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Malachi 1:2–3
“‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have you loved us?’ ‘Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ declares the Lord. ‘Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.’”
Undoubtedly, the love of God ranks among the most misunderstood of the divine attributes. Frequently we hear people outside the church assert that the love of our Creator means that He cannot possibly desire to condemn impenitent sinners to everlasting destruction in hell. Yet even within the church, we find confusion regarding the love of God. Here the problem consists largely in the failure of many churches to teach the biblical truth that the saving love of the Lord is selective.
We saw in our last study that God has a universal love for creation that motivates Him to provide for the general welfare of what He has made and to offer Jesus as the Savior to redeem the world (Matt. 5:44–45; John 3:16). Yet not everyone trusts in Christ. This is because while God has a general love for all people, He has a special, saving love reserved only for some. Because of the fall into sin and the corruption of our wills, God must show an efficacious, irresistible love that overcomes our hardened rebellion if anyone is to be saved. Dead sinners must be made alive, or they will not believe in the Savior (Eph. 2:1–10). This saving love of God is also called God’s love of complacency.
Dr. R.C. Sproul defines God’s love of complacency for us in his book Everyone’s a Theologian. Complacency, he writes, has nothing to do with smugness. Rather, “theologians speak of complacency in the sense of satisfaction or delight. God’s love of complacency has to do with His redemptive love that is focused chiefly on His beloved Son, yet spills out to those who are in Christ. God has a special love for the redeemed that He does not have for the rest of the world.” The Father loves His only begotten Son supremely, and as an outflow of this love He has chosen some individuals in and through the Son to be united to the Son by His Holy Spirit and so receive eternal life (Eph. 1:3–14).
As Dr. Sproul notes, this saving love of God is for the redeemed only and not for every individual in the world. Such love can also be referred to as the electing love of God, and it is described in texts such as Malachi 1:2–3. There we read that the Lord loved Jacob, or Israel, and hated his brother Esau, the father of Edom. Paul later uses these verses as proof of the doctrine of unconditional election (Rom. 9:13). God chose freely to love some men and women unto salvation, though they were not in themselves lovable, leaving the rest to perish in sin and misery.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
God’s electing or saving love is good news for us. Because He has freely chosen to shower those who believe with His saving love, even choosing them from all eternity, we know that this love cannot fail when we fall short. Thus, we know that our salvation is secure, that He will not fail to save us to the uttermost if we have trusted in Jesus Christ.
For further study
- Psalm 130:7
- Hosea 11:1
- John 17:20–23
- Romans 1:7
The bible in a year
- 2 Samuel 21–22
- Luke 22:1–30