Why Can’t God Eternally Love Those Who Don’t Believe in Him?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast
00:00:07.040 | and welcome back Pastor John.
00:00:08.400 | We have a question from a listener named Tuck Warner
00:00:11.240 | in Coldstream, Canada.
00:00:13.520 | Dear Pastor John, although I see that the Bible
00:00:15.380 | supports a predestination concept,
00:00:17.360 | I'm still having trouble reconciling the fact
00:00:19.520 | that a perfectly loving God would in essence
00:00:21.600 | force us to love him and leave us no other options.
00:00:25.720 | If his love is perfect, then how can he not allow us
00:00:29.200 | the freedom to accept or reject it?
00:00:32.360 | How would you respond to Tuck?
00:00:34.320 | - I have three responses.
00:00:36.280 | And mainly, these are responses to the way
00:00:40.880 | the question is asked, but I think can help
00:00:44.520 | get at the underlying issues he's concerned about.
00:00:47.720 | The first response has to do with assuming
00:00:51.340 | that we know what it means for God to be perfectly loving.
00:00:57.640 | Before we actually see from the Bible how he loved.
00:01:02.160 | Second is a response that has to do with the word force.
00:01:07.160 | When he asks, would God force us to love him?
00:01:13.660 | I wanna say a word about force.
00:01:16.000 | And third is a response to God allowing us freedom
00:01:21.000 | to accept or reject his love.
00:01:25.520 | So those are my three things
00:01:27.020 | I wanna say a word about.
00:01:28.360 | When Tuck asks how a perfectly loving God
00:01:34.040 | could do this or that, it seems to suggest,
00:01:38.000 | and I could be wrong, that he has in mind
00:01:41.540 | the way a perfectly loving God must act.
00:01:45.680 | But we humans are not in a very good position
00:01:50.640 | to define what perfect love in the creator
00:01:55.160 | of the universe must look like.
00:01:56.800 | We are too sinful, too finite, too culturally bound.
00:02:00.980 | For example, this is right off my front burner,
00:02:05.080 | I think that if the federal government of Norway
00:02:08.660 | were to vote on what a loving God must or may not do,
00:02:14.660 | they wouldn't allow him to spank his children.
00:02:18.380 | This has been very much in the news recently
00:02:21.500 | because Norway has become increasingly,
00:02:24.580 | it seems, heavy-handed, I would say that anyway,
00:02:28.940 | in removing children from their parents
00:02:32.000 | who don't measure up precisely to the ideas
00:02:37.260 | of what parental love looks like to the government.
00:02:41.460 | Whoa, government.
00:02:43.580 | Well, it's as plain as the nose on your face
00:02:46.980 | that God spanks his children.
00:02:49.500 | God takes the life of his children
00:02:54.540 | in 1 Corinthians 11 over the Lord's Supper
00:02:57.860 | and he spanks them in Hebrews 12.
00:03:01.420 | "In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted
00:03:04.660 | "to the point of shedding your blood.
00:03:07.480 | "And have you forgotten the exhortation
00:03:10.000 | "that addresses you as sons?
00:03:12.320 | "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
00:03:15.640 | "nor be weary when reproved by him.
00:03:19.440 | "For the Lord disciplines the one he loves
00:03:21.960 | "and chastises every son whom he receives.
00:03:25.460 | "It is for discipline that you have to endure.
00:03:28.740 | "God is treating you as sons for what son is there
00:03:32.080 | "whom his father does not discipline."
00:03:35.420 | Now, the point of what I'm saying,
00:03:37.560 | don't distort it by saying Christian parents
00:03:41.860 | have a right to take the lives of their children.
00:03:43.820 | God forbid that anybody would interpret me that way,
00:03:46.980 | but God does.
00:03:48.720 | God has that right.
00:03:50.640 | I'm not talking about how to discipline children
00:03:53.520 | in this podcast.
00:03:54.360 | We can do that another time.
00:03:55.900 | I'm talking about the cultural limitations
00:03:59.180 | on defining what God can do as a loving God.
