God's Love And Hate?

William C · Mar 29, 2003

Posted by Ray:
Whoever wrote post March 29 1:04 a.m. offered some good thoughts. Brother Bill I think it was you.

Posted by Eric
Yes, thank you Bro. Bill for this explanation of "hate". It's alarming how many people like to think that God arbitrarily "hates" some unconditionally in a sense of animosity that he doesn't hate them and other sinners.

Thank you both for actually responding to my post which is most likely the answer to the question that this thread is addressing. It's interesting that you two actually respond to my post but none of the Calvinists address it. I wonder why that is?

Glenn, you wrote:

I feel the God Loves everybody theology is a stench in Gods nostrils and an abomination of scripture

You have drifted from mainstream Calvinism with this statement. I encourage you to read John Calvin's works on love and John MacArthur's book "The Love of God."

I'm surprised that other Calvinists on this board haven't taken issue with your statement.

Pastor Larry · Mar 29, 2003

The answer is found in the infinite perfections of God. His hate for sinners and their sin is a real hate, not merely a contrast to his love, because he loves them both. While we, as finite humans, find love and hate as incompatible, God because he is infinite, can love and hate the same object at the same time. To try to say he can't is to put God in human box, something he is not afflicted with.

romanbear · Mar 29, 2003

Npetreley;
a quote from you;
----------------------------------------
I forget who it was who it was who came up with this analogy, but that's like saying, "Here, you can have this Mercedes Benz for free. All you need to do to keep it is pay me $1,800 per month."
-----------------------------------------
My reply;
Do you believe that you can be saved and sin all you want?.
Your problem here is that you think of everything as works. If one Loves Christ why not do His will?. Is everything we have to do with Christ a work?. Is believing in Him is a work to Calvinist?. If so then you are all saved by your works.

You can't be truly saved and go your own way and sin all you like because you are affraid of works.

Works are the product of your faith not the other way around.
Romanbear

Yelsew · Mar 29, 2003

A Word search in the bible revealed the following:

"Hate" appears 81 times

"Love" appears 636 times

Pastor Larry · Mar 29, 2003

Originally posted by Yelsew:
A Word search in the bible revealed the following:

"Hate" appears 81 times

"Love" appears 636 times

So. This depends on the version you use and it makes no difference. We would have to examine those in their contexts to see what they were referring to. But even then, this is not really a majority vote kind of a deal. The question is not how many times these words are used but rather what do they teach us about God when they are used with reference to him?

Yelsew · Mar 29, 2003

Originally posted by Pastor Larry:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Yelsew:
A Word search in the bible revealed the following:

"Hate" appears 81 times

"Love" appears 636 times

So. This depends on the version you use and it makes no difference. We would have to examine those in their contexts to see what they were referring to. But even then, this is not really a majority vote kind of a deal. The question is not how many times these words are used but rather what do they teach us about God when they are used with reference to him? [/QUOTE]The ratio of occurrance will change very little regardless of the research one does. You will agree that The Holy Scriptures are "inspired by God", thus God's message relative to love and hate is clear, there is much more emphasis on Love than on Hate.

Ray Berrian · Mar 29, 2003

Yelsew,

Your word study was helpful. From God's vantage point love is mentioned approximately eight times more than His mentioning of hate. Probably not all of the references dealing with 'love' are related to God's attitude and feelings toward sinners. Also, with the word 'hate' one might find that everytime you read about hate it is not dealing with God in relation toward sinners. The emphasis seems to be clear: Love 636 times; hate 81 times.

It would be interesting to see if John Calvin had the same emphasis as the Bible demonstrates. How many times does Calvin refer to God's hate and how many times does He speak of His love? A person might come to the conclusion that if His theology was right then the founder of Geneva's experiment and theocracy should have emphasized the demonstrated love of God as found in the Bible as well as in your heart and mine.

It is true that God hates the sinner and his sins. Perhaps the only time that He loves is when He calls men and women to Christ through preaching or by witness to His salvation plan by the aid of the Spirit.

Yelsew · Mar 29, 2003

I would add that I did not search for any of the variations of Love and Hate, but only those two words.

Pastor Larry · Mar 29, 2003

I just did a word search. The word "and" is used 38127 times in teh Bible. Therefore, it is obvious that God emphasizes "and" a lot more than he emphasizes "love."

