Does God love everyone including those who have not received salvation yet? This is a question that is commonly asked in the Christian faith. The answer to this is Yes, God loves everyone. So, let us delve into the details as to why God loves all His Creations.
God’s Love as Written in John 3:16
The best evidence of God’s love for the world would be Jesus Christ. In John 3:16, It is written that “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
The passage mentions the word “world.” This means that God loves the entire world, both the righteous and the wicked people, and because He wants to save the world from sins, He gave His only Son.
The “world” that is referred to here is the wickedness of the world rather than the physical world itself. God knows that the world is wicked, and His creations are exposed to such wickedness in many ways and forms, and thus, they sin. That is why He sent His son to save the world.
Nevertheless, it is written further in John 15:19 that God’s followers are people who do not love the world and those who are not His followers are those who love the wickedness of the world. “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”
Although it is not explicitly said that God does not love the wicked, it is written in this passage that people should take heed of loving the world more than they love God.
The passage also sends a powerful message to anyone around the world — that receiving salvation is easy. This is stated in the early part of John, John 1:12, “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
Salvation is easy and anyone can do it. It merely needs a person to believe that their Savior is Jesus Christ and receive Jesus through the Holy Spirit and baptism.
However, not everyone understands how easy this is and they tend to complicate things with sin and with the belief of other gods and doctrines. Nevertheless, God still loves them because they are created by Him and God is persistent this way.
God’s Love as Written in Ephesians 2:4-5
Aside from John 3:16, we also see God’s great love for us in Ephesians 2:4-5, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved.”
In this passage, Paul begins by talking about God’s great mercy and love and then continues to talk about the difference between non-believers and believers. This text differentiates people in terms of believing in Christ and not.
However, he further writes about transgressions. In this passage, we can see that God loves us even if “we are dead in transgressions.” By this line, it is obvious that God loves and has mercy even for the sinners.
God’s Love as Written in Romans 5:8
This is further explained in Romans 5:8 as it is written, “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”
This verse is one of the most loved verses in the Bible because it talks about God’s love in a short but to-the-point manner. Paul writes clearly about salvation through Christ’s death and that faith is the basis of it.
It also shows that we are at peace with God’s love as long as we are saved because we are safe in the hands of God who loves us.
But the most loving idea that this verse says is that we don’t have to question God’s love for us through words but instead evidence of His love, which is very obvious in the passage, “We are sinners, Christ died for us.”
This passage has put so much emphasis on Christ dying for sinners. What does this mean? This means that He died in our place. We deserve to die for our sins, but Jesus, through God’s instructions, died for us instead. And evidently, it takes so much love for a person to die for him or her — this is God’s love.
The mere fact that God gave His Son to save everyone from sins is irrefutable evidence that He not only loves those who are saved, but also those who are not saved.
What Romans 9:13 Really Means
Now, even if there is irrefutable evidence that God loves everyone, there are debates that say otherwise. One of the passages that is usually provided to rebut the fact that God loves everyone is Romans 9:13, “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.”
This passage is quoted to show evidence that God loves only the believers and not the non-believers — as Jacob is a believer and Esau is not. But there is a problem with the representation.
If we look closely at the context of how Paul has written this text, he was actually referring to Malachi. In Malachi, Jacob and Esau are representatives of nations (Israel and Edom) and not the metaphors of the believers and nonbelievers. For this reason, the argument using Romans 9:13 is not valid.
What Does This Mean?
God loves everyone. This is a fact that has been discussed in the radical verses of John 3:16, Ephesians 2:4-5, Romans 5:8, and many other verses in the Bible that are not mentioned in this article.
God’s love is so great that He gave His only Son to die for our sins and be resurrected. This bold fact, alone, is very important evidence of God’s love for his children.
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Glory Dy has been a content creator for more than 10 years. She lives in a quiet suburb with her family and four cats.
