Transcript

ANNOUNCER: What about God’s love for believers? Does he show more love to some than others? Does God love all believers the same amount the same way? Let’s have a discussion about that today here on Grace in Focus. Thank you for joining us, friend. This is the ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Find us at our website, faithalone.org. We have a free online seminary that we’d love you to know about. It’s the Grace Evangelical Seminary. Study with us for an MDiv degree. And it is free as long as you maintain above a 3.0 average. Go through the application process and be ready to study with us next semester. It is the GES Seminary. Find all the information you need at faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s discussion here are Bob Wilkin and Ken Yates.

KEN: Bob, we got a question from Doug and he’s bussing on you. He’s bussing on you.

BOB: No, he’s not bussing. 

KEN: Yes, he is. He’s talking about a blog you did and it’s talking about the love of God and his question basically is this. Does God love all believers in the same way? Or we would say equally. In other words, if a believer is rebelling against God, like the prodigal son, for example, and God is disciplining him, is that just as loving or God loves them just as much as a believer who’s in fellowship with the Lord and walking with the Lord. And he mentioned a blog that you wrote. And so why don’t you first of all, give us a summary of what you discussed in your blog about the love of God. 

BOB: And then and maybe before I do that, why don’t you read the part he says about his friend who says God must really love me because I’m going through a lot of discipline or something? He mentions Hebrews 12, doesn’t he? 

KEN: That’s right. He quotes from Hebrews 12, where it says whom the Lord loves, he disciplines and scourges. And then he says his friend goes, God must really love me because He’s certainly putting me through the ringer right now. Now, let me just say something about that in that question or that example. 

What he’s saying is a believer who’s going through a difficult time, but I’m assuming it’s not because he’s in rebellion against God. You know, like, let’s say I’m in fellowship with God and I get an incurable disease, Paul’s thorn in the flesh. Okay, 2 Corinthians 12. And his friend goes, God must really love me right now. But we’re adding this other wrinkle here because of Hebrews 12. What about a believer who is sleeping with a prostitute and gets an incurable disease? 

BOB: Right. I think the blog he’s talking about is the blog where I wrote and I asked does God love all believers equally? And I talked about the verse. I think it’s Jude 21 or 22 where Jude says, keep yourselves in the love of God. And what I suggested in that blog is that if we fall away, which Jude 24 and 25 talks about, then we’re no longer in the love of God. If we’re in the spiritual far country like the the product of a son you mentioned earlier, how is the son in the pig stye experiencing his father’s love over in the Ponderosa? He’s not. 

KEN: Oh, that’s, that’s an old reference there to Bonanza. 

BOB: Right. He needs to go back to his father. And when he gets back to his father, he gets the robe, he gets the ring, he gets the sandals, they slay the fatted calf for him. He returns to the experience of his father’s love. So it’s not that God cuts off His love to us. It’s we cut off God’s love to us. That’s why he says, keep yourselves in the love of God.

KEN: We remove ourselves from experiencing that love. Would that be a good way of saying that? 

BOB: He still loves us. But we’re not experiencing it. Now Hebrews 12 is not talking about God judging the person who’s off in immorality and they get HIV. Right? It’s talking about the person who is walking in fellowship with God and they’re experiencing difficulties in their life. Actually, the word for discipline there, isn’t that paiduo? 

KEN: Paideia, where we get our word “pediatrician”, the raising up of a child 

BOB: Child training. 

KEN: Right. And the readers of Hebrews were going through difficulties, you know, from chapter 10, you know, they’ve been persecuted and that’s what the whole book’s about. So this is the discipline of God, but it’s not because they’re dirty nasty rotten backsliders. You know, it’s because they live in this world in the particular area where they lived in, where they were being persecuted for their faith. 

BOB: So if you’re being persecuted for your faith, you could, like Doug’s friend say, God must really love me because he’s allowing me to be persecuted for faith. I remember Acts 5, I think it’s verse 41. And that’s after the apostles are beaten and they rejoice that they’re counted worthy to suffer for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we should rejoice if we’re counted worthy to suffer for Him. But that’s different than saying, okay, if I have calamity in my life as a result of me being in the spiritual far country, me being out of fellowship with God, I shouldn’t be rejoicing when that calamity falls on me. I should be repenting. 

KEN: So to go back to the prodigal son, when he’s there eating the pods, the pigs, and laying in the mud, he shouldn’t be saying, man, my father really loves me. You know, because I’m down here, suffering. 

BOB: He could say, my father really loves me. In fact, I think it’s verse 17 of Luke 15, he says, when he came to his senses. Well, at that point, he does know his father really loves him, but he also knows he’s not experiencing it. In order to experience it. He’s got to be in fellowship with his father. 

KEN: But you know, even there, kind of press that a little bit, does he have a misunderstanding of his father’s love because he says, I’m no longer worthy to be called a son, I’ll go back and be one of his servants. 

