Does God Love Everybody?

The Bible teaches that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Does God love everyone He created in His image? Does He love all people in the same way? Today, Derek Thomas helps us think clearly and carefully about the love of God.

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: We’re recording live from Ligonier’s 2022 National Conference, and I’m joined by Dr. Derek Thomas, one of Ligonier’s teaching fellows. Dr. Thomas, God loves everybody?

DR. DEREK THOMAS: Well, yes and no. There is a sense in which God loves all of His creatures. We can think of it in terms of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world.” What does “world” mean? It doesn’t mean that God loves every single individual in exactly the same way. In the Reformed faith, we talk about common grace, that blessing that was part of the covenant with Noah in Genesis 9 that relates to all of creation, that there is a beneficent love of God that provides food and shelter and a happy marriage to those who are not Christians. So, there is a sense in which God loves everyone.

But God doesn’t love everyone in the same way. There are those whom He loves. We believe in the doctrine of election, that God chose from before the foundation of the world, that Christ died for particularly, that He shed His blood and provided atonement, that He rendered propitiation to appease and satisfy divine justice, that Christ died in the place of as a substitute and sin bearer for the elect.

Now, I don’t know who the elect are. There’s not a mark on their forehead that tells me who they are. As a preacher, I preach the saving love of Christ to everybody, that to whosoever will come to Christ and repent of their sins and believe on Him. If they do that, then in retrospect, you can look back and say, “Well, they were obviously elect.” But as a preacher, I do want to proclaim the universal love of God for all of mankind in the sense of common grace. But that particular love of God for salvation is, in the end, only for the elect.