J. I. Packer (1926–2020) on God’s Love, Will, and His Bona Fide Offer

God’s love is spoken of by means of a varied and overlapping vocabulary. Goodness (glorious generosity), love itself (generous goodness in active expression), mercy (generous goodness relieving the needy), grace (mercy contrary to merit and despite demerit), and loving-kindness (KJV) or steadfast love (RSV) (generous goodness in covenantal faithfulness), are the main terms used. The often-echoed self-description whereby God expounds his name (Yahweh, the Lord) to Moses on Sinai crystallizes these ideas: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin…” (Exod. 34:6-7). The New Testament gauges divine agape by the staggering gift of God’s Son to suffer for mankind's salvation (see Rom. 5:7–8), and thus deepens all these ideas beyond what Old Testament minds could conceive.

God’s love is revealed in his providential care for the creatures he made. “The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made...The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing” (Ps. 145:9, 15–16; and see also Ps. 104:21; Matt. 5:45; 6:26; Acts 14:17).

God’s love is revealed in the universal invitations of the gospel, whereby sinful humans are invited to turn in faith and repentance to the living Christ who died for sins and are promised pardon and life if they do. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16; see also Rom. 10:11–13; Rev. 22:17). “God is love (agape). This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:8–10). And God in the gospel expresses a bona fide wish that all may hear, and that all who hear may believe and be saved (1 Tim. 2:3–6; cf. 4:9–10). This is love in active expression. … So it appears, first, that God loves all in some ways (everyone whom he creates, sinners though they are, receives many undeserved good gifts in daily providence), and, second, that he loves some in all ways (that is, in addition to the gifts of daily providence he brings them to faith, to new life, and to glory according to his predestinating purpose). This is the clear witness of the entire Bible.

J. I. Packer, “The Love of God: Universal and Particular,” in Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace, ed. Thomas R. Schreiner & Bruce Ware (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 283–84. Again, he wrote, “We have seen that the measure of agape is its giving, and that our holy, sovereign, triune, self-revealed Creator-God shows agape to all his rational creatures in some ways and to some in all ways; that is, not only in providential provision but also in saving them from sin for eternal glory.” Packer, “The Love of God,” 289–90. Also, in addition to affirming God’s bona fide offer of salvation and invitation in this work (p. 283, 286), he did so elsewhere as well. See, for example, J. I. Packer, “Arminianisms,” in Through Christ’s Word: A Festschrift for Dr. Philip E. Hughes, ed. W. R. Godfrey and J. L. Boyd III (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1985), 123, 146, 148.

Packer noted:

Third: we must acknowledge that professed Calvinists bear some blame for the pilgrimage of others along the Arminian road, both in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and since. Arminianism, we have seen, is a reaction, and it seems undeniable that one factor producing it has been Calvinistic theological provincialism, in the sense defined by Mildren Bangs Wynkoop—“any partial truth raised to the status of a whole truth, or any over-emphasis of one segment of theology to the neglect of other emphases.” … Specifically: can it be denied that any stress on God’s sovereign predestination which overshadows or makes doubtful the bona fide universality and truthfulness of Christ’s invitation in the gospel, and man’s genuine responsibility before God for his reaction to it, is an example of theological provincialism?

From J. I. Packer, “Arminianisms,” in Through Christ’s Word: A Festschrift for Dr. Philip E. Hughes, ed. W. R. Godfrey and J. L. Boyd III (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1985), 145–46.

Incidentally, I am only quoting the above passage to show Packer’s statements about God’s love, grace, mercy, goodness and universal saving will. I hope the reader does not get the impression that Packer no longer believed in a strict particular redemption. He did, as is seen in the rest of this writing. He favorably cited Berkhof, Owen, and Nicole with respect to their arguments on the nature and extent of the atonement.