Why Does God Tell Us to Love Our Enemies When He Doesn’t Save Unbelievers?

Why does God tell us to love our enemies when He doesn't save unbelievers? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Hi, this is Bill Meyer along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. We would love to hear from you with your question. You can call us for the next 25 minutes or so. The phone number is 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Now, you can also post your question on one of our social media sites. And of course, you can always email us your question. Here's our email address. It's questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to Marjorie, who's calling in from Kansas.

Marjorie, what's your question for Adriel? I'm in Philippians 3, 10, and 11. I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Now, I know Paul teaches the resurrection from the dead and other places, so I'm questioning what he means there, because in 1 Thessalonians 4, 16, he teaches the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a loud command with the voice of the archangel, the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Well, that's resurrection from the dead, right? Yeah, Marjorie, that's precisely what the Apostle Paul is talking about also in Philippians 3. The resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come is the hope of all believers. Now, Paul knew earlier in Philippians, he talks about when he dies, he's going to go and be with the Lord, which is far better than anything else, and for a Christian, for those who are in Christ, when we die, immediately our souls are brought into glory. They're perfected in holiness, and we wait for that glorious day of resurrection. The final judgment happens at the same time that the Lord returns, which is that passage that you were referring to in 1 Thessalonians 4. But what Paul is getting at in Philippians 3 is that great hope that he had, and the great hope that all of us should have, that through Christ, we will rise again from the dead. So he's talking about his sufferings, the sufferings that he shares with Jesus, that intimate union that he has with Christ in his death and resurrection, and how that's manifested in this life of following Jesus, becoming like him in his death. That, by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. That word, attain, can just mean to arrive at or to come to.

That's what he's saying. And so what this emphasizes, I would say, for all of us is that the hope of Christians isn't just to die and go to heaven and exist for all eternity in disembodied bliss. That wasn't the ultimate hope that Jesus gave to his people. That's not the hope of the Christian faith.

The hope of the Christian faith is bigger than that. It's the restoration of all things, including the creation and our very bodies, that just as Jesus rose from the dead, we too are going to rise as well by faith in his name. And so, Marjorie, thank you for reaching out to us and for bringing up those two wonderful texts, Philippians 3 and 1 Thessalonians 4.

God bless you. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let us know if you've got a question about the Bible, the Christian life, doctrine, or theology. We'd love to talk to you. 833-THE-CORE is the number.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Let's go to Dave in New York. Dave, what's your question for Adriel?

Hi. My question has probably been debated by a lot of theologians. So basically I want to know, what came first? Was Satan, I mean, was Lucifer cast out of heaven with one third of the angels first, or did Adam and Eve sin in the garden first? And I'll just follow up really quick and just say, I would assume maybe, and I need your input on this, that Adam and Eve could not have been tempted if Satan hadn't, or if Lucifer hadn't been cast out of heaven first. However, the Bible doesn't even talk about Lucifer being cast out of heaven. I appreciate your comments.

Yeah. Well, first came the fall of Satan. Obviously he's there in the garden seeking to deceive our first parents, Adam and Eve. And you can read about that fall in places like Isaiah, chapter 14, verse 12. How you are fallen from heaven, O day star, son of the dawn. How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will make myself like the most high, but you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. Jesus quotes this text in reference to Satan in Luke chapter 10, verses 18 and following. And so it's clear that obviously Satan had to fall first. Now why is it that the Bible doesn't talk about that? Why don't we have a whole history of the fall of the angels outlined in scripture? And that's a really good question.

We're not given an answer, frankly. The Bible is the record of the history of redemption for humanity. And so the focus is on mankind, on humanity, on God's creation of all things, including the angels. And you get that in the early chapters of Genesis where it talks about God creating the heavens and the earth. I don't think that that's just a reference to the planets and the stars.

I think that's also a reference to the angels. But you don't have any real clear outline of the history of the fall of the angels as well. And so probably something that we're going to learn about in glory when we're in the presence of the Lord. But for now, I think the focus is on God as he's revealed himself to humanity and how he wants us to know him through his son Jesus. And so that's helpful for you.

