RE: Can God love?
June 21, 2018 at 10:32 am
(This post was last modified: June 21, 2018 at 11:55 am by SteveII.)
(June 21, 2018 at 7:50 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: This whole idea that God would love me 'if', is, I think, rather beside the point. If God chooses not to let me near because of some supposed flaw, or whether he cannot, is, I think an irrelevant distinction. Love, in order to be real, has to actually involve, you know, "loving" the other. If God neither does actually let me near, regardless of whether he simply won't, or because he can't, then God's love for me is never actualized. Love that is never tested isn't really love, it's just the idea of love. We have no idea whether God would or would not embrace me in spite of my flaws because he never actually does. So this idea that God has agape for me is hollow, empty, and meaningless. It is like the teenager's "undying love" for her boyfriend that turns out not to be so undying after all. God's love cuts and runs at the first sign of trouble. How Christians consider that agape, or anything at all, is beyond me. That's not love, it's just a romantic notion. It's the idea that God would love you if he could, but he can't, so he shan't. It's nothing real, it's just empty words.
God has certainly 'actualized' his love for everyone even prior to any one person's salvation experience:
1. John 3:16, For God so loved the world...he died to atone for anyone's sin. Romans 5:6-8, God proved his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
2. God continually preserves this message of hope and constantly orchestrates events so that people hear it. Mark 4:3-20 (the parable of the sower/seeds)
3. When a person's heart is receptive to this hope, he is waiting there to respond. I John 1:8-9
So, your whole point above is wrong: God has already shown his love for us. There is no "God would love you if he could, but he can't, so he shan't."
My references are not exhaustive, rather are just one of many places in the NT where you get the same principles.