The “More Loving Than God/Jesus” Argument

This argument has been stated in various ways to try and prove that God, after all, must love everybody, otherwise He is outdone by His own creatures. I have named this the “More-Loving-Than-God” argument for common grace.

Here are some of the ways it is often presented:

(1) God commands us to love one another, to love our neighbour, to love even our enemies. Why? Because God wants us to be like Him and to be Christ-like. He wants us to love everyone the same without partiality and that love isn’t a selfish love or something that seeks for its own. Therefore, to have a mindset that says God loves only a few while also believing that He commands us to love everyone is to make us more loving than God.

(2) Jesus told us love our neighbour as how He loves them. If He just loves a few, how come He asks us to love everyone? Does He not want as to be like Him? If Jesus loves only a few and yet we aspire to love and have concern for everyone, are we not making ourselves more loving than Him?

(3) Paul in Romans 9:1-3 and 10:1 reveals that He has an ardent, earnest desire and longing for all of His kinsmen (head for head) to be saved. And yet you deny that God Himself desires all to be saved? Does that not make you more loving than God Himself?

(4) You aspire to treat everyone with kindness (i.e. love them) and share the gospel to everyone (i.e. you want them to be saved) and yet you believe that God only loves a few. Are you making yourself more loving than God?

(5) Do you believe God only really cares for a few individuals? If He is, then so should you … or else you will not be like Him.

(6) What if one of your own children is a reprobate? If God desires and intends for him to end up in perdition, while you being a Christian, who are known for your love for your neighbour, want him to be in heaven, are you making yourself more loving than God?

(I)

Prof. David J. Engelsma

“The argument in question proves too much. It proves that God on His part actually attempts to save all humans, but fails. For we not only love our enemies, but exert ourselves on their behalf, that is, try to save them. If what is true of us must also be true of God, He, therefore, also tries to save all humans, but fails. This trying includes giving Jesus Christ to the death of the cross for all humans, for there can be no salvation apart from the cross. Christ then died for all, but His death is unavailing. 

All of this speculative thinking results in an impotent God, one who is frustrated by the will of sinners, and in a death of Christ that not only is a failure but that also was not an effectual atonement for anyone. 

Besides, this reasoning conflicts with the express testimony of the Bible in Romans 8 and 9 that God loves only the elect with His saving love and that Christ died effectually only for the elect.

The flaw in the reasoning of the argument is, first, that it is mere speculation—not based on the Bible. The Bible does not teach that we are to love our enemies or all humans ‘because God loves all His enemies.’  The Bible clearly teaches that God ‘hates’ some humans—God hated Esau (Romans 9), even though Jacob was called to love his brother. 

Theological conclusions must not be based merely on abstract reasoning, but on definite biblical grounds. The Bible teaches that we are to love our enemies—our enemies personally, not as God’s enemies (cf. Psalm 139:21-22: “Do not I hate them who hate thee? … I hate them with perfect hatred …”)—because God loves men and women who are His enemies by nature, that is, the elect in the race who are by nature enemies on their part of God. 

Second, the reasoning is wrong in that it makes the comparison of our love with God’s a matter of numbers (if we are to love all, God must also love all). Fact is, the comparison is, rather, in the reality of God’s (particular) love of His enemies. As God loves His enemies, regardless that they are only some of the human race, so also are we to love our enemies, regardless that they are more in number than those whom God loves. 

This does not make us more loving than God, for the greatness of love is not found in the mere number of objects of love. The greatness of love is found in that the objects of divine love are unworthy of love, and in what love does for the beloved—the love of God gave the only begotten Son for the objects of love. 

Truth is that, as a Christian, I must love some whom God hates, and this manifests the love of God, who loves men and women who hate Him, though not all humans who hate Him. These objects of His love are not a ‘few,’ but an innumerable multitude.” (DJE, 20/02/2017)

----------------------------------------------------

(II)

Dr. Daniel Ritchie

“The error of this argument is that it assumes that there is a univocal likeness between divine and human love. Our love can never be “more” than God’s love because our love is not infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. Moreover, God is love. Owing to the simplicity of God, His attribute of love is ontologically identical with Himself. That is not true of human love. Thus, the idea that we could ever be more loving than God simply by loving more people than God loves is nonsensical.”

