Part Five "The notion that God can not love someone and
send them to Hell is strangely familiar. Many liberals also believe
this. They solve the 'problem' by denying eternal punishment while
you, Rand, limit God's love to include only the elect. Both erroneous
conclusions come from the same polluted source. There is no problem
really because God's judgment and God's love are not incompatible.
God is not love only but is also a righteous judge who must punish sin.
A human judge might love the man who stands before him convicted of
murder, but in accordance with justice he must sentence that man to
death even when it causes him much grief and sorrow. God's love
for sinners in Hell was expressed clearly in the death of His dear son
at Calvary, but they rejected it." When Jesus came into Galilee, He did not preach, God loves you!! He has a wonderful plan for your life!! Instead, He preached, Repent ye, and believe the gospel. Without the conviction of the Holy Spirit man will not repent. Without the gift of faith man will not believe. Yet it is man's duty to do both. Had Christ preached God's universal love for all, including the Pharisees, Jesus would not have been crucified. By preaching the wrath and judgment of God upon the religious hierarchy, Christ was a dead man walking. It is true that God is loving while also remaining just. Those whom God loves He saves by grace, undeserved and unmerited on our part. This saving grace is freely given by God to whom He will have mercy and compassion, (Romans 9). In order to propitiate His justice - which will not countenance sin unpunished - Christ has graciously and freely given Himself up for punishment and death in our stead. He is our substitute Lamb, upon whom the judgment of God fell. Those who reject Christ's grace are those for whom Christ did not die. They themselves must suffer eternal punishment for their sins. They are those for whom He did not include in His prayer for forgiveness upon the cross. Had they been included, they would have been saved. For Christ successfully completes that mission for which He was sent, (John 4:34). Had Christ's mission been to save every human ever born through His atoning death, all would be redeemed. But that is not the case. Jesus prays and does only that which is the will of the Father, (John 5:30, 6:38-39, 17:9). It is the Father's will that Jesus should lose not one Elect soul chosen by the Father before the foundation of the earth. In John 17, Jesus declares that is precisely the case - those that thou hast given me none of them is lost, but the son of perdition [whom You never willed to save in the first place, as declared in Scripture before he was born, neither having yet done good or evil]. The analogy to a human judge is erroneous. God's ways and thoughts are not our ways and thoughts. Furthermore, a judge who has a bias for or against a defedent must remove himself from the case because of fear of prejudicial treatment. Jesus declares His bias for the Elect: ye have been with me from the beginning. John confides that we love him because he first loved us. Though He loved us from eternity for reasons not in ourselves, His justice still needed to be served. Sinless Christ crucified in the stead of the Elect was the means used to appease the justice of God. Hell is a reflection of God's eternal righteous hatred, wrath and just condemnation. Heaven is a reflection of God's eternal love, mercy, compassion and grace. The difference is as great as night and day. The two are as far apart as Christ and Antichrist, Mystery Babylon and New Jerusalem. To commingle the two is unsavory and dishonoring to God's love, sovereign will, and omnipotence which cannot fail to save from Hell those Elect whom He loves. |