Should You Tell Unbelievers “God Loves You”?

Some pastor stirred up controversy on social media when he said the following:

“You should not tell an unbeliever, ‘God loves you.’ The apostles never shared the gospel this way. The Bible says God’s wrath is upon unbelievers (John 3:36, Romans 1:18). Help them see their sin, warn them of the judgment of God, and give them the gospel.”

Okay, so that pastor was me.

The comment I made on Twitter generated quite a bit of criticism, even inspiring blogs and articles in rebuttal. Many of the objections looked like a person read the first sentence and reacted to that without considering the tweet as a whole. Let me begin by expounding upon my original tweet, and then I’ll respond to a few of the more common arguments.

Understanding the Tweet

First, who is the intended audience with this tweet? I would hope it’s obvious that the intended audience is Christians—Bible-believing followers of Jesus Christ. The vast majority of my followers on Twitter are Christians. I have made tweets that address unbelievers, but this is to Christians.

Second, what is the context of this tweet? I would hope it’s evident that the context is evangelism. I’m talking about how you should share the gospel with a person who is not a believer.

So my first sentence is, “You should not tell an unbeliever, ‘God loves you.'” Why? Well, the first reason I gave is, “The apostles never shared the gospel this way.” When it comes to sharing the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, our examples are Jesus and the apostles. How did they preach, publicly or privately—whether to a big crowd or one on one? No where will you find them saying to unbelievers, “God loves you.” There’s not one example of this in Scripture. (I know someone is thinking, “Oh, yes there is!” I’ll address some of those common rebuttal passages in just a moment.)

How did the apostles share the gospel with unbelievers? Turn to the book of Acts. Read Peter’s sermon at Pentecost in the second chapter, his sermon at the Beautiful Gate in chapter 3, preaching to Cornelius’s household in chapter 10, Paul’s sermon in Pisidian Antioch in chapter 13, how Paul and Silas testified to Lydia and the Philippian jailer in chapter 16, or Paul’s sermon at the Areopagus in chapter 17.

In none of these places was it ever said to unbelievers, “Hey, guys, I’m here to tell you God loves you.” In fact, the word “love” doesn’t appear in the book of Acts at all. It’s in the gospels 65 times, but not in Acts. If you look at the dozen-or-so evangelical sermons in Acts, what they all have in common is something like this: Here’s how you have sinned against God, the day of judgment is coming, so repent and believe in Jesus Christ whom God has raised from the dead. Is that not a loving message? Of course it is loving.

So that’s the first reason we don’t tell unbelievers God loves them—because the apostles didn’t. A second reason I gave for why we don’t tell unbelievers God loves them is because Scripture says the wrath of God is upon them. I gave two references: John 3:36 and Romans 1:18. There are many other references that support my point, but I have a character limit on Twitter, so let’s stick with these two.

John 3:36 says, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” This verse tells us about believers and unbelievers. Believers have eternal life; unbelievers have eternal punishment. The wrath of God “abides on them.” Meaning that this was on them before and it remains on them.

We all deserve the wrath of God. We have sinned against the Holy One, and because He is good, He is not going to allow sin to go unpunished. But God gave His Son, Jesus, who laid down His own life as an atoning sacrifice. By His death on the cross and resurrection from the dead, whoever believes in Jesus will be forgiven. Your sins are paid for by the precious blood of Jesus. By faith, you are no longer under God’s wrath, but in His love, adopted as sons and daughters of God.

How confusing is it to say to an unregenerate unbeliever, “God’s wrath abides on you and He’s going to send you to hell, but He loves you”? If you tell an unbeliever, “God loves you,” what they hear is that God loves them no matter what. And they will mock God in one of two ways. Either they will believe they can sin all they want, because God would never send someone He loves to hell. Or they will scoff at God the way the late George Carlin and his audience do here:

“Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever till the end of time… But he loves you!”

The other verse that I used is Romans 1:18, which says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” This comes right after Paul said that the gospel “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous will live by faith.'”

As in John 3:36, we have believers and unbelievers mentioned here. Believers have salvation. What are they saved from? They are saved from the wrath of God against unrighteous men. Who are the unrighteous? Unbelievers. The righteous shall live by faith. The unrighteous shall perish under the wrath of God.