00:04:03.540 | If you start with the cultural assumption
00:04:05.980 | that God cannot do something hurtful to his children,
00:04:10.980 | you have canceled out scriptures.
00:04:14.360 | We need to learn from scripture
00:04:16.060 | what love is going to look like.
00:04:17.880 | So that's all I'm saying,
00:04:20.000 | is that we bring to the Bible assumptions
00:04:24.420 | that may or may not be true
00:04:27.740 | in regard to what the love of God must do.
00:04:31.700 | Let's let the Bible define God's love.
00:04:36.100 | That's my first response.
00:04:37.880 | My second response is to the word force
00:04:41.460 | when Tuck says he has trouble reconciling
00:04:45.080 | the fact that a perfectly loving God
00:04:48.540 | would in essence force us to love him
00:04:52.680 | and leave us no other option.
00:04:55.260 | Now, the problem I have with that
00:04:56.840 | is that it creates a picture in our minds
00:05:00.180 | that is not accurate.
00:05:01.980 | Anyone who loves God genuinely loves God freely.
00:05:06.980 | He does.
00:05:10.340 | He loves God freely.
00:05:11.160 | Anyone who loves God genuinely loves God freely.
00:05:15.900 | That is, he loves God because he wants to love God.
00:05:19.440 | That's what it means to love God.
00:05:22.680 | To love God is to see God as infinitely worthy
00:05:26.820 | of being loved.
00:05:27.780 | To love God is to see God as beautiful
00:05:29.820 | and worthy and satisfying.
00:05:31.400 | And thus seeing God,
00:05:35.260 | our hearts are drawn out to delight in him
00:05:38.780 | and enjoy him and be satisfied in him
00:05:41.140 | and treasure him above all things.
00:05:44.180 | Forced enjoyment is an oxymoron.
00:05:48.520 | It can't be done.
00:05:50.940 | You can't force people to make their heart love
00:05:55.460 | what they don't love.
00:05:56.460 | You can force people to make physical movements
00:05:59.960 | they don't like to make,
00:06:01.380 | but you can't force them to like what they don't like.
00:06:04.980 | You can't force them to love what they don't love.
00:06:07.900 | So this picture that somehow we are loving God
00:06:12.900 | with our arm twisted behind our back in a painful action
00:06:18.060 | as God is forcing us to love him is ridiculous.
00:06:22.340 | It's not even ridiculous and wrong, it's inconceivable
00:06:26.480 | because that's not what love is.
00:06:29.020 | When God brings about love, and yes, he does,
00:06:32.820 | when God brings about love for himself in a heart
00:06:37.460 | where it didn't exist before,
00:06:39.820 | he does it by opening the eyes of the blind
00:06:44.340 | to see the irresistible beauties of Christ
00:06:48.500 | so that we freely delight in him.
00:06:51.500 | There isn't any other kind of love,
00:06:54.340 | but that kind of free love.
00:06:56.940 | Which brings us now to the third response
00:06:59.620 | that might help him understand the second.
00:07:02.740 | He says, "How can God not allow us the freedom
00:07:07.260 | "to accept or reject his love?"
00:07:11.060 | And the answer is that God does in fact leave many people
00:07:16.060 | the freedom to accept or reject his love.
00:07:19.760 | And this is called judgment
00:07:21.700 | because nobody left to themselves
00:07:26.780 | will accept the love of God.
00:07:29.380 | Nobody will accept the love of God.
00:07:33.780 | If God leaves us to our own so-called free will,
00:07:38.780 | the result will be rebellion and with it, damnation.
00:07:43.060 | So all of us, including Tuck,
00:07:46.500 | need to seriously consider that we are not neutral.
00:07:51.500 | I mean, Tuck's suggestion that maybe we're like a pendulum
00:07:55.860 | hanging straight down, not to the right, not to the left.
00:07:58.300 | We're neutral, ready to tilt to God or tilt to the devil.
00:08:03.700 | That's not true.
00:08:05.380 | The Bible from cover to cover says we're already tilted.
00:08:09.020 | We come into the word tilted.
