The Love of God - John MacArthur

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marks

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So an important distinction must be made. God loves believers with a particular love. It is a family love, the ultimate love of an eternal Father for His children. It is the consummate love of a Bridegroom for His bride. It is an eternal love that guarantees their salvation from sin and its ghastly penalty. That special love is reserved for believers alone.

However, limiting this saving, everlasting love to His chosen ones does not render God's compassion, mercy, goodness, and love for the rest of mankind insincere or meaningless. When God invites sinners to repent and receive forgiveness (Isa. 1:18; Matt. 11:28-30), His pleading is from a sincere heart of genuine love.

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Does God love the elect and hate the non-elect?

John MacArthur claims that God invites sinners to repent and receive forgiveness from a sincere heart of genuine love.

But.

Clearly God does love even those who spurn His tender mercy, but it is a different quality of love, and different in degree from His love for His own.

A sincere love. A genuine love. But a substandard love, not enough that they can come into the kingdom.

How sincere is that?

OK, you don't have to stay in Jail, I'll pay your $1000 fine. So I go to the clerk, give him $500, and say, OK, I've done what I said.

God is love. God is not "loves". God is love and that love is supreme, as all that God is. God is not, Greater Love and Lesser Love.

God does not love with a second-rate love.

Much love!
 
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CharismaticLady

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Found here:
Does God love the elect and hate the non-elect?

John MacArthur claims that God invites sinner to repent and receive forgiveness from a sincere heart of genuine love.

But.



A sincere love. A genuine love. But a substandard love, not enough that they can come into the kingdom.

How sincere is that?

OK, you don't have to stay in Jail, I'll pay your $1000 fine. So I go to the clerk, give him $500, and say, OK, I've done what I said.

God is love. God is not "loves". God is love and that love is supreme, as all that God is. God is not, Greater Love and Lesser Love.

God does not love with a second-rate love.

Much love!

Wow! And people wonder why I think that man is possessed!

Crime Stopper Alert
John MacArthur
 

Stan B

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Found here:
Does God love the elect and hate the non-elect?

John MacArthur claims that God invites sinner to repent and receive forgiveness from a sincere heart of genuine love.

But.

A sincere love. A genuine love. But a substandard love, not enough that they can come into the kingdom.

How sincere is that?

OK, you don't have to stay in Jail, I'll pay your $1000 fine. So I go to the clerk, give him $500, and say, OK, I've done what I said.

God is love. God is not "loves". God is love and that love is supreme, as all that God is. God is not, Greater Love and Lesser Love.

God does not love with a second-rate love.

Much love!

God's love is a mystery. As your referenced John McArthur confirms that before they were even born, God loved Jacob and hated Esau!

Even before the beginning of the world, God declares that He had already chosen His own:

"He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love" Ephesians 1:4
 
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marks

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God's love is a mystery. As your referenced John McArthur confirms that before they were even born, God loved Jacob and hated Esau!

Even before the beginning of the world, God declares that He had already chosen His own:

"He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love" Ephesians 1:4
Does this mean you agree with this "two loves" idea?
 

CharismaticLady

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God's love is a mystery. As your referenced John McArthur confirms that before they were even born, God loved Jacob and hated Esau!

Even before the beginning of the world, God declares that He had already chosen His own:

"He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love" Ephesians 1:4

Both Ephesians 1 and Romans 9 through 11 have to do with Israel, God's chosen nation. God didn't literally HATE Esau, He just chose Jacob to further the line to the Messiah. Adam - Seth - Noah - Shem - Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - David - Jesus
 

marks

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God's love is a mystery. As your referenced John McArthur confirms that before they were even born, God loved Jacob and hated Esau!

God reveals His love for us in Jesus Christ. I'm not saying we understand God's love as God does, Just the same . . .

God demonstrates His love, commends His love, pours His love into our hearts, directs us into his love, perfects His love in us, we see His love in Jesus' sacrifice, He tells us how we know we have His love, and wants us to remain in His love.

You mention Jacob and Esau, this makes for a good study.

Malachi 1:2-4
2) I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob,
3) And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
4) Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever.

God's hatred for Esau was in action against their nation. God gave Mount Seir ot Esau, and even when the Israelites wanted to pass through Edom, God told them to leave them alone, that God had given Edom to Esau.

Just the same, God's hatred for Esau was not a rejection of them individually to salvation, it was God's promise to prevent that nation from prospering.

"They shall build, but I will throw down." That is God's hatred for Esau, contrasted with God's love for Israel, that God would establish them in their land, and in His kingdom.

But there is nothing here about individual salvation.

But what is the love of God? God's love is revealed as He gives to us, and we see His gift, His grace to us. Those who reject His love do not diminish His love to some second-rate, actually meaningless kind of love.

Much for reals kind of love!
 

marks

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I am unfamiliar with that term.
It's my own description of MacArthur's teaching, that God loves everyone, but that He loves the elect with a better kind of love.

So I refer to these as "two loves", that is, to different kinds of love. One is a love God has for certain individuals, and which imparts the gift of eternal life. The other love, God's sincere love for everyone else, does not bring life, those who are loved with this lesser love receive eternal shame and torment.

I don't see anything remotely like this taught in Scripture.

Much love!
 

Ernest T. Bass

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John 15:9 "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love."

Jude 1:21 "Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."

The two above verses, commanded to disciples/Christians, indicate that in some sense the Christian can fall away from God's love. God has a general love for all mankind, (John 3:16) but there is a Fatherly love God has for those that are His children/Christians Romans 8:15. A Christian can become an apostate and fall away from God's Fatherly love yet is stilled loved by God as seen by God's concern for the salvation of those that are lost, 2 Peter 3:9.
 

John Caldwell

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I could go with "God loves all men, and did so by sending His only Son" while also saying "God loves the Bride as His people set apart from the World".

This is not saying that God loves one group of people "better", but perhaps differently.

I believe God set His love on me when I was a sinner by sending His Son/ dying for me. But as a "child of God" I believe God has set His love on me differentlt than before.

I don't know if that makes sence, but that is my thoughts when I hear "two loves". I love my wife and my son. My love for each is different, but not by degree. I love my wife as my wife and my son as my son.
 

Waiting on him

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I could go with "God loves all men, and did so by sending His only Son" while also saying "God loves the Bride as His people set apart from the World".

This is not saying that God loves one group of people "better", but perhaps differently.

I believe God set His love on me when I was a sinner by sending His Son/ dying for me. But as a "child of God" I believe God has set His love on me differentlt than before.

I don't know if that makes sence, but that is my thoughts when I hear "two loves". I love my wife and my son. My love for each is different, but not by degree. I love my wife as my wife and my son as my son.
Maybe just made aware of a love from the foundation of the world, through a quickening Spirit?