Ask NTW Anything Podcast.

Hello and welcome to the Ask Entryte Anything podcast.

I'm your co-host, Mike Bird from Melbourne, Australia, and I'm joined by...

I'm Tom Wright, here in Oxford in England.

Tom, it's great to be with you again and we have some

great questions to deal with. To begin with, we have Reese Owen from Edinburgh, a city we're both

very familiar with Tom. And Reese says, hi Tom, when we say that God loves us, what do we mean? Do we mean that God acts in ways which are loving

towards us or that he has feelings of love for us or both? Is this an unhelpful distinction to try and

draw? And how does God communicate this through the Bible? And relatedly, does God love each of us individually, or does he love humans in general?

I want to believe that both are true, but the Bible often seems to be saying that God loves Israel or the world,

or humans who are faithful to him, which seems to leave open the possibility that any given human or perhaps some given humans

are not particularly valuable on their own. I don't believe this is true, and I don't want it to be

true, but sometimes it doesn't seem glaringly obvious that God is communicating a personal

love for each one of us in the Bible. Would you be able to shed some light on this?

And another related question he's got,

what would it mean for God to have feelings of love for us,

given that it doesn't mean that he loves the things we do?

We are capable of doing evil and acting on untrue beliefs.

And in the Bible, God conquering all human evil is celebrated,

such as Psalm 91. In what sense does God love those human beings who are doing evil? And Reese says

he'd appreciate your thoughts on this issue. Well, Tom, there's quite a lot there on God's love.

Does God have a universal love? Or is there a particular love for special people?

...