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Bible Questions with Michael Pearl
Episode 014: In John 3:16, is it significant the word "loved" is used in the past tense?

By Michael Pearl

Episode Transcription:

Michael Pearl:  Alright! Here we are again to answer your Bible questions. This is Michael Pearl and behind the camera is Jared and he’s going to play off a question that you have asked and I am going to try to come up with a Bible answer. So, what's the first question?

Charles Thompson: Yeah, Charles Thompson. You know, in John 3:16 it says "for God so loved the world"—isn't the key word there "loved" past tense and God no longer loves the world or people in it unless they turn to Christ? Isn't that passage misused today to say that God loves everybody? I appreciate your answer. Thank you.

Michael:  Alright. I will answer that question. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Just to take note of that being in the past tense "loved" and suggest that that was a former state that God had that he no longer has is to misunderstand grammar and to misunderstand God. It says that God loved the world that he gave, past tense, so he's speaking of a past act of God and what prompted that act. That's why it's in the past tense. The whole sentence is in the past tense. It's a past tense event. That in no way is implying that God's love toward the world has changed in any way.

In the book of 1 John chapter two, verse two —John, again writing—it says, "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world." So the Scriptures are clear that when Christ died, he died for the whole world, he loves the whole world. Now, I understand your philosophical question. What you're basically asking is "how can God love that which is unlovely?"

If you turn to the Book of Psalms, we have lots of places where it speaks of God hating the sinner: “[God hateth] all workers of iniquity”; he said he'll bend their arm behind them, break out the teeth of the ungodly, he'll whet his sword, he'll mock when their calamity cometh, and so we have a number of verses like that.

What we don't understand is that God is infinite and God can, in one hand, hold infinite love for his creation, and in the other hand, he can hold infinite hatred for us and our sin. Just as you and I have these extremes of responses and emotions, what we're usually prone to do is to follow one or the other.

What God did is, while hating us with one hand and loving us with another, God's mercy and love provided grace so that God's hatred and wrath was poured out upon his own son. We're freed from our sin, not because God's love overruled his hate, but because God found a place to bury his hate, which was in the flesh of his own son as our substitute. So, we find forgiveness and freedom in Christ based on that love, that mercy, and that grace.

God loves us, loves all of us, but he loves us because of what he can make out of us, what he knows he can bring about in us. He loves us because we're his creation. Just like a parent who gives birth to a child and loves that child because it's their own flesh. Even when the child does something horrible, and wicked, and cruel, the parent still loves the child.

The parent may hate what the kid did, and hate the kid in a sense, so much that the parent goes to court and testifies against his son, and wants to see him go to jail, maybe wants to see him executed for his crime because it was so vile, and yet the parent stands and weeps as the child is being executed when no one else does. Why? Because Mama and Daddy still love their son, even though he's vile.

So, they love him on one hand, they hate him on the other. God loves on one hand and hates on the other. The difference in whether or not you're going to be the recipient of his love or the recipient of his hate is whether you repent toward God, and change your mind about yourself and your sin and God, and join his side.

As long as you continue in your rebellion, you'll end up being the recipient of his hate, but thank God that through the cross we can be the recipient of his love.

Announcer: If you would like to ask a Bible question, email us at [email protected] or call at 931‑805‑4820.

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