Tackling Tradition 78: Cephas In Galatians

Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus •along with me. 2  •I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. 3  But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 4  Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— 5  to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. 6  And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were •makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. 7  •On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised...
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Is It True That God Does Not Love Everyone?

From time to time, Hyper-Calvinists & others will point to Romans 9 & Malachi 1:2 - 3 “ Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”  (Romans 9:13, ESV)  & allege that these two texts and similar texts (like Psalm 5:5) teach that God literally hates either all sinners or the Elect but not the Reprobate.

Is that at all true? 

No, it most certainly is not true. How so?

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”  (Matthew 22:34–40, ESV)


God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, justice, holiness, goodness, and truth who summarizes/encapsulates His Moral Law via 2 overarching principles that conduce to infinitely exhaustive, perfect love for God first, then everyone & everything else, & then one’s own self. 


God’s Moral Law commands us to love the same way He Himself loves.   God loves Himself first (because God alone is God); then God loves everyone & everything else next, & then God loves Himself.   


Therefore, God doesn’t hate anyone (as in an absolute privation of love).  Rather, these passages mean that God’s love when set upon those He has redeemed/intends to redeem is so very vast in comparison to His righteousness indignation & wrath that as to the targets of His indignation & wrath, it is as though God truly hates those He wraths, especially those who persist in wickedness like Edom (ie Esau). 


O LORD, Hear our prayer(s)!




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