And again, the text in terms of thinking about at least the fall of Satan in particular would be Isaiah 14 and Luke chapter 10. God bless. Thanks so much, Dave. Appreciate you listening there in New York. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let's go to Jonathan in Nebraska. Jonathan, what's your question for Adriel?

Yeah. So I was listening to Catholic radio yesterday. I travel for work and that was only station on and the topic was Mary. And they believe that Mary is perpetually a virgin so that she never had intercourse at any time. And obviously, Jesus in the New Testament has siblings. So I'm just curious, I was kind of blown away at why maybe you think that belief comes from.

Hey, Jonathan, thank you for that question. Part of it is the theology that they have related to the Virgin Mary, the perpetual virginity of Mary. There are a number of other doctrines that they hold to regarding Mary like her assumption into heaven and things that really, especially later on in Roman Catholic theology, became more codified.

But they would make the argument that some of these things were always held to from the earliest days. It doesn't seem like there's any indication in scripture, certainly with regard to the assumption of Mary and then with her perpetual virginity. You look at those texts that you brought up in the New Testament where it talks about Jesus' brothers and sisters and so forth. Well, doesn't that indicate that Mary had children? And I would say, yes, there are ways in which they handle those passages and say, well, that doesn't necessarily have to refer to a sibling per se.

Maybe this is a relative like a cousin or something like that. And additionally, it wasn't just the Roman Catholics. There were others or even some Protestant reformers who held to the perpetual virginity of Mary.

Here's what I would say. In terms of Roman Catholic doctrine, they put Mary on a kind of a pedestal, even the language of her being kind of a co-redeemer with Jesus. They'll use that language, language that many Protestants, including myself, are not comfortable with.

It's not just the perpetual virginity and the assumption. It's a number of other things, and this is why you have Roman Catholics who will pray to Mary and ask her to intercede on their behalf. I think the focus in the New Testament is on the fact that we have one mediator, a perfect mediator between God and man, and that mediator is Jesus Christ. And so we look to him and we cling to him and we cling to his intercessions, his prayer for us, for his people. We know that he ever lives, as the New Testament says, to make intercession for us. Now, that doesn't mean that we need to minimize the Virgin Mary or her role in the history of redemption.

No, we don't want to go there either. And so I think we need to have a balanced and biblical view and appreciate you calling in with that question. There definitely are some differences between the Roman Catholic approach to the Virgin Mary and the way in which Protestants have viewed her traditionally, and so God bless. Great explanation.

Thank you for that, Adriel. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Maybe you've got a question about doctrine, whether that be Catholic doctrine or Protestant doctrine or something theological. Any doctrine. Even Greek Orthodox. We'll answer your questions there, too. No, we're just kidding. We'd love to hear from you.

And maybe you've got a question about something happening in your church that involves doctrine or theology and you're kind of mystified by it. Here's the number to call. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Reminder, we have a YouTube channel and you can watch us on YouTube every day at 1130 a.m. Pacific time. You can also send us a question through YouTube, and we have one from one of our viewers in Virginia, and they say, I live in a small town that seems to be becoming infiltrated with drag shows. Do these shows affect the furthering of the kingdom of God?

I don't know about you, Bill. I mean, I keep seeing these kinds of things on the news and in social media, drag shows or the drag queen story hour. Have you heard of that? You know, they'll go to the library and have somebody dressed in drag reading to kids. And it's, I mean, I think it's horrible, frankly. It's part of the propaganda and agenda of so many to try and push this down our, you know, push it down our throats and really to indoctrinate children to sort of normalize it, to make it seem like it's okay. So the first thing I would want to say is this is, I mean, this is a tragic thing. I would say a horrible thing, a sad thing, a sign of the moral decay of society, the fall, really, of society and sin. And just the fact that it's everywhere, right?

I mean, it highlights the fact that there's a real serious problem. Now, your question is, do these things affect the furthering of the kingdom of God? And I know that there are so many people who they look around at society right now and things that are happening, and they say, man, I just, boy, I feel like we're on the losing team. I feel like what's happening around us, and there can be a lot of discouragement. We need to remember the promise given to us by the Son of God.