BOB: He’ll be like Hop Sing and working in the kitchen. 

KEN: You know, there’s another Bonanza reference. Bob is showing his age. Some of the people listening go like, who’s hop sing? Who’s Hoss? 

BOB: Who’s Hoss? I didn’t mention Hoss yet. He’s one of the sons. 

KEN: Who’s Little Joe? 

BOB: You know, I think Little Joe’s in the far country because he wanted his inheritance early. And why is Little Joe doing it? We love Michael Landon, right?

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KEN: This question by Doug is a good. By the way, he mentions his own dad. He says he’s 76 and he said his own dad used to spank him. 

BOB: Yeah, and his father loves his son. He spanks him or at least disciplines him. Today, I guess you don’t spank you. Try to reason with him or something. But in Proverbs, it says he who spares the rod spoils the child. 

KEN: And I’ll tell you something else. They did some spanking on the Ponderosa. The father there, forgot his name. 

BOB: Ben Cartwright. 

KEN: Yeah, Ben Cartwright. He loved his boys. 

BOB: He did love his boys and they grew up to be strong men because they had training. And so I guess his question is does God love all believers equally? Yes or no? Does he show his love equally? No. Does he love them equally? Well, yes, but clearly you’re not experiencing the love of God, if you’re not walking in fellowship with Him. 

KEN: But I love that verse that you use from Jude in your blog, abide in the love or remain in the love. So that obviously is saying we might not do that. 

BOB: If you’ve ever been around rescue mission work, if you’ve spoken there, you know that there are people there who were born again and fell away from the Lord and were in the gutter. Sometimes literally in the gutter, they were addicted to drugs, addicted to alcohol, other things. They’re homeless. And then they come to the rescue mission and they start getting involved in the discipleship program at the rescue mission. 

Well, some of those people come to faith in the rescue mission, but some of them are already born again, but they had fallen away. And sometimes you’ll find doctors that end up homeless. You’ll have lawyers that end up homeless. They’re alcoholics. They’ve lost their marriage. They’ve lost their kids. It’s not just people who were, let’s say, gardeners that fell away and that somehow became homeless—

KEN: Or even unbelievers or just, you know, it’s not there’s just—it’s not just some unbelievers that are sleeping out in the gutter. 

BOB: Right. They’re born again people who fall away from the Lord and end up in a rescue mission and they help restore these people. So yes, some of the people are unbelievers in the rescue missions and they come to faith there, but some of them are born again people who end up and they’re away from the Lord. 

So I would say to Doug, God is chastising or training all believers. However, do you have the passage there? Why don’t you turn to the Hebrews 12 passage? Where’s the verse about illegitimate sons? Is that around verse 11 or 10? 

KEN: Yeah, I was just going to talk about that. You know, since he references Hebrews chapter 12 quotes, Hebrews that says, whom the Lord loves, he disciplines and scourges, it talks about—he goes in verse eight, but if you are without chastening of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. And I think a lot of people come to that verse and say, Oh, he’s talking about illegitimate children are not believers. 

BOB: Right, they’re not born again. 

KEN: But Bob and I were talking about this and no, we don’t think that’s at all what the author of Hebrews is talking about it. What he’s saying is sons are those who are going to reign with Christ. But we would say mature sons, we would say a chip off the old block and the Lord chastens or trains up those who are going to rule in the world to come. We both knew Earl Radmacher. He said, this is training time for reigning time. And so yeah, if I’m in fellowship with the Lord and he is training me up and bringing things into my life to make me more like Christ, then yeah, I can look at that, that suffering and Doug’s friend saying, boy, the Lord must really love me now. I’m assuming that’s what he means. Then that’s a true statement. And I am experiencing his love. I’m experiencing his chastening, his training. I’m getting my booster shots from him, whatever the case may be. As a kid, you know, he’s he’s doing this for my own good, even though I don’t like it. So yes. 

BOB: I’ll tell you what’s interesting and maybe you can pull the Bible Knowledge Commentary. It’s right behind you there on the shelf. Hodges wrote the commentary on Hebrews. And in it, he talks about the illegitimate sons. And Hodges says that the illegitimate sons are believers. And he said that he’s not talking there about unbelievers. So if you would, why don’t you read that quote? 

KEN: Yeah, Hodges in the Bible Knowledge Commentary says, talking about the illegitimate children there in verse eight, he says, “And speaking of those who are not disciplined and are thus illegitimate children. He was probably thinking of Christians whose disloyalty to the faith resulted in their loss of inheritance, reward.” Obviously, not salvation. But illegitimate are those who are not going to inherit the father’s estate, something like that. That’s what he says. And I agree. 

And so yeah, like Job, for example, Job’s trials were a sign of God’s love. He was being disciplined by God in that sense. 

BOB: Yeah, that’s good. Well, great question, Doug. And let’s all keep grace in focus.

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On our next episode: is remarriage adultery? Please come back and join us. And in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.