artly inspired by a PragerU video and some art/memes by some Facebook compatriots.
John Calvin himself wrote about God passing by certain people and excluding them from the inheritance predestined for His children. That language is precisely what makes the imagery of the Good Samaritan so provocative. Imagine the scene:
A man is dying on the roadside.
Jesus walks toward him.
The man cries for help.
And Jesus says:
“Let’s pass by on the other side.”
That picture is deliberately jarring.
WHY?
Because it is fundamentally contrary to the picture Jesus Himself gave us of mercy.
THE THEOLOGICAL TENSION
There are many arguments against Calvinism that begin with complicated questions about election, predestination, regeneration, or the interpretation of Romans and Ephesians. But there is another way to approach the question—one that goes straight to the character of God:
What does genuine love and mercy look like?
Jesus gave us a remarkably simple answer. In Luke 10, a man is beaten, robbed, stripped, and left half dead on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. A priest sees him and passes by. A Levite sees him and passes by. But a Samaritan sees him, has compassion on him, approaches him, binds his wounds, provides for him, and makes sure he receives further care.
Jesus then asks which man proved to be the neighbor. The answer was obvious: the one who showed mercy. The point is important because Jesus introduced the parable in response to the question,
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
The discussion had centered on loving God with all one’s heart and loving one’s neighbor as oneself. When the lawyer asked, “And who is my neighbor?”, Jesus answered by telling the story of the Good Samaritan. In other words, Jesus didn’t merely define love abstractly. He gave us a picture of what love does when it encounters someone in desperate need.
It doesn’t walk around the other side of the road.
It doesn’t say, “I could help, but I have chosen not to.”
It doesn’t leave the dying man where he is while congratulating itself for having a sovereign reason for doing so.
It stops. It has compassion. It acts. It shows mercy.
That is precisely why the Good Samaritan provides such a powerful theological test.
KEY: The Samaritan isn’t more loving than God
The Samaritan is not the standard above God. He is the example Jesus Himself selected to illustrate what loving one’s neighbor looks like. And that raises a profoundly important question:
Would Jesus command His followers to demonstrate a form of love and mercy that is somehow greater than the love and mercy God Himself possesses?
Soteriology 101 makes a similar argument from 1 Corinthians 13. Paul doesn’t merely tell us that love exists; he describes its character: love is patient, kind, not self-seeking, not easily angered, and persevering. The article argues that Christians are commanded to love even their enemies because this reflects the character of their heavenly Father. If we are called to imitate God in this way, then God’s own love cannot reasonably be portrayed as falling short of the kind of love He commands His children to demonstrate.
Dave Hunt presses the question even further in What Love Is This? His argument is not that Calvinists simply deny that God is loving. RATHER, he argues that Calvinism’s doctrines of unconditional election, reprobation, limited atonement, and irresistible grace create a picture in which God’s saving love and mercy are deliberately restricted to the elect. Hunt points out that Calvinists themselves can speak of God’s love while simultaneously maintaining that God chose not to provide the same saving provision for the non-elect.
That distinction is important. The question isn’t, “Do Calvinists say God is loving?” Of course many Reformed determinists emphatically do. The more penetrating question is:
What does God’s love actually look like toward those whom Reformed theology says God has passed over?
Hunt specifically points to this tension in his discussion of God’s character. He notes that Calvinism can place such overwhelming emphasis upon God’s sovereignty that God’s love, mercy, and grace toward the lost become secondary or restricted to the elect. He even cites R.C. Sproul acknowledging the difficult implication:
“If some people are not elected unto salvation then it would seem that God is not at all that loving toward them.”
Hunt’s objection is that this qualification sits uneasily with the biblical presentation of God’s love as infinite and perfect. And this brings us back to the Good Samaritan.
Jesus doesn’t portray mercy as something that should be extended only to a predetermined class of people. The Samaritan encounters a person in desperate need and responds with compassion. He sees the need, he has mercy, and he acts. So the challenge isn’t that the Calvinist refuses to call God loving. The challenge is whether the kind of love attributed to God within the Reformed/Calvinistic determinist system is consistent with the kind of love Jesus commands us to embody.
