Does God love the saint and the sinner equally?  Does God have degrees of love?  Are there moral conditions that prompt God to love one person more, or in a different way, than another person?  These questions have been asked by church people for generations.  Answers to those questions are as varied as the questions themselves.  The ultimate question is: HOW DOES GOD ANSWER THOSE QUESTIONS?  Therefore, let us allow Him to answer them by using His prescribed method of Bible study that He recorded in Isaiah 38:9,10,13.  Let us diligently search out the Truth relative to His love for mankind.

Does God love the person who lives according his own will the same as the person who submits his will to God’s will?  I will add some thought-producing fuel to this scriptural fire in the form of two statements of Truth.  1) “For God so loved the (sinning) world that He gave His only begotten Son …. (Jn. 3:16) and 2) “You (God) hate all workers of iniquity (Ps. 5:5).  How can Christ love the sinner enough to die for him and hate the sinner enough to cast him into hell fire?  The answer requires the study of several passages of Scripture.  Because we desire the only answer that matters, we will now delve deep into God’s Holy Word, which Jesus calls Truth (Jn. 17:17) in search of the only true answer.

In 1 John 3:4 we find this statement: “To transgress the Law is sin; for sin is the transgression of the Law.”  If disobedience to the Law is sin, then obedience to the Law is the opposite of sin, which is righteousness.  Therefore, righteousness and the Law are connected.  Does love have anything to do with the Law and righteousness?  “love is the fulfilling of the Law” (Rom. 13:10).  The fulfilling of (obedience to) the Law shows love for God.  Did Jesus come to earth to do away with the Law? “I came not to destroy (the Law), but to fulfill (it)” (Mat. 5:17).  Are we to fulfill His Law of righteousness? “… therefore it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness” (Mat. 3:15).

Does our love for Christ involve obedience of the Law? “If you (disciples) love Me, obey My commandments/words” (Jn. 14:15,23).  Is salvation dependent on one’s obedience to the Law?  “If you would have (eternal) life, obey the commandments” (Mat. 19:17).  Do God and Christ take away their love for a believer when the believer stops obeying Them?  “IF you keep My commandments (Law) you will ABIDE (remain) in My love, even as I have kept My Father’s commandments and (therefore) ABIDE in His love” (Jn. 15:10).  Notice: THE DISCIPLES HAD TO OBEY THE LAW IN ORDER TO REMAIN IN CHRIST’S LOVE.  CHRIST HAD TO OBEY THE LAW IN ORDER TO REMAIN IN GOD’S LOVE.  It is for this reason that, out of fear that He might weaken and fail His Father, Jesus prayed so intently that He sweated great drops of blood (Lk. 22:20).  Science has proven that stress can cause the blood vessels in the forehead to rupture, causing blood to run down one’s face like sweat.

By the above statements we know that what God gives (His love), He can, and does, take away in the same way that He can and does remove His Holy Spirit from sinners who have received the Spirit at true conversion, then have repeatedly sinned.  Following his sin with Bathsheba King David prayed: “Please do not take Your Spirit from me” (Ps. 51:11).  The Lord can and does remove both His Spirit and His love from one who formerly had both.

“For God so loved the world ….” tells us that God loves every man, woman and child ever born because He created them.  This is His general love for all of mankind regardless of their goodness or badness.  For this reason He “… sends sunshine and rain on the just and the unjust” (Mat. 5:45).  However, as Jesus made clear, in order for Him (Jesus) to remain in God’s special love He had to obey Him.  The love Jesus had for His disciples (including Judas) was the same kind of love God had for Him.  However, He knew that in order to keep His Father’s special love, He had to obey Him.  The disciples knew that in order to keep Christ’s special love for them, they had to obey Him. This is a life and death lesson that 99% of professing Christendom has refused to learn.  One day soon they will learn it.  But it will be too late.

Clearly, God’s special love for those who obey Him is totally different from the love He has for all of mankind.  This is the kind of love Christ has for those who will say to Him on the Day of Judgment: “… Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, … and in your name done many marvelous works?”  To those people WHOM HE LOVED He will say: “I never KNEW you, depart from me you workers of iniquity (Lawlessness).”  He obviously knew them in that He loved them on a general level.  But because they did not obey His Law He never “KNEW” them of the intimate level.  It is on the intimate level of “knowing” that we find God’s (agape) love which He gives only to those who obey Him.  It is these saints whom He will take with Him into the Kingdom of God upon His return to earth.  These are the “few” who “find” His strait gate (church), enter it and walk His narrow way (of obedience) during their converted life (Mat. 7:13,14).  These are they who love Him enough to “walk as He walked” (1 Jn. 2:6), who “purify themselves as He is pure” (1 Jn. 3:3) and who “overcome (Satan) as I (Jesus) overcame him” (Rev. 3:21) who will join Him in the kingdom.

Does God have different types of love?  Yes.  Does the type of love He gives to a person depend on that person’s obedience to His Law?  Yes.  L.J.