I am going to build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. Remember what the apostle Paul said in Romans chapter one, that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Remember the fact that the gospel advanced. In the first century church, the days of the apostles, that gospel took over the world and advanced, not in the midst of a world that was friendly towards Christianity and Christians. On the contrary, I mean, it was a very pluralistic society where there were so many different pagan gods that were worshiped.

There was all sorts of sexual immorality and decay. I mean, there are a lot of parallels between the Roman society and that world and the world in which we live today, frankly. And yet the gospel and the kingdom of God continue to advance. And the good news is the gospel and the kingdom of God are going to continue to advance today. And God help us today to be faithful to His word, to the truth of His word, to be committed ourselves as followers of Jesus to holiness, to being a part of the church, to growing in grace, to following the Lord and seeking to be salt and light in the world so that the world might see our good works, as Jesus said in Matthew chapter five, and glorify God in heaven. So we have a part to play, and it's following Jesus and being faithful to Him and being faithful witnesses and not falling prey to some of the wicked and sinful ideologies or practices that are all around us. And so God help us to do that, but also help us not to be discouraged or despairing. We don't need to be despairing, and I hope that you're not despairing because we have the word of Christ and the promise of the gospel, which is going to continue to advance until our Lord Jesus returns. And so that should give us courage and hope.

Amen. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. If you're a parent or a grandparent, we've got something really cool we want to tell you about today. It's actually a group of songs that you can sing together as a family. Yeah, there's a resource that we have available for free over at corechristianity.com called Ten Songs to Sing as a Family. This is going to just give you some music, some songs to sing together as a family with a little bit of background to each of these songs. So if you want to grow in your understanding of Christian theology, one of the best ways to do that is through singing, is through getting together with your family, especially thinking about teaching kids. I think the people in the studio are looking at me and they're saying, You should sing, Adriel.

Give it a shot. And I promise you I'm not going to do that because we want to retain listeners. We don't want to lose listeners. And so get a hold of this resource. It's Ten Songs to Sing as a Family, and it will bless you.

It'll edify you and your family as well. Adriel's being very modest. He actually has a great singing voice. And if you go online, you're the one who you've been in choir. You've been in choir. I think you can even read music, Bill. I can barely read English. So you're good.

You got this. OK. By the way, you can find that resource by which we mentioned is free by going to corechristianity.com forward slash radio. That's corechristianity.com forward slash radio. Well, we do receive voicemails here at Core Christianity. You can call us 24 hours a day.

Leave your question on our voicemail system. Here's one that came in from one of our listeners named Dallas. The reason I was calling a solid post on social media, Facebook, that had the family circus, and it was one of the kids standing up pointing at the picture. The bubble said, Why does God tell us love our enemies yet his enemies he sends to hell?

I am a Christian, and I could probably think of a thousand ways to answer that, but that might be a good one to answer in a correct way theologically. I appreciate it, and I love your show. Thank you. Hey, Dallas, I appreciate your encouragement, and thank you for listening. I mean, there are a couple of ways to approach this, so it sounds like fundamentally the question is, Why is God telling us to love our enemies when he sends his enemies to hell? Well, not all of his enemies, and that's something that the Apostle Paul makes very clear. In Romans 5, in particular, in verse 6, he says, While we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, there's that word, if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more now than we have been reconciled shall we be saved by his life.

Brothers and sisters, if you're in Christ, if you've been redeemed by the blood of Jesus, it wasn't because you were good and righteous. No, we were the enemies of God, dead in trespasses and sins, and God sent his Son into the world to pursue his enemies, and God has done this in numerous ways. In fact, Jesus, when he calls us, commands us to love our enemies in the Sermon on the Mount, he says the reason that we do this as Christians is because this is how God loves.

He talks about God's common grace. Matthew 5, verse 43, You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for he makes his Son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. In other words, when we love our enemies, we're doing exactly what God does. When we do good to those who persecute us, to those who we consider our quote-unquote enemies, it's following in the footsteps of the God who we claim to worship.

If he is our Father, then we should exhibit the characteristics of our Father. That's the point that Jesus is making there. And what kind of love did God show to his enemies?

