Does God Love His Enemies?

Ask Pastor John

Desiring God

John Piper, Unknown, 163859, Pastor, Ask, Theology, Desiring God, Religion & Spirituality/christianity, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Questions

4.8 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2016

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Both God and his people love their human enemies, but not in the same way, since God is all-wise and all-governing, and we are finite.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to a new week on the Aspastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor John Piper.
0:05.4	Kenneth from Starkville, Mrs. Sypherites, and to say this,
0:08.8	Pastor John, I have been taking advantage of more and more of the resources that desireing
0:13.0	God.org lately, and one of the things that stood out for me is the self-exaltation of
0:18.3	God.
0:19.3	You discuss how it is the most loving thing that God could do for us, namely, to exalt
0:23.3	himself, while it would be a sin for anyone else to do that.
0:27.8	My question is almost the reverse of this.
0:30.6	Are there things that we are commanded to do by God that would be a sin if God did
0:34.9	them?
0:35.9	Specifically, Jesus tells us to love our enemies.
0:38.7	Would it be a sin for God to love his non-human enemies like Satan and the fallen angels?
0:45.1	Or does he love them?
0:46.5	Pastor John, what would you say to Kenneth?
0:49.6	Let me take those two questions one at a time, because the first one that I hear
0:57.3	is, I think, clear and easy to answer from Scripture.
1:01.7	The second one, not so easy.
1:05.4	First, he says, Kenneth says, are there things that we are commanded to do by God that
1:15.3	would be sin if God did them?
1:17.8	And the answer is clearly, yes, I can think of half a dozen things that God commands us
1:24.8	to do that would be sin for God to do.
1:27.8	He commands us to confess our sins to each other, in James 5, 16, confess your sins to
	...

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