God is love. But you're missing the point. God's response to any objection to how He handles the universe is not "I am love" but "I am the sovereign CREATOR of all things, and you have no right to object."
So when people say the problem with non-free-willers is that they discount the fact that God is love, I say the people who object to Romans 9 are discounting the fact that God is sovereign, and any objection they may have to the message of Romans 9 is pure hubris, and you should repent as Job did.
God is love and every other attribute stems from His love. I have proven this several times on the forum
We must understand how God's attributes all work in harmony together, not in opposition to each other. God's attributes and character flow from His love—for God is love.
Your theology is man centered whereas mine is God centered based on His immutability.
We must understand how God's attributes all work in harmony together, not in opposition to each other. God's attributes and character flow from His love—for God is love.
God being love has nothing to do with His creation. That is secondary. God is love, and that love is perfect, lacking nothing within His Triune nature as God. Love, by definition, has to be expressed with another, which is why a unitarian god cannot be love. Love requires another to share and express that love, and it is what we see with the Triune God. God is love before anyone/anything existed.
Before creation, there was no sin. There was no judgment, wrath, mercy, grace, and justice. Why? Because those are God's secondary attributes concerning the creation and the fall. God's love is a primary attribute, like Holy is a primary one. Everything about God flows from His being Love which includes His secondary attributes, which were not in use until the creation and the fall.
Let’s examine how this works in conjunction with Gods sovereignty and His love. God is sovereign and also love. Both sovereignty and love as they intersect with God have been revealed plainly to us by God in His word. He has done this both through his word and his works. And God has sworn never to change for He is Immutable.
God's sovereignty is never exercised in violation of his love. His love is very everlasting, for God is love. The love of God has not the slightest shadow of variation, and it, not his sovereignty, is the basis upon which his moral standards rest. Any promotion of any doctrine that represents God as acting in a way that violates his love appealing to the fact that He is sovereign is found nowhere in the pages of scripture.
The fact that God can do something is not a justification for Him doing it. The fact that God can damn everyone without a reason is not an argument for justifying teaching that he does as in the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination. All that He can do is restricted by the standard that God values most which is His love. If it will violate love, God will not and cannot do it for that would be contrary to His nature and character as a loving God. And if it will violate love then it is not right. God cannot make it right by doing it just because He is sovereign. If God does it just because He is sovereign then He would not be God but something else.
What makes God, God is so intricately bound to his intent for doing things that if He were to do a thing just by virtue of the fact that He is sovereign and can do it rather than by virtue of the fact that it is loving? He would not be God as we know Him but something else. If sovereignty is what defines what makes up love in such a way that God doing anything is what defines love, then love has no meaning and can be anything and everything it is and opposes any time, which is ridiculous.
This below is from the Calvinist Theologian Abraham Kuyper on God is love:
“Before God created heaven and earth with all their inhabitants, the eternal Love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit shone with unseen splendor in the divine Being. Love exists, not for the sake of the world, but for God's sake; and when the world came into existence, Love remained unchanged; and if every creature were to disappear, it would remain just as rich and glorious as ever. Love exists and works in the Eternal Being apart from the creature; and its radiation upon the, creature is but a feeble reflection of its being.
Love is not God, but God is Love; and He is sufficient to Himself to love absolutely and forever. He has no need of the creature, and the exercise of His Love did not begin with the creature whom He could love, but it flows and springs eternally in the Love-life of the Triune God. God is Love; its perfection, divine beauty, real dimensions, and holiness are not found in men, not even in the best of God's children, but scintillate only around the Throne of God.
The unity of Love with the Confession of the Trinity is the starting-point from which we proceed to base Love independently in God, absolutely independent of the creature or anything creaturely. This is not to make the divine Trinity a philosophic deduction from essential love. That is unlawful; if God had not revealed this mystery in His Word we should be totally ignorant of it. But since the Scripture puts the Triune Being before us as the Object of our adoration, and upon almost every page most highly exalts the mutual Love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and delineates it as an Eternal Love, we know and plainly see that this holy Love may never be represented but as springing from the mutual love of the divine Persons.
Hence through the mystery of the Trinity, the Love which is in God and is God obtains its independent existence, apart from the creature, independent of the emotions of mind and heart; and it rises as a sun, with its own fire and rays, outside of man, in God, in whom it rests and from whom it radiates.
In this way we eradicate every comparison of the Love of God with our love. In this way the false mingling ceases. In principle we resist the reversing of positions whereby arrogant man had succeeded in copying from himself a so-called God of Love, and into silencing all adoration. In this way the soul returns to the blessed confession that God is Love, and the way of divine mercy and pity is opened whereby the brightness of that Sun can radiate in a human way, i.e., in a finite and imperfect manner to and in the human heart, to the praise of God. “From his book on the Work of the Holy Spirit Volume 3, Second Chapter Love- xviii Love in the Triune Being of God “
Hope this helps !!!