If Jesus tells us to love our enemies, show mercy to the unworthy, and come to the aid of those in desperate need because this reflects the character of our heavenly Father, then the question becomes unavoidable:
Would Jesus command His followers to display a broader compassion toward the needy than God Himself displays toward the lost?
That is the tension the Good Samaritan graphic is intended to illustrate.
This isn’t an argument that every Calvinist personally lacks compassion. Obviously, that would be unfair and demonstrably false. Nor does the parable, by itself, settle every question concerning election and salvation.
Rather, it raises a character-of-God question that deserves an answer:
If mercy toward the helpless is one of the clearest demonstrations of goodness that Jesus gives us, how can we understand a theology in which God sovereignly withholds the saving provision from people whom He could save?
That is the heart of the objection.
The Good Samaritan doesn’t ask whether the wounded man belongs to the right ethnic group.
He doesn’t ask whether the man has already demonstrated sufficient worthiness.
He doesn’t investigate whether the man’s future behavior will make the rescue worthwhile.
He sees someone in need—and shows mercy.
The forum article makes precisely this connection, arguing that Jesus’ portrayal of the Samaritan establishes mercy toward the person in need as the exemplary response and then asks whether we can consistently attribute something less than this kind of mercy to God Himself. (Berean Apologetics Ministry). And then comes 1 Corinthians 13… Paul gives us another piece of the puzzle.
“Love is patient, love is kind…”
“It does not seek its own…”
“It keeps no record of wrongs…”
“It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
And, most importantly:
“Love never fails.”
If GOD IS LOVE (1 John 4:8), then these aren’t merely instructions for Christians. They tell us something about the character of the God whom Christians are supposed to imitate.
Jesus tells us to love our enemies.
Paul tells us to love without self-interest.
Jesus tells us that the Good Samaritan demonstrates what it means to be a neighbor.
And throughout Scripture, God’s mercy is repeatedly presented as something that extends toward humanity.
So the question becomes unavoidable:
Would Jesus ask His followers to become more compassionate toward their enemies than God is toward His?
That would turn the entire biblical pattern upside down.Soteriology 101 makes this same connection by arguing that Jesus’ command to love enemies is grounded in the character of the Father: believers are to love their enemies “in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” (SOTERIOLOGY 101)
This contradistinction is what the graphic is trying to communicate.It isn’t simply saying, “Calvinism is wrong because it sounds mean.” It is presenting a deeper challenge:
What happens when our theological model makes God’s behavior look less compassionate than the behavior Jesus Himself holds up as the supreme example of neighbor-love?
The irony is almost unavoidable. Jesus—the very person Christians confess to be the revelation of God—tells us:
Don’t pass by the suffering person.
Show mercy.
Love your neighbor.
Love your enemy.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
And yet, in the strongest versions of Reformed determinism, God’s sovereign decree is understood as determining that a majority of people will never receive the saving grace given to others—not because they were less needy, but because God chose not to grant it to them.
Increasing his glory in someway, apparently. That is the tension the graphic is meant to expose. And it leads to perhaps the simplest question of all:
Is the Good Samaritan actually more merciful than God?
If the answer is no—and it must be no—then we have to ask whether our doctrine of God is consistent with the very picture of love and mercy Jesus gave us. The Samaritan isn’t the standard by which God is judged.
Jesus is revealing what God is like.
And the God revealed in Jesus is not the one who walks past the wounded man.
HE IS THE ONE WHO STOPS
THE “GOOD NEWS” QUESTION
The Snap, also known as the Decimation and the Blip,
was the event in which Thanos snapped his fingers while
using the Infinity Gauntlet, resulting in the extermination
of half of all life in the universe. (SOURCE)
The gospel is called GOOD NEWS because God has provided salvation through Jesus Christ. The message of the gospel is not merely that salvation exists—it is that God genuinely offers salvation to sinners.
Good News Apologetics summarizes that message by emphasizing that God loves the world, Christ died for us, salvation is available to all, and there is no limitation as to who can be saved. It points to passages such as 1 Timothy 2:4–6, which says that God desires all people to be saved and that Christ gave Himself as a ransom for all. That brings us to a difficult question concerning unconditional election and reprobation.
