Sure. So does God love the unregenerate or non-elect? So can we say Jesus loves you to people we meet on the street or wherever, right? To unbelievers, can we say that?

Yeah. Well, I think out of the gate, we ought to recognize that the gospel has unfortunately been contorted or distorted or dissolved into that sort of a thing where the message is God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. The warrant on which a sinner is called to come is never God loves you. It's always the command of God and the promise of God that the one who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ will not be ashamed, will be saved.

And it rests upon, the warrant to come rests upon the ability and the willingness of the Savior, not on this idea that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. If we look at the Biblical evidence, if we look at what the Bible says with regards to gospel proclamation, take for example the Acts of the Apostles. What do we find to be the content, the constituent pieces of the proclamation of the gospel? It's never God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

It's always, immediately and intimately connected to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the gospel. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul defines the gospel as such. The gospel that I proclaim to you, in which you stand, that which you believed, That which I chiefly proclaim to you as the central message of Christianity is that Christ died for your sins, the sins of the believer, that he was buried, and that he rose again according to the scriptures.

And so that's the gospel proclamation. And so in the book of Acts, for example, when we see the apostles going about preaching the Christian message, preaching the gospel, it is that. that this man, Jesus Christ, attested to you by miracles, signs, and wonders, which he did in your midst, he is very God and very man, one Christ, the only mediator between God and man, and the gospel message is concerned with his death, burial, and resurrection for the salvation of sinners. And that is the warrant upon which sinners are called to come.

The perfection, the ability, the willingness of the Savior who came into this world sinners to save, not in this weird, you know, sort of platitudinous, universalistic approach that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. And it might sound mean, okay, does that mean that we can't tell sinners that God loves them? Well, you know, I think it's important to see what the Bible says with regards to the love of God. In fact, the Bible does speak about the holy hatred of God with regards to sinners.

We read in the Bible that he hates the workers of iniquity. He's angry with the sinner every day. So is it Is it a responsible act upon the part of the Christian evangelist, upon the part of the Christian preacher to say universalistically and without any sort of qualification that God loves every individual before whom they stand? I don't think it is.

The Bible speaks to the unrivaled and unmitigated holiness of God and His hatred for those who transgress His law. proclamation with God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life is, in fact, and interestingly, the absence of love exercised by that Christian to the one before whom they're speaking, because they're distorting what the Bible says with regards to God, His purposes, the nature of God, the nature of the decrees, the nature of the gospel, and what the gospel itself is. It might be important to observe that theologians have recognized a way to approach the love of God as exercised in a grand expression to all of his creation. Some will parse out divine love in a threefold manner, or some have historically parsed out divine love in the love of benevolence, the fact that God has a will for the goodness of his creation, the love of beneficence, the fact of God actually visiting and conferring goodness upon his creation, and then the love of complacency where we actually see More what we're speaking of with regards to God's particular love for the elect.

The actual reality of God delighting in and pouring out His love upon those who are the object of His love. Gil, for example, would take sort of those first two categories of love and call them more God's general sort of providential goodness. And I think that's a careful way of doing it. God has this general providential goodness and condescension that he shows to His creation.

We know the verses, the sun shines on the evil and the good, the rain falls upon the just and the unjust. There is this general providential goodness that God pours out upon His creation. But then there is that special and particular love that God has for His elect. not for the unregenerate generally concerned as sinners, and not for the reprobate, of course, but with respect specifically to the elect, seen as those who before the foundation of the world God has determined to in time pour out His grace and His mercy upon by virtue of the perfection of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so getting back to the heart of the matter and the simplicity of the question, The gospel message is not God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. It is that we have all sinned and we have fallen short of the glory of God, that there is a triune God in high heaven who cannot look upon sin approvingly without having to punish it. And he has dealt with sin either in the death of his son or he deals with sin in the everlasting banishment and punishment of sinners who will be cast out of his sight. And so the blessedness of the gospel message is found in the fact that God has condescended in the person of the Son to secure the salvation of a multitude that no man can number from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation by his death, burial, and resurrection that he rendered perfectly for the salvation of sinners.

Those saved sinners that God has that special and peculiar and electing love for. Those who are found in the Son, not having their own righteousness which is from the law, but that which is from God through faith in Christ. Good. Amen.

That's good. So the Bible says, we're messed up, the world is messed up, but God so loved the world that He sent His Son. Yeah, and think what the message does when we say to a sinner, indiscriminately, to anyone in front of us, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That puts the glory, the majesty, the beauty on the person who then is loved, not upon the God who condescends and not upon the Christ who is the sum and substance of the gospel.

You know, God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life. I must be lovable, and I must be worthy of this, you know, divine favor that's exercised towards me. Whereas, you know, that one to whom the proper Christian message is spoken needs to hear of that holy God, of their sin, of the just punishment for sin, and of the blessedness of the Savior who came in to save sinners perfectly. Yeah, it's important to use the language the Bible uses.

Just stick to it, because it's sufficient. The other one, I was having a discussion with somebody this week about saying, hey, can you accept Jesus? The Bible doesn't use that word. I think it's okay.

Maybe you disagree, but either we reject Him or we accept Him, right? We receive. I just use that as a synonym for receive, but some people have a problem with that language. Accepting.

Maybe because it's an abuse of accepting Jesus into your heart. Yeah, I'm sure it's a reaction to bad uses of it. But it's okay, it's not my favorite, but I'm not going to say you're therefore messed up, right? I mean, we should be able to have differences in a confessional context and still love each other and not lose sleep over it.

No, I'll never think that of you.