00:08:10.940 | Tilted to the rejection of the love of God
00:08:13.540 | and such a firm inclination that the Bible calls it slavery,
00:08:18.020 | bondage to sin.
00:08:20.020 | And the only hope for us is not for God to leave us
00:08:24.140 | in our bondage to sin and watch what our free will will do,
00:08:28.940 | but to overcome our bondage
00:08:31.180 | and enable us to fulfill every inclination we have
00:08:36.180 | to worship Him or obey Him
00:08:38.480 | because we've seen the irresistible beauty of Christ.
00:08:43.020 | I'm recording this just a few days
00:08:46.960 | after being at Together for the Gospel 2016,
00:08:51.880 | where I preached on this issue.
00:08:55.000 | And the title of the message was the bondage of the will,
00:08:59.300 | the sovereignty of grace, and the glory of God.
00:09:04.300 | And I would encourage Tuck to go to that website.
00:09:09.140 | It'll probably be up in a few days
00:09:10.460 | and to listen to my argument.
00:09:13.000 | Let me try to give it in one minute.
00:09:16.280 | The Bible talks in at least five, maybe more ways
00:09:22.340 | about how enslaved or in bondage my will is.
00:09:26.540 | It does not talk about me having a free will to do good.
00:09:31.540 | We're not free when bondage holds us this way.
00:09:35.960 | In John 3, 19 to 20,
00:09:38.780 | we're in bondage to the love of darkness.
00:09:41.460 | In John 5, 43 and 44,
00:09:45.580 | we're in bondage to the love of self-glorification.
00:09:48.820 | How can you believe who love the glory of man
00:09:51.220 | and not the glory of God?
00:09:52.500 | In Romans 8, 6 to 8,
00:09:54.720 | we're in bondage to the mind of the flesh
00:09:57.020 | that is hostile to God.
00:09:59.340 | Everybody apart from the Holy Spirit is hostile to God.
00:10:03.740 | We don't submit to God's law.
00:10:05.420 | Indeed, we cannot.
00:10:06.660 | Ephesians 2, 1 to 4,
00:10:08.860 | we're in bondage to spiritual deadness, deadness.
00:10:13.380 | And in 1 Corinthians 2, 13 to 14,
00:10:15.660 | we're in bondage to the natural man's mockery
00:10:18.340 | of spiritual things.
00:10:19.900 | We can't understand it
00:10:20.740 | because we think they're foolish to us.
00:10:23.620 | And in 2 Corinthians 4, 4,
00:10:26.320 | we're in bondage to blindness,
00:10:28.640 | to the gospel of the glory of Christ.
00:10:31.360 | So tuck, if God leaves us to our free will,
00:10:36.120 | we will perish
00:10:39.000 | because we're only free to do what we love to do.
00:10:41.600 | And what we love to do by nature is exalt ourselves, not God.
00:10:45.840 | And the only possibility is to be set free
00:10:48.600 | by an act of sovereign grace,
00:10:51.400 | only the preciousness and beauty of sovereign grace
00:10:54.340 | by which He breaks into our deadness and blindness
00:10:57.500 | and rebellion and reveals to us the beauty of Christ,
00:11:02.340 | can we be set free to freely love Him.
00:11:06.340 | - Yeah, yeah, thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:08.420 | And for the question, thank you, tuck.
00:11:10.420 | Pastor John's T4G message can be found
00:11:13.200 | also at deservinggod.org.
00:11:14.780 | It's titled, "The Bondage of the Will,
00:11:16.340 | "The Sovereignty of Grace, and the Glory of God."
00:11:19.420 | Well, it has been a great week so far
00:11:21.260 | on the podcast, and you can catch up on the episodes
00:11:23.020 | and search our archive of hundreds of episodes,
00:11:25.500 | download our podcast app, or subscribe to the podcast,
00:11:28.140 | or even send us a question of your own.
00:11:30.060 | Go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:11:34.560 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and I will see you tomorrow.
00:11:37.360 | (silence)
00:11:39.520 | (silence)
00:11:41.680 | (silence)
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