God Does Not Love Everyone

Οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον, ὥστε τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν, ἵνα πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν μὴ ἀπόληται ἀλλ᾽ ἔχῃ ζωὴν αἰώνιον.

John 3:16

1.           God Loves Everyone


Except for Calvinists and Reformed Baptists, this sentiment of Universal Divine Love, for all intent and purposes, has become axiomatic in the Christian Church today. So much so, that it would not be stretching the truth to call it Christianity’s primary unwritten doctrine. In fact, this stealth-doctrine has been so pervasively and persistently taught inside and outside the Church, that Jesus’ love for every single human being is now accepted by all non-Christians, including atheists and agnostics, as His defining characteristic. Too often to count, I've seen the first gambit an atheist resorts to, in his argument with a believer, is to point to some evil in the world, then ask how an all-loving Jesus can permit it. The poorly schooled Christian is quickly stymied by such theologically facile questions, because he’s been marinating in the doctrine of Universal Divine Love his whole life, and must direct the atheist to a pastor or minister much better informed than he—after conceding the argument, of course.



In the first chapter of his disappointingly slim monograph The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (printed in 2000 by Crossway Books), D. A. Carson (of the video above) notes how the majority understanding of God as “a loving being” plays a part in hampering the witness of “informed Christians” [with my emphasis]:

If people believe in God at all today, the overwhelming majority hold that this God—however he, she, or it may be understood—is a loving being. But that is what makes the task of the Christian witness so daunting. For this widely disseminated belief in the love of God is set with increasing frequency in some matrix other than biblical theology. The result is that when informed Christians talk about the love of God, they mean something very different from what is meant in the surrounding culture. Worse, neither side may perceive that that is the case.

This wide appeal of the concept of an all-loving God to those who don’t believe in Him should send up a warning flag to every Christian. If the goats are responding to a particular call, then it’s not coming from the Shepherd. Or, put another way, if a sheep is responding to a call that is attracting goats, he should get his ears checked.

The mass appeal of the notion that God loves everybody is mistakenly regarded as proof of its veracity, rather than evidence of its inherent falsity, because the nature and operation of God’s love hasn’t been properly explained and understood by most Christians. They are therefore unable to see any difference between biblical love and the worldly love of the unregenerate. Either they haven’t heard, or have forgotten, the words of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians about the natural man’s inability to grasp “the things of the Spirit of God” (1 Cor 2:14); or they themselves are wallowing in Corinthian carnality.

So, in this essay, I will prove that Universal Divine Love is a false doctrine upheld by the mutual ignorance of both the believer and unbeliever alike, and that it is so scripturally and semantically unsound, it withers quickly under the most routine exegesis and word-study.


2.           God Loves Everyone In English


Before examining the flaws related to the language of this doctrine vis-à-vis the Greek NT, let’s first deal with the argument against it in the English NT. In researching this topic, I came across the following, rather succinct video lesson by Robert Morey of Faith Defenders, which deals with this nicely:



This is Romans 9:13 in English:

As it is written, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated”.

Which is a reference to Malachi 1:2-3.

²“I have loved you,” saith YHWH, “Yet ye say, ‘Wherein hast thou loved us?’ [Was] not Esau Jacob's brother?” saith YHWH, “Yet I loved Jacob, ³and I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.”

Let us state again the simple conclusion Robert Morey drew from this verse in the above video: Here is a specific individual that God Himself admits to hating: Esau. If God hates Esau, then, obviously, He doesn’t love Esau. So, if there is someone God doesn’t love, then He clearly does not love everyone. And in light of that fact, those who still want to believe in Universal Love are forced to qualify their assertion that “God loves everyone” with the self-nullifying dependant clause “except Esau”.

Paul's citing of this OT verse in the NT not only helps to confirm the meaning of the Ancient Hebrew words for “love” and “hate”, but also underscores how important he thought it was for Believers to draw from it the proper conclusions about how God relates to humanity; that He loves some people and hates others.

With regards to this, Paul also takes pains in this epistle to explain that whom God loves or hates is determined by Him before they are even born. As Romans 9:11-13 has it:

¹¹For [the children] being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth. ¹² It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. ¹³ As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

The verses from Malachi, illuminated within the context of Paul’s epistle¹, show clearly that God’s loving is equivalent to His electing (or choosing) a person to honor, and that His hating is equivalent to His fitting a person to dishonor (Rom 9:21); and neither of these states has anything to do with the person’s actions, but is at the sole discretion of God.

In fact, as Paul shows us in Romans 9:17 about Pharaoh, the actions a person will take turn out to be the very purpose for which that person was born. If God chooses to love you, you will be born a vessel of mercy. If He chooses to hate you, you will be born a vessel of wrath (see Rom 9:22-23).

