SPROUL: The kingdom of God is not Mr. Roger's neighborhood. I think there are few things more
dangerous than preachers out there preaching that God loves everybody unconditionally because
the message that is heard by the people who hear that is, "There are no conditions. I can continue
to live just as I'm living in full rebellion against God, and I have nothing to worry about
because there aren't any conditions that I have to meet. God loves me unconditionally. I don’t
have to repent. I don't have to come to Jesus. I don't have to leave my life of sin. No conditions.
No strings attached. God loves me just the way I am. He's glad that I turned out so nicely,"
and so on. But there is a sense. I've written a book on the love of God, where I talk about the
three ways in which theologians speak about the love of God. God's love of benevolence, where God
has a good will towards everybody, believers and non-believers. Beneficent love of God: God gives
benefits to people whether they're believers or not believers. "The rain falls on the just as well
as on the unjust." But the most important consideration is the love of complacency,
not the love of smugness. But what is meant by the love of complacency is the filial love that God
has for the redeemed, and that love is directed first to Christ and then to all who are in Christ,
our elder Brother. And that salvific love is not something that God has for everybody
unconditionally. And sometimes we close our eyes to what the Bible says frequently about
God's posture towards the impenitent. "God," the Bible tells us "abhors the wicked." That's
strong language. God abhors, detests, the wicked who are impenitent. And then people say, "Well,
God loves the sinner; He just hates the sin." But He doesn't send the sin to hell;
He sends the sinner there. And so, this is very dangerous stuff when we tell people,
"God loves you unconditionally," you know, so we have to do it from a biblical perspective rather
than trying to change the biblical character of God. God is angry every day against the
wicked and justly so. And every impenitent sinner is exposed every second to the rage,
the fury of God's wrath, as Paul tells us in Romans 1:18 and following. But again,
like you said earlier, there's no understanding of the good news apart from the bad news. Christ
came into the world that was already under the universal indictment for rejecting God the Father,
for living in a sense where the clear revelation of God, as you pointed out Steve, was so made
manifest to every human being. But our nature is so fallen that we don't want God in our thinking,
we don't want God in our minds, and we want so much to win people to Christ that we'll
do everything we can to hide from them the reality of the wrath of God. We don't tell them that every
moment that they refuse to repent that they are heaping up wrath, Steve, against the day of wrath.
But people aren't afraid of the wrath of God, and it's because we're out there telling them, "You
don't have to be afraid of God because God is so nice and, you know, it's Mr. Roger' neighborhood."
MACARTHUR: It takes the terror out of it. "Knowing the terror of the Lord," Paul says,
"we persuade men." "It's a fearful thing," a terrifying thing,
"to fall into the hands of the living God." The preaching that God loves you unconditionally is
the wrong message. The sinner needs to be terrified about his condition. He doesn't
need to feel comfortable in the fact that he's turned out so well, as R.C put it.
SPROUL: Now, just in the last year, John, I've had two guys come into membership in our church
as adults, baptized as adults, by the way, who in their testimony…their testimony is
that what drove them to the gospel was they realized that they were on their way to hell,
and that scared them, literally scared them…the hell out of them, right?
LAWSON: Yeah, and rightly so. SPROUL: Yeah.
MACARTHUR: Now, that's part of what Steve was saying, excuse me Chris. That's part
of what Steve was saying. If we're going to ever call a nation to righteousness,
the preaching has to dramatically change. It has to dramatically change.