"Many mistakenly assume that, if God
is by nature loving, he
must choose all, as if to say it would be a contradiction of the divine character were he not to love everyone equally. But this fails to note that the saving love of God is also
sovereign. John Murray explains it this way:
Truly God is love. Love is not something adventitious; it is not something that God may choose to be or choose not to be. He is love, and that necessarily, inherently, and eternally. As God is spirit, as he is light, so he is love. Yet it belongs to the very essence of electing love to recognize that it is not inherently necessary to that love which God necessarily and eternally is that he should set such love issues in redemption and adoption upon utterly undesirable and hell-deserving objects. It was of the free and sovereign good pleasure of his will, a good pleasure that emanated from the depths of his own goodness, that he chose a people to be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. The reason reside wholly in himself and proceeds from determinations that are peculiarly his as the "I am that I am."
Thus, to say that love is sovereign is to say that it is distinguishing." (
Chosen for Life, 183)
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