Surely you can see the fallacy of such a method of argumentation. Truth is not determined by word counts.

1. You did not determine how many of those occurrences of love and hate refer to God. Many of them no doubt refer to man.
2. You did not explore what those passages teach about the respective ideas. How many times does a doctrine have to be mentioned before it is accorded an "emphasis" or an "importance"? I say only one.

Word counts mean nothing in determining truth. They are very superficial, as I demonstrated by the beginning of this post. Why you go through these and post the ones that have to do with God and then go from there.

And Ray, a word count is not a word study. You know that. I agree that word studies are helpful. But word counts don't mean a whole lot.

Yelsew · Mar 29, 2003

I just did a word search. The word "and" is used 38127 times in teh Bible. Therefore, it is obvious that God emphasizes "and" a lot more than he emphasizes "love."

God is high on conjunctions. Did your try "of" and "the"? What about "a"?

2. You did not explore what those passages teach about the respective ideas. How many times does a doctrine have to be mentioned before it is accorded an "emphasis" or an "importance"? I say only one.

The number of occurrences of a word that in itself is can be the topic, most certainly provides a measure of relative importance of that topic. If God commanded man to Love over 600 times, it is relatively important to God that Man love!

Word counts mean nothing in determining truth. They are very superficial, as I demonstrated by the beginning of this post. Why you go through these and post the ones that have to do with God and then go from there.

Would that not be denying that All love is of God?

[ March 29, 2003, 10:38 PM: Message edited by: Yelsew ]

npetreley · Mar 29, 2003

Originally posted by Pastor Larry:
The answer is found in the infinite perfections of God. His hate for sinners and their sin is a real hate, not merely a contrast to his love, because he loves them both. While we, as finite humans, find love and hate as incompatible, God because he is infinite, can love and hate the same object at the same time. To try to say he can't is to put God in human box, something he is not afflicted with.

IMO, this is the best answer so far.

npetreley · Mar 29, 2003

Originally posted by romanbear:
Npetreley;
a quote from you;
----------------------------------------
I forget who it was who it was who came up with this analogy, but that's like saying, "Here, you can have this Mercedes Benz for free. All you need to do to keep it is pay me $1,800 per month."
-----------------------------------------
My reply;
Do you believe that you can be saved and sin all you want?.
Your problem here is that you think of everything as works. If one Loves Christ why not do His will?. Is everything we have to do with Christ a work?. Is believing in Him is a work to Calvinist?. If so then you are all saved by your works.

You can't be truly saved and go your own way and sin all you like because you are affraid of works.

Works are the product of your faith not the other way around.
Romanbear

If you honestly believe that works are the product of true faith, then how can you believe that true faith would produce a person who would "sin all they want"?

IMO, this is the sort of fear that is produced by doctrines that depend on man's will instead of God's will.

Yelsew · Mar 29, 2003

If you honestly believe that works are the product of true faith, then how can you believe that true faith would produce a person who would "sin all they want"?

IMO, this is the sort of fear that is produced by doctrines that depend on man's will instead of God's will.

OK, You are a Calvinist, You believe that God does it all, Right? Have you been regenerated? Have you repented? Do you still sin?.....Scriptures say that if we say we have no sin, we are a liar!

Ray Berrian · Mar 29, 2003

I really did not think that anyone would really buy into the idea of 'God Who is infinite to the
point that He can hate and love the same object at the same time.' (in this case the sinner) I say this in respect to the Lord but I don't think anyone should characterize God as being a spiritual Being who is schizophrenic. Inadvertently this could happen. And by this definition I mean that God does not have in His Being 'the presence of mutually contradictory or antagonistic aspects in His Divine nature.' {Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary, p. 1050 -right column}

That's why I said that perhaps the only time God does not hate the sinner is when He, by the Spirit, is convicting and convincing men and women of their need of Jesus. If they receive Him they are saved; if they reject Him they remain sinners under His wrath. [John 3:18]

We know that God hates sinners [Psalm 5:5] but when they receive Christ [John 1:12] they receive love Personified. Herein is love, not that we loved God, {as sinners} but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propititation for our sins. 'Beloved, if God so loved us, {as sinners} we ought also to love one another.' [I John 4:10-11]

There are perhaps other explanations of this interesting topic.
' 'God Who is infinite to the point that He can love and hate the same object at the same time.'

