God’s love is not limited or unjust

Have you ever wondered whether God’s love and blessing are only for a chosen few? George MacDonald, who grew up as a Presbyterian and was trained to be a preacher, struggled mightily with the doctrine of predestination, the theology that only some are destined for salvation. After a lifetime of pondering the unlimited nature of God’s love and the necessary fairness of divine justice, he wrote: “I will accept no explanation of any way of God that involves what I should scorn as false and unfair in a man.” Human parents whose intention was to love and bless only some of their children would be considered “false and unfair.” So, MacDonald concluded: “If it be said by any that God does a thing, and the thing seems unjust, then either we do not know what the thing is, or God does not do it.” (Discovering the Character 249 or Unspoken Sermons, “Justice”) To me, MacDonald is saying here that Christians need to show caution in formalizing and applying to others what we THINK God intends. To do so includes the risk of starting from the wrong premise and arriving at the wrong conclusion. … Clearly, Jesus didn’t limit his compassion and forgiveness only to a particular set of followers or a particular ethnic group or a particular time. So we can be assured that we are all and eternally God’s beloved and ordained children. (Yielding to Wonder, chapter 7, 2009)