Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: bnr-fos!bnr-public!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: He loves me, He loves me not, He loves me, He... Message-ID: Date: 4 Aug 89 02:46:31 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 77 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article fibercom!lab@uunet.uu.net (Lance Beckner) writes: > God hates sinners + We are all sinners = God hates us all. This is not exactly correct. My position is that God hates sinners but that He does not hate His elect even prior to His bestowing of salvation upon them because their sins have already been paid for by Christ. Since the penalty for those sins has been paid for, His perfect justice would not permit Him to see those sins any more. If He does not see the sins of a person because they have been paid for then He is obligated to save that person and He is also obligated to not hate that person. We must remember that the forgiveness of our sins really happened when Christ endured the penalty for them on the cross and not when God chose to actually bring us to salvation. Note that this does not leave the Old Testament believers in trouble because the Scriptures teach that Christ is in principle the Lamb slain from before the foundations of the earth because God's Word is as good as done as soon as He speaks it since He cannot lie. Would that we all could keep our commitments with this degree of infallability; but then we would have to insure that all of them were good ones, wouldn't we! Speaking of Romans 8:38-39 which says "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.": >But it does not prove that He hates non-Christians either. It tells the >believers in Rome (and everywhere else) that nothing will separate them from >the love of God. But it does. The Scriptures teach that it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgement. This means that when any one of us dies there is no further oportunity for salvation. If nothing whatsoever can separate us from the love of God, and if we agree that those whom God loves must be saved, then how would you rationalize the fact that most of the people in this world die unsaved? The Scriptures teach that many are on the broad way to destruction and only a few are on the narrow way to eternal life. God could not have loved those numerous people who have died unsaved because hell will separate them from His love. >Do you have scriptural support for this? Or is this just your way of >reconciling these passages? (this is NOT a flame, I just want to know). I believe that I have answered this in the preceding paragraph. If you do not think I have dealt with it adequately then let me know. Dave Mielke, 613-726-0014 856 Grenon Avenue Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 6G3 [I'd be curious what reaction others who believe in God's judgement have to this. My impression is that it is common for Christians to believe in eternal suffering in hell, but very uncommon indeed to believe that God hates most of mankind. I certainly understand where you get your conclusion. It is certainly hard to believe that a God who loves people could condemn them to hell. But it seems to me that most Christians adopt a solution other than giving up the idea of a loving God. This is an area in which logical precision may not always be possible, since there's no reason to think that we understand God completely. But most answers I've seen say in effect that God's love is not quite what we imagine it. His love is a consuming fire. His judgement is seen as in some way the inverse side of his love. I confess that this kind of love is hard to reconcile with our concept of love. But most Christians have been willing to accept that our concept of love may need redefinition when applied to God, rather than concluding that God hates most human beings. This view has the advantage of being consistent with the implications behind a number of OT visions of God. God is so holy that for a sinful person to see him is death. It's not the God abandons his holiness for hate when a sinful person sees him, but that holiness itself is dangerous. One can conceive of a kind of love that is similarly dangerous. On earth we see it only in a veiled form. But when we are confronted with his love in its full power, we can survive it unscathed only if we have accepted his protection. What do others who believe in the existence of a (non-empty) Hell have to say? --clh]