A concomitant error to Mr. Pink's doctrine of a limited atonement, with its denial of the real truth of propitiation, is the Calvinistic denial of the elementary and basic truth that "God is love." This is seen in Mr. Pink's handling of John 3:16: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." He goes to great lengths to prove that God does not love the world—mankind—and this precious verse suffers much at his hands. Everything must conform to his predetermined scheme; hence he says it is not the world as such that God loves, but only "the world of the godly" or "the world of God's people." But where was "the world of the godly" or of "God's people" when He sent and gave His beloved Son?
On this subject, Mr. Pink further says: "No matter how a man may live—in open defiance of Heaven, with no concern for his soul's eternal interests, still less for God's glory... notwithstanding, God loves him, we are told." p. 246. Here is serious heresy, for this of necessity makes God's love to man to depend on something in man. If Mr. Pink could restrict God's love to His own elect, will he say that they until conversion were otherwise than those whom he pictures as being unlovable? undeserving? Were God's elect in anywise different from all mankind? Instead of extolling God's sovereignty, Mr. Pink here makes God's love descend on the worthy only! If God does not love those who live "in open defiance of Heaven," and those who have "no concern" for their "soul's eternal interests" or for "God's glory," who then would be saved? If these are prerequisites for God's loving us, our case is hopeless indeed. If God loves any on this basis, it would strike a fatal blow at the very thing—God's sovereignty—for which Mr. Pink says he is contending.
Mr. Pink says, "One of the most popular beliefs of the day is that God loves everybody, and the very fact that it is so popular with all classes ought to be enough to arouse the suspicions of those who are subject to the Word of Truth. God's Love toward all His creatures is the fundamental and favorite tenet of Universalists, Unitarians, Theosophists, Christian Scientists, Spiritualists, Russellites, etc." pp. 245, 246. Here he treads on dangerous ground, for he assumes that God's love for His creatures is a fable simply because some false doctrines make His love a blind love that will wink at sin. God's love is real, in spite of Calvinism; but it is holy and will not tolerate sin, in spite of Universalism, and of all who would make God a party to sin. Even John 3:16 shows that God's love is not the kind that Mr. Pink would portray as being preached today, for He sent His only begotten Son into the world that whosoever believes in Him should not perish. Justice must be satisfied or all would have perished—"the Son of man" must "be lifted up."
To show the folly of Mr. Pink's contention that John 3:16 only means that God loved His own elect and no one else, let us ask those of his persuasion, What then is the purpose of the word "whosoever" in the rest of the verse? Absolutely none whatever, unless "that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life," should mean that because God loved the world and gave His Son, any or all who will may come and be saved through Him. "Whosoever" has no meaning if it does not signify the scope of the offer. It is without limit or restriction. Would God make an offer that was not real? God did love the world and gave His Son; now all may come.
Author Pink remarks: "To tell the Christ-rejecter that God loves him is to cauterize his conscience, as well as afford him a sense of security in his sins. The fact is, that the love of God, is a truth for saints only." p. 246. Was it to a believer that the Lord spoke John 3:16? No, Nicodemus was not so then. He still needed to be born again, as the Lord told him. Will Mr. Pink impugn the wisdom of the Lord Himself in quoting that verse to him? Listen to the words of a more sober strain:
"The love of God, and even His love announced in forgiveness through the work of Christ, may, through the power of the Holy Ghost, awaken the sense of need: still having the forgiveness is another thing. That love, brought home to the soul through grace, produces confidence, not peace; but it does produce confidence. Hence we come into the light. God is light and God is love. Christ in the world was the light of the world, and He was there in divine love.... When God reveals Himself, He must be both—light and love. The love draws and produces confidence; as with the woman in the city who was a sinner (Luke 7), the prodigal (Luke 15), Peter in the boat (Luke 5)." "The law may by grace reach the conscience and make us feel our guilt, but it does not reveal God in love." If conscience only were reached, it would drive man into hiding from God, as Adam did in the Garden; but it is the thought that there is goodness in the heart of God that draws anyone to Him. It was the sense of goodness in the father's heart and house that led the prodigal to return. Little did Mr. Pink think of it, but his denial that God is love is closely akin to the devil's lie when he libeled God to Eve, for he insinuated that God was not good—not love—that He was arbitrarily keeping back something from the creature which would have been for his good. "What a solemn thing to echo a false accusation against God! To believe Mr. Pink, one would have to come to the conclusion that God is neither love nor good. This, the devil propagated among the heathen, so that they sought to appease an angry God. At present there is generally another form of his old lie in the garden, which in substance says, If God would put the sinner in hell, He would not be good or love. But be it remembered that a good and loving God can punish sin without any impairment of His goodness; a holy God must punish sin. A loving earthly father can punish a disobedient child without foregoing his natural love. Mr. Pink is on dangerous ground in his assumptions that God has no love toward the sinner; they strike at the very root of God's nature, for He is love.
