

56:00

And so hearing that you can do it online and hearing that it is so financially accessible is such a blessing.

56:06

So, Michael, again, I want to thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you for sharing about the love of God and sharing about what you're going to be doing in Tullahoma and at the conference in Knoxville, the

56:19

Laborers Conference. So, again, thank you for being a part of the show today, and thank your family for giving you to us for this time.

56:26

Thank you, brother. It's been a blessing. Amen. And I want to thank you again, audience, for being a part of your

56:33

Calvinist podcast today. This podcast goes out every week, and today is our inaugural episode, so be looking forward to another episode next week.

56:41

And I want to thank you again for being a part of the show. I'm Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.