So there are the two reasons I gave in my short tweet for why we don’t tell unbelievers, “God loves you:” because the apostles didn’t do it, and because the Bible says they are under the wrath of God. So what should we tell unbelievers? Well, exactly what I said about how the apostles preached: “Help them see their sin, warn them of the judgment of God, and give them the gospel.”

Responding to Biblical Objections

Now that I have expounded upon my tweet, let’s consider some of the objections. I’m going to begin with those who used the Bible—because if you’re going to disagree with me, you better bring the Scripture. If I am wrong, I want to know what God has said, not what you say. I’m not trying to offend, but I desire to please God, not man.

One of the first objections I responded to was from a person whose Twitter is literally a joke: Alexandria’s Occasional Cortex. Just a word to the wise, if you want to be taken seriously on social media, you’ll probably need to use your own name and a picture of, well, not AOC. I understand some people don’t want to do that, and that’s fine, but you’re likely going to be ignored.

In this case, I did respond to this person, who said, “But God does love the unbeliever.” Cortex then pointed to the story of Jesus with the rich young ruler in Mark 10. Verse 21 says, “Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him, and said, ‘One thing you lack: go and sell all your possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

I replied to Cortex and said, “Jesus feeling a love toward the rich young ruler did not entail telling him, ‘God loves you.’ He told him his sin and to repent. So like Jesus, love unbelievers by showing them their sin as Jesus showed the young ruler, and tell them to repent and follow Christ.” My friend, Pastor Jayson York, replied, “Perfectly said.” Thank you, brother!

Traci Rhoades, who’s an author, said, “Yikes. For God so loved THE WORLD. I’m so sorry if you’ve been shown otherwise. So very sorry. Truly.” This was perhaps the most common verse that was thrown at me, John 3:16, which says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

I told a few people to look at the context. “The world” as it is used in John 3:16 does not mean every single person. Now, understand me here, I’m not saying that God does not show love to every single person—I’ll get to that later. Right now, we’re just looking at the context of how “world” is used in John 3:16.

Jesus was talking to the Pharisee Nicodemus, who did not believe Jesus is the Christ. In verses 14-16, Jesus told him, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” See, as a Jew, Nicodemus thought that the Messiah was coming only for Jews. But as verse 16 points out, God will save not just Jews but even Gentiles. So “world” in John 3:16 means Jews and Gentiles. You can’t take it to mean every single individual person—that’s not the context. “Whoever believes in Him” will include people from all over the world.

Listen, you can quote John 3:16 to an unbeliever. In fact, I’ve told my students to memorize John 3:16-21 which is helpful for doing evangelism. But quoting John 3:16 is not telling an unbeliever “God loves you.” Jesus did not tell Nicodemus, “God loves you, Nicky!” And saying “God so loved the world” is not the same thing. How did Jesus and the apostles evangelize? Share the gospel like they did.

Darryl from Florida said, “This seems like love to me. Romans 5:8, ‘But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Of course that’s love. Now look at verses 9-10: “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”

This is similar to John 3:36. We were under God’s wrath as His enemies before we came to faith in Jesus. Who is “us” in Romans 5:8? It’s believers! An unregenerate unbeliever is not going to get Romans 5. This was said to God-loving Christ-followers whom Paul is teaching about justification by faith. When we understand the text, we know by Romans 5:8 that God placed his affections upon His elect before we believed. But nothing about this verse means that you should tell unbelievers, “God loves you.” Romans 5:8 is not about evangelism.

Kim who is a radio host from Glendale, AZ said, “I became a believer when someone told me Jesus loved me enough to die for me. I was broken over sin already. She quoted 1 John 1:8-9 to me and said he would have come for me if I was the only one. That’s how much he values me.”

Now, I find Kim to be charming and delightful. I’m not trying to embarrass her by singling out her comment—as I’m not trying to put down anyone. But I did tell her this is not a biblical way to witness to someone. I’ve heard many times some variation of, “Jesus would have died for you even if you were the only person on earth.” Okay, how do you know that? That’s not in the Bible anywhere. It’s as if there’s something about us that’s worth dying for.

