I found 3 verses that bring down the “God loves everyone” theology down like a house of cards.
Malachi 1:2-3
I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons in the wilderness.
Romans 9:13
As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
These verses imply that God does indeed hate some people. He likely hates me but I can’t do anything about it.
This phrase "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated" is talking about how Jacob received the birthright even though Esau was the firstborn; God chose Jacob, and thus God's covenant promises are made with Jacob's children: Israel; rather than Esau's children: Edom.
Edom was an ancient nation, and their patriarch was believed to have been Esau. The Edomites were eventually absorbed into the Jewish nation during the Maccabean period through a forced conversion to Judaism. The Herodians (e.g. Herod the Great), for example, were Edomites (Idumeans).
It has nothing to do with God having antipathy against the individual Esau, or God having antipathy against every Edomite.
But Paul uses this: God's elective choice to make Jacob the chosen son rather than Esau, to illustrate his larger point. Paul is dealing with two things here:
1) How the majority of his Jewish kinsmen have not come to faith in the Messiah, but have rejected Him; and
2) God has opened up the gate for the Gentiles to enter into the Household through faith in the Messiah.
This is part of the larger theme of Romans, which can be found in Paul's thesis statement for the epistle: "I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is is the power of God to save all who believe, the Jew first and also the Greek; for by it the justice of God is revealed from faith to faith; just as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith.'" (Romans 1:16-17).
To that end, the Apostle weaves together two streams of thought: The universality of sin and death for both Jew and Gentile, and therefore also the universality of the Gospel for both Jew and Gentile, through faith in the Messiah.
So, for example, in the first chapter of Romans Paul speaks about the "obvious sin" of the Gentiles, about how even though God's power and wisdom is on display in creation, the Gentiles instead took to worshiping the creation rather than the Creator, falling into idolatry and all manner of sin. Paul is, in a sense, leading here, he is leading so that his readers (especially his Jewish Christian readers) all nod their heads in agreement showing their own prejudice and hypocrisy. Paul immediately flips the script, and points out that his readers are just as guilty, "For you do the very same things". Why does Paul do this? Because Paul is leading up to the fact that everyone, regardless of whether they are a devout Torah-observant Jew or a heathen Pagan, is condemned and guilty under the Law--"All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:21)
Paul then guides his readers to recognize this universal condemnation of sin under the Law, and why therefore the Law cannot justify anyone; and so Paul actually goes to the time before the giving of the Torah to Abraham, and speaks of how Abraham was justified by faith, "Abraham had faith and it was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Romans 4:3).
So how is the sinner (and we have established that all are sinners), then, justified before God? Paul answers this by pointing to Christ, and to faith in Christ. It is through faith in God's Messiah that the sinner is justified. See the entirety of Romans chapter 5. Paul then addresses how through our baptism we have been united to Christ in His death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-4), and therefore are to now see ourselves dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:11); we are to struggle against the old man who is put to death and walk in new obedience. In Romans 7 Paul talks about this struggle more emphatically. How we wrestle against the law of sin and death that remains in our bodily members, even as we desire to do good; and as wretches we can give thanks to Christ alone who has saved us (Romans 7:24-25). This leads to Romans 8, where Paul announces how in Jesus we are not condemned, we who have died to sin who though continued to wrestle and struggle against the sin of our flesh, by God's grace, are not condemned--but are predestined in Christ to the glorious hope which we now have: Just as God raised Jesus from the dead, so God is going to do the same for us (Romans 8:11), in fact God is going to do this for all creation, for all creation itself suffers under sin an death and groans in labor pains for the freedom of new creation.
Now Romans 9. About how not all who are Israel by blood are Israel by faith, about how God chose Jacob rather than Esau. Is this an indication of injustice on God's part, or is God being inconsistent? No, Paul says, as he points to where God says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy" (keep this in mind).
Turn to Romans 10 and 11, the Apostle speaks about how ALL who call on the name of the Lord will be saved, how none shall be put to shame if they have faith in the Messiah. Through the preaching of the Gospel God works and creates faith (Romans 10:17), and the unbelief of the unbelieving Jews while cutting them off from God's covenant promises in the Messiah, also means that God can show forth His power by calling the Gentiles. Some natural branches have been pruned from the olive tree, and wild ones grafted on.
Now to how Paul brings it all together:
"
Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,
'The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will banish the ungodliness from Jacob';
'and this will be My covenant with them when I take away their sins.'
As regards the Gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too now have been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all.
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!
'For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?'
'Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid?'
For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen." - Romans 11:25-36
See then this: For God chose Jacob and not Esau. Israel, not the Gentiles. And here, though Jacob has stumbled, and the Gentiles are brought in, it does not mean God is faithless to Jacob. Rather here God fulfills all His faithfulness: For the Gospel goes forth to Israel, to Edom, to the Greeks, to the Scythians, the Romans, the barbarians, to all: Circumcised and uncircumcised, Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female.
God will reconcile all people. The nations shall come to Mt. Zion (Isaiah 2:2-4). God declared in ancient times that Egypt and Assyria would be His, with Israel (Isaiah 19:24-25).
God fulfills His promise, through Jesus the Messiah, so that Jew and Gentile, and indeed the whole world of lost sinners, are the objects of His affection.
He has had mercy on you, therefore He will have mercy on all.
For Christ who has died died for all, tasting the death of everyone (Hebrews 2:9), for His atoning death is not for us who believe only, but for the whole world (1 John 2:2).
Romans 9:13 does not mean God doesn't love everyone; just the opposite.
God loves everyone, and this is made evident in the fact that He loves you, yes even you, O wretch and sinner. It is the love with which He loves you that shows forth His mercy upon all wretches, all sinners, on all of us. Without exception. Because
you were Esau, and so am I. For He has mercy on Jacob
and Esau.
Christ died
for you.
-CryptoLutheran
