God's Love is NOT Unconditional?

One of the most fundamental truths of salvation by sovereign grace is that God’s love for his chosen people is utterly unconditional so far as any actions on their part are concerned. This is an unavoidable consequence of the well-founded doctrine of total human depravity in the scriptures. The moment one affirms the abject depravity of the human race as a result of the fall, they have likewise affirmed man’s total inability to meet any spiritual conditions whatsoever (Galatians 3:21). It is this observation that forms the basis for why eternal salvation must be totally by grace and not according to our works rather than by works through some conditional scheme. Salvation by sovereign grace insists that ALL of the conditions required for the salvation of God’s people were met by God himself, not by man (Romans 8:33). So I’ll pause here to state this as bluntly as I possibly can so that there can be absolutely no misunderstanding on the matter: Any man who does not believe that eternal salvation is unconditional so far as man’s actions are concerned, does not believe in salvation by sovereign grace, irrespective of how audaciously wrapped in sovereign grace language he may present himself. Those who insists that God’s love for his people is not unconditional while also insisting that this theological position should be called “salvation by sovereign grace” are evident Christian Irrationalist of the most egregious sort.

A Journey Round MacArthur's Park

MacArthur's Statement

I recently stumbled across the following quote which appeared in the first release of Hard to Believe, by John MacArthur.

John Piper - Jesus Doesn't Love Everybody the Same

NeoCalvinism is the increasingly popular form of evangelical irrationalism that embraces both God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility in the matter of eternal salvation.  Stated another way, this system simultaneously embraces both particular redemption and the well-meant offer of salvation to all of humanity (WMO).  Since these two precepts are so evidently contradictory, NeoCalvinism attempts to reconcile the two by positing that God has two types of love – love for the sheep and love for everyone else.   Rather than reconciling the two, two loves theology ends up undermining the WMO.  We have recently posted an article dealing with the irrationalism upon which MacArthur’s Two Loves of God theology is founded.  In the following video, we find John Piper grappling with the same issue.  Our analysis seeks to draw out the irrationalism in this system by highlighting the ramifications of these statements on particular redemption and the WMO.

John MacArthur - The Love of God

A few years ago I wrote a commentary on John MacArthur's book, The Love of God - He Will Do Whatever It Takes To Make Us Holy. This book is riddled with contradictory statements such that I could not possibly recommend it as a guide to understanding the love of God. Indeed, why on earth would someone promote a book that purports to help a man understand the love of God, when the book itself rests on irrationalism? That is a very straightforward indictment. So much so that it may at once raise the hackles of any MacArthurite. As always, we would ask that one examine our analysis of MacArthur's teaching in light of the scriptures before coming to any conclusion.