----------------------------------------------------

(III)

Dr. Julian Kennedy

“The big error here is equating our temporal tainted love with God's perfect, pure and eternal love. He commands us to love to reflect His love for sinners like us. He Himself loves His elect people and hates His reprobate enemies [Romans 9]. His prerogative!”

----------------------------------------------------

(IV)

Rev. Kenneth Koole

[Source: Reflections on the Free Offer and the Charge of Hyper-Calvinism, pp. 34, 35, 36]

Are we not commanded to love all those with whom we have contact, to the point even of seeking their salvation? Is this not the implication of Matthew 5:43ff.? Why would God require this of us (in fact, how could God require this of us), if He does not do the same? …

… [This] is more than an intriguing question. It really amounts to a charge made by the WMO men against us who deny the free offer. The charge is this, that we as ‘high Calvinists’ end up putting the character of believers at odds with the nature of God—on the one hand, denying God has a love for all those whom He addresses in the gospel, and yet on the other maintaining that what motivates us in bringing the gospel to all and confronting everyone with God’s Word is a love for all. Is it not so? But how can this be? “Are you claiming to be even more gracious than God Himself?”

The WMO men are convinced such cannot be, and, in fact, is not. Such, according to them, is the position in which we as ‘high Calvinists’ leave ourselves, but that’s because we misrepresent the character of God. According to the WMO men, the truth concerning God is that God, for all His particular, electing love, is also a God who loves all men. And so the desire of believers is not out of sync with God’s will and desire, but squares with His; in fact, our love for all with whom we have contact is and ought to be a reflection of God’s love for all. And this supposedly is the teaching of Matthew 5:43 ff. …

We intend to point out the error of such ‘reasoning.’

As an aside, though it may sound a bit cynical, yet it strikes one that the WMO men are willing to use logic and reason when it suits their purpose, pointing out apparent inconsistencies in their critics’ positions. But when one uses logic and reason to expose fallacies in their arguments and logic, one is suddenly guilty of being of the school of the scholastics and rationalists.

Well, perhaps it is best to leave it with the poet who said, “Ours is not to reason why ...”

… love means I do all within my power to secure the saving of the prodigal’s immortal soul: instruction, embraces, discipline, prayers, rebukes, pounding at odd hours of the night on the wayward son’s door and on the door of heaven itself. This in accordance with the demands of God’s covenant. But for God, not so. In instance after instance, God’s love means He does not do all within His power to bring this or that one back (else they would be brought back!)

Conclusion? According to the free-offer scheme of things, God’s love and will to save, flowing from His divine heart, in instance after instance does not begin to compare with our love for sinners. Love, worthy of the name, means we do all within our power to restore the lost; but not so for God.

And this is posited as the “marrow of divinity”?

It’s enough to make one weep.

The WMO men can charge ‘high Calvinists’ all they want with putting the believer’s character at odds with God’s nature (our heartfelt yearnings for the salvation of many whom God intends from all eternity to destroy), but the fact is, they do not escape the same ‘problem.’ Their presentation does not actually harmonize our love for sinners and God’s love either. Their free-offer position also puts the two ‘out of sync’; and it does so in a most troubling way.

Surely, if God indeed loved our wayward, unbelieving, ‘non-elect’ children half as much as we do (or that Paul did his “kinsman after the flesh”), God without fail would change their hearts and ways. Can it be imagined that the God of covenant promise should love them as the WMO men claim, with “deepest yearnings of love,” with a love more profound even than a mother’s love, and then not take it upon Himself to bring them back? The kindest thing I can say about such a notion is that it confounds all notions of love, God’s love no less, God’s love to save …

… However, for the sake of accuracy, let us be clear. Our claim is not that we have a “greater” love for certain lost sinners than God does, because the certain sinners of whom we are speaking are those for whom God has no love at all, never has, never will. Not according to Scripture. To state it as clearly as we can, our contention is that we as disciples of Christ love many whom God does not love at all, whom He has reprobated (the Esaus of this life), whom He neither has, nor ever had, any intention of saving (for instance, the greater part of that apostate Israel living when Christ spoke the very words of Matthew 5:43ff.); and, we assert, to this God Himself calls us. To this the sovereign and electing God calls us for His own secret and predestinating purpose, as He works out His ‘saving’ and ‘condemning’ will.

----------------------------------------------------

(V)

More to come! (DV)