Incidentally, this was particularly important for the Roman Believers of that day to understand, because it is the foundational truth behind the doctrine of Election, and their misunderstanding of this doctrine was the cause of a specific controversy which had arisen in the Roman Church between the Jewish Believers and the Gentile Believers—a controversy Paul’s letter was written to dispel.

Essentially, the Jewish Christians were saying that, as the “Chosen People of God”, they were entitled to special consideration and treatment. The Gentiles, on the other hand, were saying that, yes, the Jews were “the Chosen People”, but only prior to Christ’s advent. Since His coming, they had been stripped of this special status because of their national rejection of Him, and were now subordinate to Gentile Christians. In short, Replacement Theology had reared its ugly head.

The Apostle Paul, recognizing the misunderstanding on both sides, sent his epistle to tell them that now they are both the “Chosen People of God”. Not, as the Jews believed, by virtue of their ancestral lineage, but by being chosen by God to receive His gift of belief in Jesus' resurrection.


3.           The Elect is the Chosen


Allow me to point out, for the sake of those who might not know, that in the New Testament, the terms “chosen” and “elect”, with regards to “the Chosen” and “the Elect”, are the same thing. They are, in fact, both translations of various forms of the exact same Greek word: ἐκλέγομαι [eklegomai]. The different English words were used for the sake of euphony. This means that those who make up the ranks of the Chosen and the Elect are the same people. And Paul’s letter to the Romans spells out in no uncertain terms that the Chosen People are a spiritual race, not a genetic one, and that the real Jew is one who is circumcised internally, not externally (see Rom 2:26-29).

If you ever thought that the Chosen were the Jews and the Elect the Church, you’re not alone. It’s a natural enough mistake for English Christians to make, given the AV’s unfortunate use of two different words to translate the same Greek one (a similar problem exists with regards to “faith” and “belief”—the same Greek word was translated into two English words and now people think they are two different things.). It was also a standard teaching of the Church from the beginning of Roman Catholicism. Today this pernicious nonsense continues to be disseminated by far too many English-only preachers.

So, to reiterate, God’s love is shown through His electing, or choosing, His beloved one(s) for Salvation. This parity between God’s love and God’s election is essential for all Believers to understand. It is foundational to our understanding how God relates to us, the ones He loves.

If we look at Deuteronomy 7:7-9, we see the synonymy of God’s choosing and His electing with regards to His choosing to love and be merciful on Israel.

⁷"The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number…⁷but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers…⁹Therefore know that…He [is]…the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy…with those who love Him and keep His commandments;

It should be noted first that the Hebrew verb translated by the phrase “to set love on” in the first line is חשק [chashaq] which properly means “to be attached to”. It is translated as προαιρέω [proaireō] in the Septuagint (LXX), which means “to bring forth for oneself”.

These verses are replete with typical Biblical Hebrew parallelisms; the restating of a single concept in another way: setting love on/choosing; loving/faithful; keeping covenant with/being merciful to. To God, loving is the same as choosing; the same as being faithful to; the same as being merciful to. It is, in short, the activity of favoring one above another.

Take a look at Matthew 12:17-18:

¹⁷That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, ¹⁸“Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles”.

Matthew is citing Isaiah 42:1 where it says of Messiah:

Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.

First off, the word “chosen” seen in Matthew is not a form of eklegomai. It is the Greek word αἱρετίζω [hairetizō], a derivative of the same root as proaireō, the LXX translation of chashaq, “to set love on”, mentioned above.

Regarding the words in red font, we notice that Matthew’s citation confirms¹ for us that the OT idea of God's elect (a translation of the Hebrew word בחר [bachar]) is equivalent to the NT idea of God's beloved (a translation of the Greek word ἀγαπητός [agapetos]). As with eklegomai in the NT, the Hebrew word bachar is translated both "to chose" and "to elect" in the OT.


4.           The Agape of God


No greater disservice has been done to English-speaking Christendom than the translating of the New Testament Greek verb ἀγαπάω [agapao], and it’s noun form ἀγάπη [agape], into the single, unqualified word “love”. The damage done to the foundation of Christian understanding with regards to the commandments, character and purpose of our Lord by that one tiny under-translation is simply incalculable. Entire denominations have been established on the basis of it. Countless heresies have been concocted from it. Millions of people are wallowing in error because of it. How is it possible that so many theologians, preachers and otherwise sensible churchmen have come to accept that, when the God of the universe says He “loves” us, He’s talking about a feeling; some kind of squishy, feminized, milquetoast super-like?

To begin with, as we saw above, the word agape, as it relates to God’s love for us, has to do with His electing (or choosing) us to be the recipients of faith in Christ (see Phil 1:29); to be a citizen of spiritual Israel. So, clearly, God’s agape is selective, purposive and willed. It is not the indiscriminate, hug-you-to-pieces, can’t-live-without-you, all-too-fleshly kind of love that is immediately brought to mind by the unqualified English word “love”. It is the love of the father who doesn’t chase after the prodigal son, but waits patiently for him to be awakened to his true nature, by trial, to then repent and return to him a reformed soul.

