Mark 10:21
Mark 10:21-23 (see also Matthew 19:23; Luke 18:22)
Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But at these words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property. And Jesus, looking around, said to His disciples, “How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!”
Question: Why is it “hard” for the rich to enter the Kingdom? Is it more difficult for the Spirit to (monergistically) regenerate a wealthy person with an Irresistible Grace?
Answer: The natural implication is that it’s easier for the poor man to come to Christ, because he has less earthly baggage holding him back, while the rich man doesn’t want to surrender that which he treasures more than God.
Question: Why would Jesus (not us, but Jesus) who “knew all men” (John 2:24), directly call an unregenerate person who He knew could not make a positive response to the call? Did He really want the man to follow Him? If Jesus had truly loved him, as the text states, would He have directly told the man to follow Him, knowing that the man could not do so, as per Calvinism?
Answer: The thing that was holding the rich young ruler back was his love of money, rather than a blanket doctrine of Total Inability, or else wealth or poverty is irrelevant. Moreover, if one is a 5-Point Calvinist, subscribing to a Limited Atonement, in which the alleged “non-elect” do not have a Savior who died for them (and thus are completely without any atonement upon which to establish forgiveness), then for what would God be patient? Is it to turn to a Savior that they don’t have and who never died for them? This is one of many reasons why Calvinism is a broken theology. The alleged “General Call” to the alleged “non-elect” is a call without any basis for forgiveness.
Question: “Jesus felt a love for him.” Did it include a desire for his salvation?
Answer: Since it is talking about treasure in heaven, rather than temporary, earthly sustenance, it is reasonable to conclude that the Lord’s love was with salvific intent. The trick for Calvinists is to switch the focus from salvific love to superficial love. Otherwise, the alternative for Calvinists is to instead engage in Special Pleading by insisting that this individual was of the secret elect, and that we just don’t know the person’s identity.
The first question that a Calvinist asks is whether this person was of the secret elect. If that’s the case, then it’s just a matter of God’s love for Calvinism’s elect. However, what if this person was not of a secret class? Does Jesus love people, regardless of who they are, to a point where He desires their salvation? Well, if Jesus died for them, then you’d think so. But 5-Point Calvinists don’t believe that Jesus died for all.
Calvinist, James White: “Unless you believe that God has no love for the non-elect, then the text doesn’t cause you a problem, because the fact that God shows His love for the non-elect through His patience, and the general call of the Gospel and everything else, you just have to recognize the difference between a general love and the redemptive love that actually brings about the salvation of someone, and we don’t know what happened to the rich young ruler. We don’t know after Pentecost if he was converted. We’re not told, and the text is not attempting to answer these things. The point is that it does seem to indicate that this particular individual, in giving the answers that he gave, was giving an answer, not out of self-deceit. He really did answer the question honestly. He really did think that he had kept these things from his youth, and I really interpret that as Jesus’ love expressed in his then, exposure, of his sin, as a wonderful example of what God’s love really does.” (Dividing Line, emphasis mine)
Is it a genuine act of love to point out a person’s sin, while simultaneously predestining them to Hell?
That is a shell-game response, since the focus is taken off of the previously established salvific love, and onto a completely superficial love. Also notice the secondary defense employed, which was to suggest that the rich young ruler could have been of the secret elect. What is really hard to understand is the nature of the General Call of Calvinism, because if the Atonement is limited in scope, then to what are they being called?
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians: “Love, however, does not just show faults...it forgives in spite of them.”
Here is what Calvinists think about God’s salvific love for anyone outside of Calvinism’s secret elect:
James White: “How is God’s love shown for one who experiences eternal punishment by the provision of salvation for someone else?” (Debating Calvinism, p.377)
James White: “No matter how one understands ‘JACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU I HATED’ (Romans 9:13), this verse alone should be enough to refute such an errant view of God’s love.” (Debating Calvinism, p.268)
A third Calvinist argument will be to suggest that Arminianism knows no levels or types of love, which follows along the Calvinist theme at Mark 10:21 in which the Lord’s love was superficial level of love:
James White: “There is no basis in the Bible for asserting that God’s love knows no levels, kinds, or types.” (Debating Calvinism, p.267)
So in addition to the shell game response, we now have a strawman argument too, since no Arminian denies that God has levels, kinds or types of love, but what Arminians do indeed reject is that there is any type of love which includes predestining someone to Hell, and especially not the type of salvific love that is expressed at Mark 10:21.
Do Calvinists believe that that’s the level, kind and type of love that God has for the alleged non-elect, that is, a love which has no intention of forgiving, but only pointing out their allegedly decreed sins? Calvinism has a difficult task of explaining the love of God. God is love (1st John 4:8), because that is what God does, and God also shows wrath when His love is spurned. For Calvinism, though, God is a God of love and a God of wrath, if God (as per Calvinism), created mankind for the purpose of displaying both traits. According to Arminianism, however, God did not create mankind for the purpose of displaying wrath, because Hell was not created for mankind, but for the devil and his angels, as per Matthew 25:41, though man will follow the devil there, if man makes the same choice to ultimately reject God. So the main weakness of Calvinism, at this passage, is that Calvinism either has to deny that a salvific love, or just engage in Special Pleading that the person was of the secret elect.
