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Thursday, March 28th, 2024
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Daily Devotionals
Grace for Today
Devotional: October 14th

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Romans 9:15

‘I will have compassion on whom I will’

Read Matthew 11:2-27

God loves some men and he hates others. God does not love everyone in the world. He is sovereign in the exercise of his love. He said, ‘Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated’ (Romans 9:13). This, I know, is a difficult truth for men to receive. It is impossible for you to rejoice in it, unless God gives you a heart to do so. When I say that God is sovereign in the exercise of his love, I simply mean that God loves whom he chooses to love and he does not love those whom he chooses not to love. God does not love Satan. There is nothing in the old serpent to love. There is nothing in him to attract God’s love. And there is nothing in God compelling him to love that which is evil. Nor is there anything in all the fallen sons of Adam to attract God’s love. We are all by nature ‘children of wrath’. There is nothing to compel God’s love towards us. If there is nothing in any member of the human race to attract God’s love and yet he does love some men, then the cause of love must be found in God himself’. I love my wife because she is lovely. She possesses those qualities and attributes of a woman which cause me to love her. I love her because she is who and what she is. Not so with God’s love towards us. He loves us because he would love us. He loves us in spite of who and what we are, The cause of God’s love towards his own elect is his own sovereign choice, determination and pleasure. God is sovereign in the exercise of his love.

In the final analysis, the exercise of God’s love must be traced back to his own sovereign pleasure. Otherwise he would love by rule. If he loved by rule, then he is obliged to love. And if he is obliged to do something by some force outside himself, he is not God. Some people are shocked to hear me say that God does not love the entire human race. But their shock reveals an ignorance of Holy Scripture. ‘As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.’ If God loved Jacob and hated Esau, and that before they were born, before they had done anything, either good or evil, then the reason for his love is not in them, but in God.

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