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The Love of God
1 John 4:8 He who is not loving knew not God, for God is love. {CLV}
1 John 4:16 And we know and believe the love which God has in us. God is love, and he who is remaining in love is remaining in God, and God is remaining in him. {CLV}
God is Love, and believers should know the love which God has in us.
However God does not just love believers, He also Loves unbelievers, in fact God loves everybody, every single person who ever lived throughout all time. We believers and others seem to lose sight of this basic fact. We have God as someone who hates the unbeliever to the point that He will have them either burn in hell for all of entity with no chance of escape or annihilating them out of His sight so that they cease to exist at all.
However we as believers are told:
Matthew 5:43-45 "You hear that it was declared, 'You shall be loving your associate' and you shall be hating your enemy. Yet I am saying to you, Love your enemies, and pray for those who are persecuting you, so that you may become sons of your Father Who is in the heavens, for He causes His sun to rise on the wicked and the good, and makes it rain on the just and the unjust. {CLV}
You are to Love your enemies to become sons of the Father. For the Father who is in the heavens does not hold back on the sunshine or the rain because someone is wicked or unjust. He gives the sunshine and the rain to the wicked and the good. This shows His love for the Just and the unjust, the good and the wicked. We as believers are to love them as well.
Luke 6:35 Moreover, be loving your enemies, and be doing good, and be lending, expecting nothing from them, and your wages will be vast in the heavens, and you will be sons of the Most High, for He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. {CLV}
God, the Father, the Most High, is “kind to the ungrateful and wicked.” This shows that He does love the ungrateful and wicked, for if He did not He would not be kind to them. This way He shows His love for them, and we as believers in Him are expected to do the same.
Being tormented, or just left to rot in Hell is not love it is hate. In fact having someone actually burn in hell for all eternity would be the worst torture ever and would mean that God is not love but hate. It is Good to know that is not the case.
Similarly while annihilation might sound a much better option it still shows a hateful nature that God simply does not have for He is Love. Annihilation would mean that God hated them that much that He destroyed them for ever. If on the other hand God truly loves them then He would have away for them to have salvation, and that is through Jesus Christ.
In fact believers were once enemies of God, before you became a believer you were an enemy.
Romans 5:8-10 yet God is commending this love of His to us, seeing that, while we are still sinners, Christ died for our sakes." Much rather, then, being now justified in His blood, we shall be saved from indignation, through Him." For if, being enemies, we were conciliated to God through the death of His Son, much rather, being conciliated, we shall be saved in His life." {CLV}
Being enemies of God we were reconciled to God through the death of His son, Christ on the cross. Thus we went from enemies of God to being Sons of God. This shows the Love that God had for us while we were still enemies. Thus God does Love His enemies, because we were once enemies and He loved us.
If God is love (I John 4:8) and God Loves ALL His children --- and Love NEVER fails. (1 Cor 13:8) --- then GOD NEVER FAILS! It is impossible for God to lose even one of His children!
Copyright © M J Farquharson 2006 & 2021
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