God's Proper Love for Himself

"Regarding the guilty sinner, it is the perfection of God's being that requires and effects the maintenance of God's holy being - His Godhead! - by the infliction on the sinner of the punishment due the assault on, and denial of, the holy being of God. Ultimately, this deserved punishment is eternal, awful hell. As the heart, center, and foundation of the gospel of salvation, it is the substitutionary suffering of the punishment for sin by God Himself in the human flesh of Jesus, thus executing and satisfying His righteousness, which then is (legally) imputed to the elect but guilty sinner by means of the sinner's faith in Jesus Christ."

- Rev. David Engelsma, "Gospel Truth of Justification," pp. 151-2 

It is popular among American evangelicals to make claims about God or the Christian faith with statements that begin with, "Since/If God loves everybody, then He..." must forgive everything, or cannot send people to hell, or can't elect some people but not others. 

What one never hears is statements that begin with, "Since God loves Himself above all else..." 

And that is why there is so much bad theology among those professing evangelicals, such as universal salvation, annihilationism, the absence of discernment, etc. 

In the quote above, Engelsma effectively makes that rare statement, and then gives one of its implications. "Since God loves Himself, He loves His own holiness, which requires that He judge sin." We see this in Scripture in, for example, Habakkuk 1:13: "You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do You idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?" The prophet takes the opposite tack from the modern evangelical. His plea to God is that He would recall His love for Himself and thus judge those who act contrarily to that nature. 

So that is the challenge I make to those who spout syrupy nonsense about the love of God. While they want the world to believe that God loves every rebel who spits in His face, I ask, "What about God's love for Himself?"