London TV Programs: #10

Hello Tom? Yeah, I've got a question basically. Tom, can you just speak up slightly for us?

Yeah, okay. I've got a question for Dr. White, especially if that's okay. I very much respect what he said already, by the way, but there's just one thing that I have a problem with.

As Christians, obviously we're called to love everyone, yeah? I mean, that's basically the essence of the gospel is to live in love.

Christ calls us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. But aren't

I right that people of the Reformed faith suggest that God loves the elect, but that he created those who are not the elect for destruction, therefore he sends them to hell, and as a result he doesn't love them?

And my question is, how can God call you and me to love everyone in the world, even people that he himself hates, and is going to be sending to hell anyway?

How can he call us to love those people? Well, first of all, I would completely disagree that God does not love them.

What I would introduce is the fact that we have different kinds of love, just as God does. God has redemptive love, just as we have a special love.

I am called to love my wife in a way that I'm not called to love anyone else's wife. The love that I have for my children is different from that which

I would have for anyone else. And the love that I have for a man who, for example, would break into my home and threaten my family is going to take a very different form than that which

I, by nature, must exercise in the defense of my family in that situation. So we cannot have a

God who is less than we are, that has an inability to have differing kinds of love, just as we have differing kinds of love.

And so I think there's a problem there in confusing the redemptive love of God, where he loves his elect people and gives

Christ on their behalf and joins them with Christ and does all these things for them and bringing them to himself, and the idea that, let's face it, all the fallen sons and daughters of Adam, if God wanted to bring his wrath to bear right now and bring them into judgment, he could.

But he does not. He pours out riches of blessings upon them. He makes his son to shine upon the righteous and upon the unrighteous.

And so the idea that, well, what you're saying is God doesn't love them. If you mean by redemptive love only, if you're restricting the term love in this case, then we need to be very careful that that's what you're doing.

And we're not talking about just the general love of God that is expressed toward all men. And remember one other thing.

I don't know who the elect are. I don't know the identity of the elect. And therefore, I can preach the gospel to all people.

It is a command. The gospel is a command. God commands men everywhere to repent. I can bring that gospel to everyone.

I do not need to have to know the secret decree of God as to in whose life he is going to cause that message to come to fruition.

But are you seriously suggesting that God actually loves people that he has created for destruction?

Well, remember, the Bible, I haven't even had a chance to read Romans chapter 9, but the objections you're raising are the very ones that Paul responds to.

And so if you're raising the same objections that Paul answered, what does that tell you? God has the right, he says in Romans chapter 9, he has the right, he has the sovereign purpose and ability to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known and to demonstrate his grace and his mercy.

Now, he's the one who freely chooses upon whom he gives those gifts. But remember, a lot of folks, they like the idea that God wants to demonstrate his mercy and his love, and that's quite true.

But what makes God's mercy so amazing is it's always placed against the backdrop of his righteousness and his holiness.

That's why Isaiah chapter 6 is there, holy, holy, holy, that holy God. And a lot of people today struggle to have the priorities that the

Bible itself gives. In Romans chapter 9, when God says that he chooses to demonstrate his wrath and his power, to make that known, a lot of people today go,

I don't care if God makes his wrath and his power known or not. I don't care if he even has the right to do so.

But God feels it's something that's very, very important and has done so in this world. That's what the word of God reveals. But it seems incredible that God would choose to love people that he has created to send to hell, where there will be eternal punishment.

Well, again, the process by which they get there reveals his character. And the real question is, what's going on in this world?

Is God revealing himself, or is it all based upon man and upon our activities and our destinies?

He is the potter. We are the clay. God has the right to make some vessels for destruction and some for honorable use and some for dishonorable use.

Does he not? That's the question that he asks. And if your answer is no, then your contention is not with me, it's with the apostle

Paul in Romans chapter 9. Yeah, but you seem to be suggesting two things. A, that he loves these people, and B, that he hates them and he's going to send them to eternal punishment.

And I'm saying that Romans chapter 9 reveals both aspects of God's activity. You cannot throw out the one just simply to make yourself more comfortable with the other.

I still don't understand how you can love and hate somebody at the same time. That doesn't make sense to me. You either love them or you don't love them.

Well, that's because you're defining love in a very, very narrow fashion that even we do not use for ourselves.

Edward, you're sitting there very quietly listening to all this and allowing James to do it. Do you want to come back to Tom?

Yes. I was just trying to say something. Just like he was saying in the book of Romans chapter 9, he says,

I will show mercy upon whom I will show mercy. I'll have compassion upon whom

I will have compassion. But let me address this issue about hell and God sending people to hell and he loves everybody.

Why should he send some to hell? Why should he send some to heaven and all that? God never intended and never created hell for man.

And I've said it before, and I want to make it clear again. He never intended man to trespass and go into hell, so to speak.

He presented himself and he made it very clear that the wages of sin is what?

Death. But a gift of God is eternal life. And so when we are now talking about hellfire and people going into hellfire, yes, it is something that they have sown.

God has the ability and has the power to be able to save them. And he has the power to be able to deliver them from that impending wrath.

But even in their own will or in their own decision, they decide, because I've met many people that I've debated with, and I've met many people that simply they don't want to know.

In such a situation, when God now decides that whatever now you have decided to do, the consequences are spelled out.

And if the consequences are spelled out, that you are going to go into hell. And that Jesus says that he is the only way, the truth and the life.

And you decide that, well, he's not the only way, the truth and the life. And then you decide to pass another way and thinking you go to heaven, and it is spelled out that, well, it is hellfire.

I don't think it would be right for us to say, well, God is casting people into hell, because man has a very great role to play in all this.

Tom, I'm not sure that we're going to change your mind tonight, but I hope at least we set your thinking and challenge you on some of the scriptures to look at them again.