“‘Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?’”
To Abraham, the answer was a given, and so he was appealing to what he knew of God’s fairness in order to save his relative, Lot, who lived in the city that God was going to judge.
The same sense of fairness is also exemplified at Jonah 4:10-11: “Then the Lord said, ‘You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?’” Not only is God reasonable in this way, but He can also be reasoned with. At Exodus 32:11-14, Moses pled for God’s mercy with regard to Israel, even while they were building the golden calf. God could have easily destroyed Israel and started over with the line of Moses, as He threatened to do, and in so doing, He still would be honoring His promise to Abraham since Moses was a descendant of Abraham. However, instead, God agreed to Moses’ intercession on behalf of Israel regarding what the Egyptians might have concluded: “So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.” (Exodus 32:14)
All of this is to show that God is indeed a God of love, and although willing to show His wrath and make His power known, He prefers mercy instead: “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (2nd Peter 3:9) The Calvinist doctrine of Preterition, and its associated non-elect caste, seems to be contradicted by the character of God that is revealed in these Scriptures.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