William C · Mar 29, 2003

Again let me ask the Calvinists a question:

The Bible teaches us to love and honor our parents and Jesus tells his disciple that if they don't hate father and mother they can't be his disciple. Is this a contradiction? What do you think?

Frogman · Mar 30, 2003

I think Jesus was only talking to the middle eastern people who would be elected to fight the holy war against the infidel invading their homeland, is this not obvious how these consistently cower behind innocent civilians. It is obvious to me these knew they were being spoken to here. Why can't you understand it?

Or maybe he wasn't and he was merely speaking in riddles so that those around him hearing him would not be able to 'hear' him and come to him and he would have to exert his energy to heal them.

Or maybe he was just letting them know that to follow him required much more than the physical, rational, natural man could imagine and thus man could not rely on his emotional tuggings to direct his worship and service.

Take your pick the floor is open, after all few who will accept your view are even sure the Bible even speaks any resemblance to truth.

Bro. Dallas

William C · Mar 30, 2003

Originally posted by Frogman:
I think Jesus was only talking to the middle eastern people who would be elected to fight the holy war against the infidel invading their homeland, is this not obvious how these consistently cower behind innocent civilians. It is obvious to me these knew they were being spoken to here. Why can't you understand it?

Or maybe he wasn't and he was merely speaking in riddles so that those around him hearing him would not be able to 'hear' him and come to him and he would have to exert his energy to heal them.

Or maybe he was just letting them know that to follow him required much more than the physical, rational, natural man could imagine and thus man could not rely on his emotional tuggings to direct his worship and service.

Take your pick the floor is open, after all few who will accept your view are even sure the Bible even speaks any resemblance to truth.

Bro. Dallas

Maybe its just late and I'm not understanding clearly but I have no idea what this means Dallas. Sorry

Pastor Larry · Mar 30, 2003

Originally posted by Ray Berrian:
I really did not think that anyone would really buy into the idea of 'God Who is infinite to the point that He can hate and love the same object at the same time.' (in this case the sinner) I say this in respect to the Lord but I don't think anyone should characterize God as being a spiritual Being who is schizophrenic.

Nobody characterized God as schizophrenic. If you were as familiar as you pretend to be with theology, this would not be a revelation to you, nor would it seem strange. See Strong's Theology, pp. 290-91 for a discussion of it.

And by this definition I mean that God does not have in His Being 'the presence of mutually contradictory or antagonistic aspects in His Divine nature.' {Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary, p. 1050 -right column}

No one said that he did. Love is an attribute; hatred of sin and those who work iniquity is the response of his holiness. AGain, this is elementary theology.

Pastor Larry · Mar 30, 2003

Originally posted by Brother Bill:
Again let me ask the Calvinists a question:

The Bible teaches us to love and honor our parents and Jesus tells his disciple that if they don't hate father and mother they can't be his disciple. Is this a contradiction? What do you think?

No but this is unrelated to the discussion we are having here. You guys and your concordances ... you come up with teh same word used in two different places and assume it it talking about the same thing ... Stop it already ...

Pastor Larry · Mar 30, 2003

Originally posted by Yelsew:
The number of occurrences of a word that in itself is can be the topic, most certainly provides a measure of relative importance of that topic. If God commanded man to Love over 600 times, it is relatively important to God that Man love!

But God did not command man to love over 600 times. That is part of teh fallacy. Many of those uses are indicative in fact probably most of them are. Relatively few of them are imperative.

But if a word count provides a measure of relative importance, then we cannot suggest that love is "relatively important" because there are many words that are used many more times than "love" is. That is a fallacy.

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Word counts mean nothing in determining truth. They are very superficial, as I demonstrated by the beginning of this post. Why you go through these and post the ones that have to do with God and then go from there.

Would that not be denying that All love is of God? [/QUOTE]Nope not at all. But not all of these verses have to do with the love of God for us. And that is what the topic here is. Many of them, in fact probably most of them, are about the love that one person has for another. And so, for the purpose of this discussion, they don't count because we are not talking about the love of one for another.

But that brings us back to the original point: How many times does a teaching have to be stated before we take it seriously? I think only one. If Scripture only says in one place that God hates the sinner, that is all it needs to.

I believe Scripture says that God hates the sinner and I believe it says he also loves the sinner. Ray's solution seems different than it ever has been to me. It seems that he might be confused with what he has previously said but I will leave that up to him. God said it and so I believe it.

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