Back on Friday, we talked about whether non-Christians can honor God or not. That was a very helpful episode and I commend it to you as episode number 1145. Today's question naturally flows from it and it comes to us in the inbox in the form of a follow-up email from a listener named Daniel who points back to an even older episode.

Daniel asks this, "Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for the podcast. In your August 30th episode, you helpfully addressed the correlation between God's love and his election and the fact that the two are basically interchangeable, if I understood you correctly. However, it leaves me with the question about how I am to understand God's love toward the non-elect.

Does God love the non-elect? If so, is that love a different quality or characteristic than his love for the elect? And thank you, Pastor John, for helping me make sense of this difficult issue." Well, I'll try. Let's remind ourselves that with all such questions, we are utterly, totally dependent on what God has chosen to reveal in his Word.

There is no way we can come up with answers to these kinds of questions without relying decisively on God's Word. So you should test everything I say. By the Word of God, my opinion counts for very little. God's Word counts for everything. So let me share with you some texts that show, I think, very clearly that God loves the non-elect, those whom he has not chosen for eternal salvation.

And then some passages to show that he has a unique kind of love for his own elect people, his bride. Matthew 5, 44. Jesus says, "I say to you, love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.

For he, God, makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good. He sends rain on the just and on the unjust." Acts 14, 16. Paul in Lystra says to the crowd, "In past generations, he allowed all nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without a witness, but he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness." 1 Timothy 2, 3, and 4.

Pray for your leaders that's good, pleasing in God's sight, who desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. Ezekiel 33, 11. "Say to them, 'As I live,' declares the Lord, 'I don't have pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.'" Turn back, turn back from your evil ways.

Why would you die, O house of Israel? John 3, 16. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." So from those texts, I conclude, and many more, not just those, that there's a real sense in which God has extended great kindness and goodness and patience and invitation to the whole unbelieving world of mankind.

As Paul puts it in Romans 2, 4, "To presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience," not knowing God's kindness is leading you to repentance. Now the problem arises when folks go beyond Scripture and infer from those statements about the love of God for all the people that he cannot and does not elect some to everlasting life, but not all.

In other words, they infer that since he loves all, he must love all in the same way, that he cannot choose to love some in a more focused, electing, redeeming, adopting, eternal way. But it seems to me that's exactly what the Scriptures teach, that he does have a different love, an electing love, a saving love for some and not all, and that this is totally owing to the abundance of his grace since nobody deserves it.

I hear the text from which I get that idea, Ephesians 1, 3, following, "God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace." Or Ephesians 5, 25, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, a unique wife love.

I have a special love for my wife, but I hope I love all women appropriately." Romans 1, 7, "To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints, grace to you." Jude 1, "Jude, a servant of Jesus, brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept by Jesus." Romans 9, 25, "As indeed he says in Hosea, 'Those who were not my people, I will call my people.' And her who was not beloved, I will call beloved.'" So there's a sense in which those who are not loved in this way were not loved.

And Romans 8, 28, "We know that those who love God, all things work together for their good." That's a kind of love. God is working all things together for their good. In John 17, 9, Jesus is praying. He says, "I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me out of the world, for they are yours." So there's a unique praying love that he performs for them and not for others.

Or John 10, 14, "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep." Or 1 Timothy 4, 10, "To this end, we toil and strive because we have our hopes set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe." So there's a sense in which his saving grace is extended to all, but there is a special application of it effectively to those whom he draws into faith.

So my answer to Daniel's question is that God's love for the non-elect consists in genuine acts of kindness and generosity and patience and invitation. And just think about it. When you're talking to an unbeliever, we are able to point out to unbelievers evidences on every hand of God's kindness to them, not the least of which is that we and they should at this moment be suffering in hell, and we're not.

Nevertheless, every believer knows that we did not save ourselves. Our faith is not because we're smarter or better or wiser or less fallen than those who do not believe. We know that grace alone, not merit, has opened our eyes and caused us to see the supreme value and beauty of Christ.

And therefore, we know that we have been loved with an everlasting love, a dying love, a love Paul calls it a great love in Ephesians 2, 5, that raises us from the dead, an electing love, a regenerating love, a preserving love that we will be loved with forever, a divine, glorifying love.

And we know that we have merited none of this. It is totally free, and therefore, we should be utterly and eternally thankful. And while we have breath, we should be bent on bringing as many people as we can into this amazing grace, even if it costs us our lives, because that's what it costs Jesus to bring us in.

Amazing, unmerited grace indeed. Thank you, Pastor John, for explaining the generosity of God to the non-elect. And thank you for listening and making this podcast a part of your week in Commute. You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive. You can reach us by email with a question of your own, even a follow-up question.

If you have questions that were raised by previous episodes, you can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, it is not easy to apply all of the New Testament to our lives, but it's certainly easier than trying to apply the Old Testament to all of our lives.

So what role does the Old Testament play in our Christian lives? That's the question next up on Wednesday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we will see you then.