Does God Love Everyone?
Actually, this is not the general agreement of Calvinists. Mosts Calvinists believe that God loves people other than the elect. They do, however, believe that God has a special love for the elect that is different from his love for others. Most Calvinists recognize at least two general types of God’s love for man: love for the elect; and the lesser love for mankind at large. Many (including we here at Third Millennium) add a third category to this: God’s love for his covenant people. We believe that God’s actions and words in the Bible demonstrate that his love for his covenant people is greater than his love for mankind at large, but less than his love for the elect. The reason we believe in these three types of love is that the Bible portrays God as demonstrating greater and lesser degrees of kindness, mercy, grace, care, concern, protection, compassion, etc. to these different groups of people. Of course, these ideas also depend on a flexible definition of the word “love” that under