Well, he's given them life, breath, and all things, rain and sun and good food and all of these things, common grace blessings. But he also sent his Son Jesus into the world to seek and save the lost, to die for his enemies. And we should, as Christians, know this, recognize this. And it's as we recognize that, that God was merciful to us, even though we didn't deserve it, even though we were shaking our fists at him in sin and rebellion, he still pursued us.

And if God loved us like that, we ought to love our enemies. And so it's an opportunity, if you get this question from friends or non-Christian family members or whatever it is, it's an opportunity to share the Gospel. It's an opportunity to talk about the love that God had for you and the love that God extends to that person that you're talking to, inviting them to receive the grace of Christ. Thanks for that question.

So well said. Thank you, Adriel. This is Quora Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. I'd love to hear from you if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life.

Also, a reminder, we're going to be recording a second episode of Quora Christianity here in just a few minutes after our live program ends. So you still have an opportunity to call in with your question if you weren't able to get through. You can call us for the next half hour or so at this number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Let's go to Don from Arkansas. Don, what's your question for Adriel? Yeah, it's going to get you guys' take. You were talking about doctrine earlier. I'm seeing more and more and even hearing the word Calvinism in churches, and I'm in a Southern Baptist church in Arkansas. After doing a little study, a lot of the books in our library that's new coming in are by Calvinists, and a lot of our songs and music by Calvinist artists.

Even looking online, it looks like up to 30% of Baptists believe in Calvinism. So I was going to hang up and maybe get you guys' response. Well, Don, if you're still on the line, I hope you're still on the line. I just wanted to ask one follow-up question. If you're seeing this, it sounds to me like this is a concern. What is the heart of the concern that you have in terms of you're seeing these things in terms of Scripture and what you're wrestling with in seeing this? What's your main concern? Main concern being the belief in the Calvinist belief of the elect chosen already being chosen by God, and I guess along with your own choice coming in, are you able to, you know, if God's predestined, it'll be the Word that comes up, I'm sure, a lot. And I don't believe that, of course, but, you know, it seems like a lot of people are okay with that, that it's already happened, and whatever you do, you know, is it going to make a difference? Yeah. I appreciate that, Don.

And let me just say a couple of things. First, I think we want to be committed to the Word of God, and we want to let God's Word shape our beliefs, not the traditions of men. And how easy it is for us to attach ourselves to one particular teacher to say, I follow this person or I follow that person. The apostle Paul talked about this in 1 Corinthians. I mean, the Corinthians were dividing some of them, saying, you know, I follow Cephas. I follow Apollos.

I follow Jesus. You know, there were these divisions that were happening even there, and there are divisions that happen, certainly, today as well, and oftentimes, you know, associated with one particular teacher or school of thought. And so I think we want to be discerning, and we want to say, okay, you know, what are we actually getting here? Because at the end of the day, we want God's Word to shape us, and every system of doctrine or belief has to be held up against Scripture. Now, the truth is, when we look at the Bible, those words, words like election and predestination, appear in Scripture, in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. And so it's not that they're not there. It's that we have to make sense of them.

And let me just read, let me bring that up. Let me just read a little bit of what Paul says in Ephesians 1, verse 3. This is really a statement of praise. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace with which He has blessed us in the Beloved.

Now, there you have some of those ideas. You can call it what you will, but let's just say, look, here's what Paul is saying. He's saying that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, and that in love, He predestined us according to the purpose of His will.

Now, people hear that, and immediately, you know, there's all sorts of questions. Well, if you predestined me, do I have free choice, responsibility? Is it my fault if I sin?

Those kinds of things. And whatever we embrace, we have to recognize that the Bible does teach that human beings are responsible, that we're accountable for the choices that we make, the sinful decisions that we make. And so we have to hold these things together, both the sovereignty of God, the fact that when it comes to salvation, God is sovereign. You do see these doctrines of choice and predestination in the Bible, but we also have to recognize that we are responsible human beings.

So there's some mystery involved here, not a contradiction, but a mystery, and we submit to God's Word, not because it comes from a particular teacher, but because God's Word comes from God Himself, and God help all of us to humble ourselves before that Word and to receive it. God bless. Thanks for listening to Core Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar, or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833, the core. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program, and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.