Mr. Pink says, "It has been customary to say God loves the sinner, though He hates his sin. But this is a meaningless distinction. What is there in a sinner but sin?" p. 246. Ah, Mr. Pink, there is in the sinner a soul that will live on and on and on, either in bliss or in woe. Your statement will not bear scrutiny. God does love the sinner.
It would be amusing, if it were not so serious, to watch the way Mr. Pink twists Scripture to his own ends. When it comes to the rich young ruler in Mark 10, whom Jesus loved, Mr. Pink clears up the difficulty for himself by saying, "We fully believe that he was one of God's elect, and was 'saved' sometime after his interview with the Lord." p. 247. This is only his bare assumption without any support.
Notice the following foolish error in the book we are reviewing: "Why say 'he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father' if the Father loves everybody?" p. 248. Who said that the Father loves everybody? Let us keep with the very words of divine inspiration, and say, "God so loved the world that He gave." It is God that loves the world, not the Father. Furthermore, there is a special love of complacency in the Father for those who love His Son—"He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father." Mr. Pink attacks such a differentiation, but it is there nonetheless. He misuses Heb. 12:6 in the same way when quoting "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth," saying that God's love is restricted to members of His own family (p. 248). Does it need to be said, that this again is not God's love to the world—the world of mankind? It is the children in the family who are disciplined in love by the Father. He also confuses Eph. 5:25 with John 3:16; but let it be noted that "Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it," but God loved the world. It does not say that Christ loved the world, nor that God loved the Church. Why cannot men quote Scripture as it is given, and revel in its perfect exactitude as evidence of divine inspiration?
Mr. Pink becomes rather daring in the following: " 'God so loved the world.' Many suppose that this means the entire human race. But the entire human race includes all mankind from Adam to the close of Earth's history: it reaches backward as well as forward! Consider, then, the history of mankind before Christ was born. Unnumbered millions lived and died before the Savior came to the earth, lived here 'having no hope and without God in the world,' and therefore passed out into an eternity of woe. If God 'loved' them, where is the slightest proof thereof?" pp. 248, 249. This almost savors of replying "against God." Let such as endorse Mr. Pink's grave error read Rom. 1 and hold their peace. In that chapter we are told that at one time the human race knew God—"that, when they knew God"—all who came out of the ark had the knowledge of God, and the long lives of the Patriarchs from the flood to the tower of Babel made it possible for men to learn of God through their ancestors. Shem, Noah's son, was still living when Isaac was past fifty years of age, although Isaac was born about 500 years after the flood. But they did not like to retain that knowledge. They gave up God, and God gave them up to uncleanness. They had also the testimony of God in creation; "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in [rather, to] them; for God bath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse." Here is the right answer. God never left man without a testimony of Himself, and men at all times were responsible for whatever revelation He was pleased to give them. The infidel today inquires about the heathen, asking what God will do with them, but Mr. Pink disposes of that question by an assumption of his own, that God designed to cast them all into hell. This in our judgment is very serious. Who gave Mr. Pink the right to speak for God?
We cannot but think of Job's friends when we read Mr. Pink's book. They did not speak right about God: "And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath." Job 42:7. Job had been through a hard school, and had learned about himself; but he had not said things that misrepresented God, as his friends had, and which we are persuaded Mr. Pink has done.
Again, Mr. Pink argues that God could not have loved the world as representing the whole human race, for half of the human race "was already in hell when Christ came." p. 251. What does he mean, "in hell"? There are none in hell yet, for the first two men who will go there will be the Roman beast and the false prophet in Jerusalem, and that has not happened. If he means those that died without faith are lost, we grant it. But how does he know how many in old times had faith in God? The Old Testament mentions individuals here and there who were not Jews who evidently had faith. Was not Job one of these? When he says, "The objects of God's love in John 3:16 are precisely the same objects of Christ's love in John 13:1," he is sadly mistaken. Why does he not make "His own" in John 1:11 The same as "His own" in John 13:1? It would be just as reasonable and just as wrong. The former were the Jews as a people, the latter the Jews who had faith in Him.
