Yesterday I posted “God hates sinners”: John Piper does believe this. In a comment Jeff, “Scripture Zealot”, noted that I had taken this from a sermon 23 years old and wondered if Piper might have changed his mind. Well, that is possible, but I have been offered no evidence for it.
However, we do have up-to-date evidence for something almost as shocking which Piper explicitly states today, or at least he did yesterday. If we can trust Adrian Warnock’s report (which is not certain; thanks to Henry Neufeld for the tip), Piper, speaking yesterday at the New Word Alive conference in Wales, said:
Someone might argue, “Sin was condemned, but not Christ.” Piper then explained: Imagine I got you on stage and said, “I’m going to hit you in the face, but it’s not you I’m hitting, it’s just your attitude.” NO! It was the will of the Lord to bruise him. God made him to be sin who knew no sin so that we could become the righteousness of God. He was wounded for us. His punishment set us free. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He struck him. It was God the Father who killed Jesus. It is considered today to be appalling to teach or sing this. Piper said it is not appalling to him, it is his very life!
To this, I will simply say that “bruise” (Adrian’s double emphasis) is not the same as “kill”, and where in this is the united will of the Trinity? But this quotation should really be checked from the audio and video expected soon.
To return to Piper’s 1985 sermon, on the same chapter, Romans 8, as last night’s, I noticed something strange here.
When I have objected in the past to statements like “God hates sinners” and its apparent contradiction with John 3:16, Calvinist commenters have claimed that in this verse “the world” in fact means “the elect”. There is in fact no exegetical justification for this at all, but it does make for a consistent, although unbiblical, system of doctrine, according to which God loves those whom he has elected to eternal life, and hates those whom he has not elected.
But the strange thing which Piper said in 1985 was with regard to himself before he was a Christian:
But it wasn’t always so for John Piper. … God hated me in my sin.
Now I am sure that Piper considers himself one of the elect. But here he seems to teach that God hated him before he repented and became a Christian. In fact, if we read on, it would appear that, according to Piper, God still hated him as he
contemplate[d] me in Jesus Christ—chosen, loved, and destined for glory … [and] fulfil[led] his predestined purpose for me by appeasing his own wrath and acquitting me of all my sin and conquering the depravity of my heart.
In other words, Piper’s view seems to be that God continues to hate humans, except for the only one he actually loves, Jesus Christ. And if he does love Jesus, he showed that in a very strange way, by killing him. Also, in this case, as Polycarp asked in a comment here,
If God hates sinners, then why Christ?
If God loved Jesus and hated Piper, why did he kill Jesus and save Piper? This just doesn’t make sense!
Now maybe Piper has some way of making this into a consistent system, but it is different from the Calvinist system I described before, and even more different from the truth revealed in the Bible:
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8 (TNIV)
Note the first “for us”: it is not just Jesus, but us sinners, whom God loves, and he loves us before we repent.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16 (TNIV)
I shouldn’t really have to quote this, but it seems that at least in 1985 Piper was not aware of it. For these words make it clear that God did not love just the Son, nor even just the elect, but he loved the world, that is everyone.
Peter,
This is a very helpful analysis! I really like what you repeated in your post yesterday: “Pam, is it possible to believe that both holiness and love are God’s primary characteristics?” But can’t we tweak this a bit? The epistle writer named Peter (I P 1:16) quotes or translates God in Leviticus saying “I am holy.” And John the epistle writer seems so overwhelmed with Jesus that heannounces “God is love.” Now following no definition of Bill Clinton’s of “the word is,” I do think the copula in most any language indicates more than a “primary characteristic,” no? It is what we English academics in America are loathe to admit: that there is “the very essence.”
Now it seems when looking at Piper’s statements and then the scriptures and God in its history, we’re faced with “how” is God’s plural essence manifest? How can he say “Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated”? How can Jesus (or how can the gospel writer John) reconcile such a God statement with what Nicodemus (and we) get in John 3:16? And with Jesus’s parables (such as the prodigal son in which there is no hate and, at best, only weird holiness in the father)? These are very very very personal questions. Yes, I know we’re exegeting the text before any theologizing, as if the one is not as fraught with interpretation.
I do like what Philip Yancey says that Martin Luther says to his disciples: “draw Christ as deep as possible into the flesh” and “flee the hidden God and run to Christ.” That might help Piper. But I think, for me, you’ve done good job explaining his inconsistencies.
I am no great biblical scholar; I am coming to this blog a little unarmed here
This is how I see it:
Rather, your iniquities have been barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. – Isa 59.2 (NRSV)
I fully accept that God is holy and that nothing unholy will be in his sight, but since we are His creation, His love joined His justice and all the while hating our sinful nature, love us His creation, so that He sent His only begotten Son.
It was our nature to be children of wrath, and God fully recognizing that fact sought the remedy in the Cross.
He hated our nature but loved His creation enough to redeem it.
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us… – Eph 2.4 (NRSV)
Things to think about for sure. But as you pointed out with Reverend Wright (not N.T.), we should see the whole context and not rely on someone’s report before we judge, even if there are some pieces that appear to be or are incontrovertible.
Jeff
“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! ” — Romans 5:10 (TNIV)
God both loved and hated us.
