On 06/29/2014, Dr. Curt Daniel preached on Luke 6:27-36 and the topic "Love Your Enemies." Around minute 30:40-33:10, he took some time to speak against a variety of hyper-Calvinism that denies God's universal love (Note: not all varieties deny it). He said:
"We at this church believe in the 5 points of Calvinism; we would be mainstream Calvinists. But there is something called hyper-Calvinism, and I've read some of their books, and they go beyond this [the mainstream teaching on God's love]. And they say God does not love everybody; he has only love for those that are Christians, that he has chosen [the elect]. They misunderstand this. The bible says God has a general love for everybody, even though He reserves a special love for the elect, His children. But this movement goes beyond that and says, 'No, no, no. God loves only the elect.' And then I say to them, and I've had to say to some of them, I say, 'Well if God only loves Christians, then we should only love Christians, and not love non-Christians.' And I've seen them, where they bite their lips, because they see the logic of this and they change the subject. And I say, 'Well what do you do with Jesus? He loved the Pharisees; He prayed for those that were killing Him; and He gave us the example. He healed people that never even said thank you!' And one of them [a hyper-Calvinist] had the audacity to say, 'Well that was Jesus, not me, and that was in His humanity and not in His deity.' And I said, 'You missed the whole point! We're to imitate Jesus. He is showing us, not just perfect humanity, but He is showing us the heart of God! God has a general love for all people, and when we show that love, even to ungrateful, God-hating people that hate us too, we're imitating God.' So, brethren, let's not be like the hyper-Calvinists who are imitating the Pharisees. Let's imitate the Lord Jesus Christ by loving and doing good to those that are unthankful; they'll never say thank you to us or to God, and in that we are being merciful like our heavenly Father is.
Let me boil it down to this: it's not just showing mercy and kindness; we are showing grace! What is grace? It's God's undeserved kindness! Yes, [to] that person that hates you. He doesn't deserve a good response, but do it anyway. And by showing love, you are showing undeserved grace! And in no other way, dear brethren, can we so imitate God as when we show grace to those that hate us and despise us and don't deserve love. So go to that enemy that I asked you to think about this morning, and do good to him, and show him the love of God."
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