When Mr. Pink asks, "Is it conceivable that God will love the damned in the Lake of Fire? Yet, if He loves them now He will do so then, seeing that His love knows no change—He is `without variableness or shadow of turning'!" p. 248. This is just plain sophistry. Wrath and judgment, the just deserts of sin, are not incompatible with love.
If any reader doubts the absurd lengths to which Pinkism goes, let him notice this quotation: "There is far too much presenting of Christ to sinners today (by those sound in the faith)." p. 247. Did not Philip go down to Samaria and preach "Christ"? (Acts 8). Did not Paul preach at Corinth, Christ's death, burial, and resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3)? Of course man's need should be presented, for if a man has no need, there is no need of the gospel. But preaching only wrath and ruin will not draw a soul to God. Mr. Pink says, "The Gospel is not an 'offer' to be bandied around by evangelical peddlers" (p. 257), but Paul rejoiced that Christ was preached, even if not sincerely. Mr. Pink did not agree with Paul.
Another bit of sophistry is to be found on the subject of God's love: "God does not love everybody; if He did, He would love the devil." What semblance of authority has he for such a baseless conclusion? Does John 3:16 embrace infernal beings? A similar bit of reasoning is found on the same page (30), "In the final analysis, the exercise of God's love must be traced back to His sovereignty, or, otherwise, He would love by rule; and if He loved by rule, then He is under a law of love, and if He is under a law of love then is He not supreme, but is Himself ruled by law." The author of this has not considered that love is God's very nature. God cannot deny Himself, or act other than He is—He is love and will always be so; and judgment is "His strange work."
A sober servant of Christ has written: "The first part of what the Lord says in John 3 is: 'And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.' The
Son of man, He who represented man, must be lifted up—die on the cross, and where was such a lamb to be found? 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.' The 'Son of man' must be lifted up, the 'Son of God' was given, the same blessed person: but 'Son of man,' to die for man's need, standing for man before God; 'Son of God,' vessel and proof of God's sovereign love." And again, "God loved us while we were sinners, and this is the characteristic of His love, His saving love." And, "God loved us while we were sinners; He loves us without any change when we are cleansed.... He loved us when we were in our sins."
What poor, unworthy thoughts of God, Mr. Pink had! and he would engender the same in all his followers, but it will not be to his credit, nor for the good of those who follow him. Let us rather sing:
"Oh the glory of the grace,
Shining in the Savior's face,
Telling sinners from above,
`God is light,' and `God is love.'"
Mr. Pink does not stop at denying God's love to the world—to mankind -but he actually goes so far as to teach that God hates those whom He does not love. Notice this: "He loves one and hates another. He exercises mercy toward some and hardens others, without reference to anything save His own sovereign will." p. 111. In speaking about God's hating Esau, Mr. Pink goes so far as to indicate that this was so before he was born; thus: "Go back to Rom. 9:11-13: did Esau fit himself to be an object of God's hatred, or was he not such before he was born?" p. 118. (Although this is put in the form of a question, there can be no doubt from the context that he is here teaching that Esau was hated before he was born.) Here is a more definite statement of Mr. Pink's: "If then God loved Jacob and hated Esau, and that before they were born or had done either good or evil, then the reason for His love was not in them, but in Himself." p. 30.
Let us notice what one, from whom we have previously quoted, says on the subject: "If God 'despiseth not any' (Job 36:5), we may be perfectly sure He hates not any. Such an idea could not enter a mind which was nurtured in the Word of God, apart from the reasonings of men. I say not this because of the smallest affinity with what is commonly called Arminianism; for I have just as little affinity for Calvinism. I believe the one to be as derogatory to God's glory as the other, though in very different ways—the one by exalting man most unduly, and the other by prescribing for God, and consequently not saying the thing that is right of Him."
Mr. Pink speaks of God's wrath upon one as though it might be synonymous with God's hatred, but this "confounds hatred with judicial anger. There is no hatred in God to man assuredly. Yet God is a righteous judge, and God is angry every day, and ought to be so." But Mr. Pink asks, "Can God 'love' the one on whom His 'wrath' abides?" p. 248. Our answer to this is "yes," for God's wrath against the sinner because of his sin is not inconsistent with infinite and sovereign love. Thus Christ in the synagogue looked upon them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts. The grief was love, the anger was His righteous estimate of their sin.
The consideration of Jacob and Esau brings us to Mr. Pink's affirmation of the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation, but this must be left for another issue. It is far too important to pass over quickly, even for those who have never had to face it.