Question #1: Is God all loving to the elect and non-elect?
Westminister Professor John M. Frame's Answer #1: Yes, but God loves others in different ways. On the human level, friendship differs from sexual love, which differs from the love of fellow Christians, which differs from our love for non-Christians, etc. So God's love takes different forms: love within the Trinity, love of believers as his bride, love of the world he has made, the love that gives good gifts even to God's enemies (Matthew 5), and the jealous love which becomes wrath as God punishes those who break his covenant and go after other gods.
Question #2: Does God want us to love our enemies?
Professor Frame's Answer #2: He wants us to love our enemies, but not in the same way a man loves his wife. Just as God has different kinds of love, so he calls us to demonstrate love in different ways appropriate to different relationships.
Joseph Y. Lee's Comments: Calvinists are accused of believing in a limited loving God even though they actually believe in an all loving God. A limited loving God contradicts His commandments because He asked us (Christians) to love our enemies. This contradiction implies an errant Bible. Although God is all loving, He is also a just God by showing his wrath on the non-elect.
Verses Supporting All Loving God
1. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." John 3:16
2. "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father show is in heaven: for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." Matthew 5:44-45
3. "The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love." 1 John 4:8.
4. "...God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." 1 John 4:16
5. "This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."
1 Timothy 2:3-4
6. "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance." 2 Peter 3:9
7. "Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, `The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving-kindness and truth." Exodus 32:6
Verses Supporting a Just God
1. "...yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and four generations." Exodus 34:7
2. "The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He." Deuteronomy 32:4
3. "Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you, And therefore you He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him." Isaiah 30:18
4. "But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is He?" Romans 3:25
5. "And I heard the angel of the waters saying, `Righteous are Thou, who art and who wast, O Holy One, because Thou dist judge these things." Revelations 16:5
6. "Dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 Thessalonians 1:8
7. See Job 34:17-30.
References:
Apologetics to the Glory of God: An Introduction by John M. Frame
I would like to thank Professor John M. Frame in helping me write this pamphlet.