Can I Say ‘God Loves You’ to Unbelievers?
00:00:00.000 | Jeremy writes in to ask, "In light of the doctrine of predestination, how are we to
00:00:09.120 | go about day-to-day evangelism? I used to tell people that they are dearly loved
00:00:13.040 | by God, that Jesus loves you, but if they are not one of the elect, then is it
00:00:17.400 | honest or right to tell them this?" So Pastor John, here's a question. How do you
00:00:21.040 | handle the language of God's love for sinners generally in light of Reformed
00:00:25.880 | soteriology? It is honest to say to the world, "God loves you," because I think
00:00:35.280 | that's what John 3:16 says and means. "For God so loved the world that he gave his
00:00:42.120 | only Son, so that whoever believes, so that the love of John 3:16 is a
00:00:48.480 | indiscriminate love that consists in a bona fide offer of his Son to every
00:00:56.360 | person for their receiving." And Matthew 5, "Love your enemy and you will be like
00:01:04.520 | your father who makes the sun rise on the evil and the good." So there are
00:01:09.520 | numerous places where God's universal love is spoken, and it's not wrong
00:01:15.360 | therefore to say to people, "God loves you." But here's what has to be clarified as
00:01:23.880 | far as biblical soteriology goes. He doesn't love everyone in the very same
00:01:29.640 | way. He has set his electing love on some freely without any of us deserving it,
00:01:36.880 | and these will believe. Acts 13, 48, "As many as were appointed to eternal life
00:01:44.320 | believe." So the love of God in their case is a specific and particular love of
00:01:51.280 | drawing them to himself. He doesn't have that love for everybody or everybody
00:01:57.080 | would be saved. So in view of those distinctions, my answer to how we
00:02:03.400 | evangelize is this. We love people by telling them the best news in all
00:02:10.360 | the world. And what is that? God, the God against...you look at...so you're
00:02:17.480 | meeting with somebody and you want to tell them the good news, you want to
00:02:20.600 | evangelize them. You say, "The God against whom you have committed treason offers
00:02:27.600 | complete amnesty freely. He will commute your death sentence. He will forgive your
00:02:35.760 | treasonous intentions and actions and feelings. He will put away his just and
00:02:42.640 | holy anger against you. And not only that, he will adopt you into his royal family,
00:02:48.880 | make you an heir with his son, and unless you doubt that this is possible for him
00:02:55.880 | to do this, just simply justify the wicked, he put forward his son to bear
00:03:03.640 | the death sentence and perform every duty that you have failed to perform if
00:03:10.520 | you would have this. He raised him from the dead to show that the
00:03:17.640 | death of his son was sufficient. He offers you now all of this through his
00:03:23.440 | son. It's all free. You can't earn it. You can't deserve it. The condition is to lay
00:03:29.880 | down the arms of treason, the arms of rebellion, and bow in humble, helpless
00:03:35.560 | dependence on free mercy from the King and receive his full pardon and amnesty
00:03:41.760 | and acceptance. So we preach, Tony, we preach indiscriminately to everybody. We
00:03:47.200 | say that to everybody. We don't try to figure out who the elect are and preach
00:03:51.320 | to them. That's the error of Hyper-Calvinism historically. We offer
00:03:55.720 | Christ. We offer Christ and all that Christ is. We say, "If you will have Christ,
00:04:02.400 | I'm offering you Christ and all of his benefits," and then we pray for the people
00:04:09.120 | that their hearts would be opened and the heart of stone would be taken out and
00:04:12.400 | the heart of believing flesh would be put in. We plead with them, "Be reconciled
00:04:17.360 | to God," and then God does the calling. God gives the faith. God overcomes the
00:04:22.820 | resistance. God takes out the heart of stone. It's our job to preach the
00:04:28.120 | unsearchable riches of Christ and to offer them freely to everybody. Yes,
00:04:34.200 | amen. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please
00:04:37.760 | email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. At
00:04:41.600 | DesiringGod.org you will find thousands of free books, articles, sermons, and
00:04:45.280 | other resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening.
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