Problems Inherent in God’s ‘Love’ For All, Part 2

Some years ago an anti-cal book was published, What Love Is This?
I respond in kind, “what ‘love’, indeed, is this?”

Consider the response of Jesus in Matt. 7:23: “I never knew you.”
Imagine. The omniscient, all-wise God-man will one day in condemnation declare to many professing Christians that at no time, not ever, did He know them. That horrible truth would necessitate the fact of eternally not knowing them. He did not know them on the Last Day, neither did He foreknow them from eternity, nor anytime in between. He never knew them. How can that be?

According to the non-cals, God loves every person ever born. (John 3:16) God loves the sinner, yet hates the sin. Given that basic premise, one would logically conclude that:

(a It is impossible the Lord did not know the false Christians because they were born of the flesh due only to His eternal will and decree.

(b) If the Lord loves every person ever born, then certainly the Lord knows those He loves. Loving someone infers personal knowledge.

(c) Therefore, “I never knew you” must not be interpreted literally.

So how should one rightly interpret this mysterious verse?

Can “I never knew you” be interpreted to mean “I never loved you?”

“28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” (Romans 8:28-30)

“I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.” (John 10:14)

“Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his…..” (2 Timothy 2:19a)

To ‘foreknow’ indicates knowledge from eternity. Those whom the Lord ‘foreknows’ He predestinates to glory where the foreknown will spend eternity with Him.

Those same persons ‘foreknown’ are those ‘known’ as His sheep. The Lord has always known who His people are.

“The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11b)

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

Those whom Christ knew as His sheep (both from eternity and in time) are those same ones whom He loved and for whom He died a loving, sacrificial death.

Therefore, we must conclude that those false Christians to whom Christ was addressing in Matt. 7 were never at anytime foreknown to be predestined to glory, nor were they known as His sheep, nor did He lovingly die for them.

If this be the case, then it is impossible He loved them in the past, present or future, since love was the primary motivating factor in saving His sheep through the substitutionary, propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

Now that we have established, through Scripture proofs, no love lost between Christ and the false Christians, can we not also extrapolate that same reasoning to the heathen?

That being so, it is a false statement to preach and teach the ‘love’ of God for every person ever born.

I reiterate:

Those whom God loves He actually saves to the uttermost.

He cannot fail to do so.

That, my friends, is Good News!