Calvin wrote:
“These things are clear and conformable to Scripture, and admirably reconcile the passages in which it is said, that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,” (John 3:16); and yet that it was “when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son,” (Rom. 5:10). But to give additional assurance to those who require the authority of the ancient Church, I will quote a passage of Augustine to the same effect: “Incomprehensible and immutable is the love of God. For it was not after we were reconciled to him by the blood of his Son that he began to love us, but he loved us before the foundation of the world, that with his only begotten Son we too might be sons of God before we were any thing at all. Our being reconciled by the death of Christ must not be understood as if the Son reconciled us, in order that the Father, then hating, might begin to love us, but that we were reconciled to him already, loving, though at enmity with us because of sin. To the truth of both propositions we have the attestation of the Apostle, ‘God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,’ (Rom. 5:8). Therefore he had this love 437towards us even when, exercising enmity towards him, we were the workers of iniquity. Accordingly in a manner wondrous and divine, he loved even when he hated us. For he hated us when we were such as he had not made us, and yet because our iniquity had not destroyed his work in every respect, he knew in regard to each one of us, both to hate what we had made, and love what he had made.” Such are the words of Augustine (Tract in Jo. 110).”
Kurk, the interesting thing, at least in English, is that person-copula-noun indicates “the very essence” but person-copula-adjective very often indicates a temporary “accident”, like “I am tired”. I don’t know how universal this distinction is – I know that Russian has other ways of making it. But I note that we never read “God is holiness”, only “God is holy”, but we do read “God is love”. That suggests to me that love is a matter of “the very essence” but holiness is something secondary. But I’m not sure if that is a valid argument.
Jeff, you are right that I need to look at the whole context. I did look at most of Piper’s 1985 sermon, but could have missed some more explanation. I just skimmed through it again, and can find nothing except what I mention below about God’s electing love.
Ben, I know that Calvin wrote that “God both loved and hated us”. But Piper seems to have departed from Calvin on this point, at least in 1985. Well, he does mention God’s “electing love for me”. But when he quotes “he hates sin but loves the sinner” he immediately repudiates that, refusing to accept that God loves sinners.
Ben, you seem to have the interesting idea that God hates humans but loves the rest of his creation and so saves humans for its sake. Is that really what you mean?
Ephesians 2:4-5: yes, that also shows that God loves those who are not yet believers.
Sorry, it was Polycarp, not Ben, who had the interesting idea about creation.
I just spotted this part of Augustine’s words as quoted by Calvin:
This sounds very much like that God hates the sin, i.e. the things which we have done and what we have made ourselves into, but loves the sinner, the person he has made.
Peter Kirk,
I don’t think there is any difference between John Piper’s view and the view expressed by Calvin. In Piper’s article Are there two wills in God? Piper affirms God’s love for the non-elect
Piper says: “Therefore I affirm with John 3:16 and 1 Timothy 2:4 that God loves the world with a deep compassion that desires the salvation of all men.”
In another sermon, Piper says: “God loves his enemies—the evil and the unrighteous—in sending rain and sunshine on them instead of instant judgment.”
So taking John Pipers’ work as a whole, I think there is no disagreement between him and Calvin at this point – God both loves and hates sinners.
The cross removes God’s anger and hatred towards the elect, leaving only love for them.
Thanks, Ben. Well, I could accuse Piper of inconsistency. I think he should at least clarify his position by not speaking of God hating sinners without mentioning also that he loves them, and perhaps vice versa. I accept that he is preaching, not writing systematic theology, but his unbalanced statements have caused serious misunderstanding.
Peter,
Let me clarify, when I speak of Creation, I mean the entire Creation, but most especially humanity. I do not believe that God hates ‘us’, just the sinful nature. It was not His intended nature for us.
Polycarp, thanks for the clarification. Obviously the interesting idea which I presented was not yours or Ben’s, but mine. But to avoid misunderstanding I will now also repudiate it. It is not that God saves humans for the inanimate creation’s sake, but more vice versa.
Amidst all this heady talk, which is wonderful, doesn’t your heart become stirred in thinking of God’s mercies and his sweet grace? His love is evergreen and tender, harsh and overwhelming: real.
Stamati, I find it hard to be stirred by God’s mercy and grace when I read people blasphemously saying that he hates people rather than loving them.
How can it be blasphemy to say what the scriptures say Polycarp?
The wrath of God abides on sinners, He hates them.
Proverbs 6 say that God hates 17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, 18 a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, 19 a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.
Why you think that some bits of the bible are blasphemy I do not know. Could you explain?
Phil, I think you were addressing me, not Polycarp. But you misinterpret me. What I said was that it is blasphemy to say that God hates people but does not love them. I accept that there are some statements in the Old Testament only (except for one NT quote of one of them) saying that God hates certain categories of person because of what they do. But that does not imply that he does not love them. On the contrary, he loves them so much that he sent his Son to die for them. This is the clear teaching of the New Testament, and it is blasphemous to deny that.
God love man but He hates sin. God hates sin with perfect hatred that is why Jesus was forsaken by God when He carried upon the sin of the whole world upon Himself. As Christ Ambassadors we should have this attitude of God towards sin.