Biblically Speaking

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God loves us so much that he will honor our wishes and our desires to reject Him thereby damning ourselves to Hell. This is a growing idea of God's role in salvation or reprobation.

A recent publication of a well known evangelist features an article by the evangelist's daughter. In the article about raising our children, this woman stated that it is important for us to tell our children that God loves them so much that he will respect their wish to send themselves to Hell. Interestingly, this woman continues that we shouldn't respect our children's wish to reject God, but if we love our children, we should do everything in our power to convince them of the truth of scripture and their need to be "saved."

This notion that God loves us so much that He allows us to chose Hell resurfaces in the "New Model" thinkers, Clark Pinnock and company. It is also pervasive in our modern, seeker-sensitive, "love is God" churches. The idea is that the characteristic of love (as defined by our own perceptions of what love means) is the basis of understanding God. All other attributes flow out of love. The "New Model" thinkers state very plainly that God must be understood primarily as love. Interestingly, in order to be supremely loving, Pinnock argues that God is changing all the time and that He is not immutable or omniscient (but that is for another essay).

We all agree that according to scripture we were born with an imputed corruption from Adam. We have this pervasive mental and spiritual problem that we enter the world with...we tend toward sin. We are not born as Adam was pre-fall, but rather we are born as the corrupted Adam became in the fall. We come into the world with a real and severe disability. We are inclined to sin. Read Romans chapters 6, 7, and 8 for Paul's writing on this (even as a convert).

Would a loving parent respect the choice of a child who has a real and severe mental handicap, ailment or disability to play in the highway in front of the house?...Or to commit suicide? No! We put disadvantaged people into padded cells and straight jackets so that they can't hurt themselves.

The point is this: the respecting of the decision of a corrupted person to harm his or her self is not an attribute of love but rather of hate.

To boil the mysteries of God's will in salvation and reprobation down to God loving us so much that He lets us do whatever we want is to oversimplify and truly miss the whole argument. It is to evade the issue and stop up our ears to the truth of scripture.

Augustine, Pelagian, Erasmus, Luther, Arminius, Calvin and many others have wrestled with these issues, and the modern love movement will not settle it by merely making love into their God. Love is an attribute of God, but not the central attribute.

What is the most central characteristic of God? I would argue from Leviticus 11 and 1 Peter 1 where the Almighty says ...I AM HOLY!