But go back to that passage from Romans 5. What does it say in the verses before? Verse 6 says, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His loves toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

In other words, there’s nothing about you worth dying for. It’s said earlier in Romans 3:12 that we had become worthless. God demonstrated His love toward us in though we were worthless sinners, Christ died for us. And notice, once again, Christ died for “us,” not you if you were the last person on earth. That’s not God’s plan of redemption. Jesus gave His life for His bride, the church, to “redeem us from all lawlessness, and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14).

The verse that someone shared with Kim was a great verse for evangelism—1 John 1:9 which says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I believe Kim is a Christian, and it’s because the truth was proclaimed to her, in spite of the faulty packaging in which it was presented.

Justa Pilgrim said of my tweet, “This is a direct denial of Matthew 5:43-48.” Wouldn’t I actually have to reference Matthew 5:43-48 to be directly denying it? Pilgrim goes on, “Why would God call us to be like Him by loving our enemies if He didn’t love His?”

Explain to me where I said don’t love your enemies and God did not love His? Several people pointed out to me the “Love your enemies” passages. Absolutely! Love your enemies by giving them the gospel! Do you love your enemies that much? I tell you, he who would not share the gospel with his enemy hates his enemy.

Pastor Ryan from Massachusetts said, “This is false,” referring to my tweet. “Explain the reasoning behind this in light of the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery. Love led them to repentance after being confronted with their sin. 1 John says God is love.” That’s 1 John 4:9. “Is God a judge? Yes. But it is His kindness that leads us to repent.”

Again, Jesus did not say, “God loves you,” to the woman at the well or the woman caught in adultery. Did He love them? Yes. And so we should show love toward other sinners, too. To quote another verse from 1 John, “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth” (1 John 3:18). As I’ve been saying, from the original tweet, it was out of love that Jesus or His apostles told people their sin and to repent. Evangelize like they did.

Responding to General Objections

Now that I’ve responded to objections which referenced the Bible, let’s consider some objections from fellow believers who did not use Scripture. Anti-Calvinism 101, Dr. Leighton Flowers, said, “John MacArthur used to warn against this trend toward Hyper-Calvinism.” Then he posted a screenshot from MacArthur’s book The God Who Loves, which I have! On pages 14-16, MacArthur said, “God is compassionate, kind, generous, and good even to the most stubborn sinners. Who can deny that those mercies flow out of God’s boundless love? It is evident that they are showered even on unrepentant sinners.” Guess what, Dr. Flowers? I agree with all of that.

One of the things that will be held against unbelievers on the day of judgment will be that God did show them compassion and they still did not repent of their sin. What does the Bible say? Romans 2:4-6 says, “Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will repay each according to his works.”

Pastor Duck Fan said, “I shared Christ with three young men last week and in each occasion I told them God loved them enough to send His Son to pay for their sin against God. Each man received Christ with utmost joy. I’ll stick with that method while everyone else sits around and argues.”

Thank you for sharing your argument—were you sitting when you tweeted that? I hope the young men you talked to were also given an understanding of the wrath of God against sin and the need to repent. If all you’re doing when you evangelize is telling someone God loves them and Jesus died for their sin, they may very well be left with the idea they can go and sin some more. Jesus said, “Go and sin no more” (John 5:14). Almost everyone who disagreed with my tweet has a story about how they told someone God loved them and they became a Christian. But anecdotes are not our standard—the Bible is.

Deacon Gabe said, “I like a lot of what you say, but this is wrong. God DOES love the unbeliever, and He does not desire their destruction. The unbeliever is under the wrath of God, and that should be clearly articulated, but God absolutely does love the unbeliever.”

This comment sounds like someone read the first line and then drew the conclusion that I said God doesn’t love unbelievers. That is not what I said. Ezekiel 33:11 says, “As I live, declares the Lord Yahweh, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways!” Show love to unbelievers by showing them their sin, warning them about the judgment that is to come, and then when their hearts are convicted, tell them about Jesus.

In Conclusion

It’s quite something to say, “Evangelize like Jesus and the apostles did,” and then have a large number of professing Christians tell me, “No, you’re wrong.” What does the Bible say? You love unbelievers by telling them the truth. And so I have done with you today. Anyone could watch this video—just explaining my tweet—and they would hear about their sin and need for a Savior. And Jesus is that Savior… when we understand the tweet.

To wrap this all up, here’s a video I made years ago using a sermon clip from Paul Washer.