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: “Go back to Romans 9:1113: 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 36:55Behold, God is mighty, and despiseth not any: he is mighty in strength and wisdom. (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.