This wrong idea of the nature of God’s love is both a product of, and a catalyst for, the doctrine of Universal Divine Love. A catalyst in that, once you think of God loving His children in the same passive way that we love ours, you are easily convinced that He must therefore love us all unconditionally. It is a product of this doctrine in that, once held, it is reinforced with every verse that mentions God’s love; verses like John 3:16.

John 3:16 has to be the most well-known verse in the English-speaking world. It is also the primary proof text for the proposition that God loves everyone. This is because the first clause of the verse is well-known in its terribly misleading 17^th century form: For God so loved the world.

Even the modern English translations, each of whose existence was justified to a large degree by the spurious need to update the language of the KJV, use this same 400-year-old Jacobean phrasing.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (KJV)

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (NKJV)

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (NIV)

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (ESV)²

When today's English-speakers hear or read “For God so loved the world”, they cannot help but hear the word “so” as “so much”. And for reasons having to do with modern English usage, and a historical lack of proper exegesis, this reading has become the unshakable standard interpretation.

It is, however, flat-out wrong.


5.           God Doesn't Love Everyone in Greek


Here is the phrase in the original Greek:

Οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον

The word translated “so” is the adverb οὕτως [houtos], the word in the red font. Houtos means “in this manner”, it does not mean “so much”. It is the same word in Matthew 6:9 rendered “after this manner” in the KJV. It is legitimately translated “so”, but only when the formal, and rarely used in modern English, meaning of the word is meant; as in the sentence, “It should be done like so.” It cannot be legitimately translated by the intensive "so" found in the phrase “That is so obvious!” or “God loved the world so much”.

Therefore, the first clause of John 3:16 should be understood to mean “For in this manner God loved the world”.

It should also be noted that the way the word “for” (the post-positive γὰρ [gar] in the Greek) appears in this phrase contributes to the misunderstanding of “so”. When the verse is taken out of context (as it invariably is), the word “for” at the beginning gives the impression that it is a subordinating conjunction of a dependent clause related to the proceeding clause. In other words, the “for” makes us hear “Because God loved the world so much, He gave His only begotten son.”

In actual fact, gar is a coordinating conjunction, which links the entire verse to what was said prior to it. In other words, we should’t hear “because God loved the world so much, He gave His only begotten son”, but rather “For in that manner (the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness, etc) God loved the world; He gave His only begotten son...”. John 3:16 is simply a reiteration of verses 14-15.

So, if we take that, and the actual meaning of the word houtos into consideration, along with the clearer understanding we now have regarding the meaning of God’s love as it relates to Election, we see that John 3:16 does not open with a declaration of how much God loved the world, but is merely a continuing explanation of the operation of the crucifixion with regards to the world. Like the snake-bitten Israelites who looked to the raised serpent and were “saved” (showing themselves to be the chosen of the called, as per Matt 20:16, 22:14), so too those sin-bitten Gentiles who will look to the crucified Christ are saved.

It should also be pointed out that the pronoun “whosoever” does not appear in the text. It is an inaccurate translation of πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν [pas ho pisteuon eis auton], which is literally “all the believing in him”. The highly versatile adjective pas means “each, every, any, all, the whole, everyone, all things, everything” and inflects to show number; here it is in the singular. Ho pisteuon eis auton is a Greek substantive participle, meaning that it is all one unit: “the-believing-in-him”. So, pas ho pisteuon eis auton actually means “the-whole-of-the-believing-in-him”. Or, in other words, the Elect.

Putting all that together, here’s how John 3:16 now looks:

For in that manner God preferred the world (of believers), that the Elect should not perish, but have eternal life.

Now, how different would our doctrine of the Love of God be if we were taught to read John 3:16 in a way that is more consistent with how it appears in the original Greek? Without the “whosoever”, the whole verse is changed. No more is it an invitation to anyone who wants eternal life to come and believe in Jesus, but is instead a declarative statement regarding the body of those who already believe in Him; a statement that is in keeping with the thrust of the words two verses below it: …but the-not-believing-in-me-one is condemned already....


6.           In Conclusion


Throughout the Bible we see that there are two kinds of people: The Israelites and the Gentiles; the Jacob’s and Esau’s; The Elect and Non-Elect; the Believers and the Unbelievers; the Vessel of Mercy and the Vessel of Wrath; the Saved and the Damned. And time and time again we are told that what distinguishes these two groups is whether their members are the recipients of God’s Love or not; whether they are Those whom God Loved or Those whom God Hated. In the end, it is inescapable, God does not elect everyone, therefore He does not love everyone.

1. For a more detailed explanation of how the NT illuminates the OT, see Lesson 3 of my How to Study [the Bible] with the Greek NT course.

2. Showing that the ESV translators knew the actual meaning of the Greek, a footnote reads: Or For this is how God loved the world.