John 16:27
John 16:26-27
“In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.”
Yes, God loves the world, and yes, God has a special love for Christians. However, Calvinism is forced to dumb down God’s love for the world, and uses degrees of love, as a basis to do so, which ultimately turns love upon its ear, and when pressed, Calvinists will admit that it’s actually hate, and use the example of Jacob and Esau as their proof-text. What this tells me is that Calvinism has levels of defense like a gauntlet, which Arminians and Non-Calvinists must patiently navigate through.
Calvinist, James White, writes: “No matter how one understands ‘JACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU I HATED’ (Romans 9:13), this verse alone should be enough to refute such an errant view of God’s love.” (Debating Calvinism, p.268, emphasis mine)
Man was created “in the image of God.” (Genesis 1:27) As a result, Jesus stated: “For God so loved the world….” (John 3:16) The “world,” that Jesus spoke of, included “he who believes,” as well as “he who does not believe.” (John 3:18) The “world” was the whole world, and God loved it, and gave it His greatest gift, that is, His only begotten Son. There is no question that God “first loved us” (1st John 4:19), and “us” meaning the whole world. We did not seek God (Isaiah 53:6), rather, God sought us, and is patient with us that we might repent and be saved. (2nd Peter 3:9) And now John 16:27 shows something further, that God has a special love reserved for those that believe in His Son. Jesus stated: “The Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.” (John 16:27) This sets up a conflict with Calvinism which teaches that God the Father had a special love for the elect from all eternity, purely on the basis of sovereign grace. And the result of the sovereign grace is that God allegedly hand picked certain individuals from before the foundation of the world to be made unilaterally born again by the Holy Spirit, as the divine enablement for faith. However, as was just shown at John 16:27, the Father’s special love for believers was conditioned upon their love for Christ and faith in Him. This point did not escape the notice of Calvin.
John Calvin comments: “But if God only begins to love us when we have loved Christ, it follows that the beginning of salvation is from ourselves, because we have anticipated the grace of God. But many passages of Scripture contradict this idea. God promises, ‘I will cause them to love me,’ and John says, ‘not that we loved God’ (1 John 4:10). It would be superfluous to collect many passages, for nothing is more certain than this doctrine, that the Lord ‘calls things that are not’ (Romans 4:17), raises the dead, joins with strangers, forms hearts of flesh out of stones, reveals himself to those who are called if they are among the elect, for he loves all his own people before they are created. But as they are not yet reconciled, they are rightly called God’s ‘enemies,’ as Paul says in Romans 5:10. This is why the Word says that we are loved by God when we love Christ; although previously we trembled before him as our hostile Judge, we now have the pledge of his Fatherly love.” (John: Calvin, The Crossway Classic Commentaries, p.385, emphasis mine)
However, if they are eternally elect in the Father, then in no way can they be considered enemies, while simultaneously being reconciled and mediated to the Father in His eternal secret counsel.
The fact remains that God the Father has a special love for Christians because they love His Son, and therefore this passage is just one more rock on top of the Mount Everest of evidence that stands in opposition to Calvinism.
