Q. “If your position is
correct (i.e., that God has no love at all toward the reprobate, that He
despises, loathes and abominates his entire existence and way of life in every
aspect), to be consistent, therefore, whenever my family members or my
neighbors do well in their lives or get a good job, or find a wife/husband, or
if they finally have a child after trying for many years, I shouldn’t rejoice
or be happy for them, for they could possibly be a reprobate, and all those
good gifts and things happening in their lives are but God’s ways of increasing
their judgment and final condemnation ... and I should rather feel sorry for
them ... Besides, every breath they make and everything they do is sin and
displeasing to God ... Or if a family member or neighbor of mine is involved in
a car crash, or loses their job, or if their house burns down, or if their son
or daughter commits suicide, I shouldn’t be sad for them, for they could be a
reprobate, and that accident could be a just judgment of God upon them ... The
only basis whereby I, as a child of my Father in heaven, may empathize with my
neighbors and family members is if God Himself has empathy towards all
men ... Otherwise, I am not acting as a child of God. and I deny, by my own
empathy, the truth of reprobation and the truth about God’s disposition towards
man.”
(I)
Prof. David J. Engelsma
The response to this argument is that
God is God and we are not.
We are to love our neighbor, regardless
whether he is, in our judgment, a believer or an unbeliever, an elect or a
reprobate, and to do good to him as much as we can.
This implies that we grieve over his
miseries—much more over his unbelief than over his physical misfortunes.
At the same time, we can be angry at his denial of God.
God on the other hand is angry with
the wicked every day and curses him in all his life, if he is a reprobate
unbeliever, who on his part hates God.
Further, I am not impressed by the evasion
of the issue on the part of the one making this argument. He wants to
have God loving the wicked in his temporal circumstances, but he apparently
agrees that God hates the same persons with regard to their spiritual condition
and with regard to their eternal destiny, namely, hell. I am supposed to
be a heartless fellow because I deny a love of God for the reprobate
ungodly in temporal things, but the one making the above argument is much nicer,
even though he confesses an eternal hatred and punishment of the wicked in
hell.
If I allowed my feelings to determine
my theology, as the one making this argument is doing, I would deny hell, which
is far worse than God’s curse in time with regard to temporal
circumstances.
Biblically, the curse of Jehovah is
in the house of the wicked (Proverbs 3)—in his house, his earthly dwelling with
all it contains and regarding all his life in that house.
Only Jesus, by His death, delivers
humans from God’s omnipresent and all-encompassing curse (Galatians
3:13). What other than the cross of Christ (for the elect, experienced by
faith) delivers from the curse in the judgment of the one arguing the above?
I have sympathy for many ungodly in
all their suffering, especially that they are under the curse of God in their
unbelief. In love for them, I witness to them the gospel and call them to
faith; give them money if they are poor; and visit them in the hospital if they
are sick.
I do it in the name of Jesus.
But God’s attitude towards them must
be determined from the testimony of His word.
What does the one who makes this
argument think of the destruction of all the world but Noah in the flood?
What does he think of the sickness and death of an ungodly young mother? What
does he think of the wrath of God burning over an ungodly world bringing about
all the suffering and death of WW I and WW II?
(DJE, 31/07/2020)
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