Where Has the “Good News” Gone?
The question is not whether Reformed Calvinists affirm that God is loving. They do. The deeper question is whether their doctrine of salvation allows the gospel to be genuinely good news for the person hearing it.
George Bryson presses the issue by examining the implications of unconditional election and reprobation. If God has unconditionally determined who will be saved and who will be lost, then the gospel invitation creates a difficult question:
Can the person hearing the gospel actually know that God’s saving provision applies to them?
Bryson argues that the Reformed doctrine of redemption and reprobation creates a division between those for whom salvation is provided and those for whom it is not. This is precisely the question Stephen Marcy raises in his analysis of Calvinist gospel presentations:
Consider how the gospel is ordinarily proclaimed:
God loves you. Christ died for you. Repent and believe in Him. You can be saved.
Those statements sound like good news because they tell the sinner that the salvation accomplished by Christ genuinely applies to them and that they may come to Christ in faith. Marcy points out, however, that this creates a tension with Calvinist doctrines of unconditional election, total inability, limited atonement, and irresistible grace. Under those doctrines, not everyone is included in God’s saving purpose, not everyone can believe, and Christ’s atoning death is understood by many Calvinists as intended specifically for the elect.
That produces a very different message.
The sinner hearing the gospel does not know whether he is one of the people God has chosen to save. He cannot determine his election beforehand. And if he is among the non-elect, the very salvation being proclaimed to him was never intended for him in the saving sense.
So the question becomes unavoidable:
What makes the gospel “good news” if the person hearing it may not be included in the salvation being announced?
Marcy highlights this problem through Calvinist evangelistic language itself. A Calvinist preacher may tell a sinner to repent, trust Christ, and be saved. Yet, according to the underlying Calvinist system, the ability to believe depends upon God’s prior unconditional election and effectual calling. Thus the outward gospel invitation sounds universal while the underlying soteriology makes its saving applicability particular.
The same tension appears in Voddie Baucham’s presentation of the gospel. In his sermon on Romans 9:30–33, Baucham describes the gospel as “news” about what God has done in Christ and emphasizes God’s sovereignty. Marcy’s criticism is that, when Calvinist doctrines such as unconditional election and limited atonement are brought into the equation, the message ceases to function as universally applicable good news.
And that brings us back to the fundamental issue:
THE GOSPEL IS SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD NEWS.
Not merely news that God has predetermined the destinies of humanity.
Not merely news that Christ died for a particular group.
Not merely news that the elect will eventually be regenerated and given faith.
The biblical proclamation is presented as an invitation and promise to sinners: come, believe, repent, receive, and be saved.
That is what makes the message good news.
Graphics Used in video – click to enlarge:
If the hearer cannot know whether Christ’s saving work is intended for him, cannot respond unless he has first been secretly regenerated, and may in fact be one of those whom God has eternally passed over, then the question “Am I included?” is not a peripheral objection. It strikes at the very heart of what the word gospel means.
And this is where the “SNAP 90+%” graphic becomes relevant. The point is not that Calvinism teaches a precise numerical percentage of reprobates—Calvinism does not give us such a statistic. The point is that if the elect are a minority, then the majority of humanity are necessarily outside that saving election.
So the question remains:
If the “good news” of salvation is ultimately only good news for the elect, what makes it good news for everyone else who hears it?
That is the “Good News” question Calvinism has to answer.
This is where the “SNAP 90+%” graphic is intended to make the issue visible. The point isn’t that Calvinism teaches a precise mathematical percentage of reprobates—it doesn’t. The point is the logical consequence of the doctrine:
if the elect are only a minority of humanity, then the majority are passed over.
And that raises the question:
What kind of “good news” is it if Christ’s saving provision was never intended for the totality of humanity?
Jesus’ illustration of the Good Samaritan presents mercy as something radically different. The Samaritan sees the wounded man, has compassion on him, goes to him, tends his wounds, and provides for his recovery. Jesus then commands His hearers: “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:37)
The question, then, is not whether Calvinists can affirm that God is loving. They can and do….
In their twisted way….
The deeper question is whether our understanding of God’s love and mercy should look like the Samaritan who sees the helpless and responds with compassion, or whether God’s saving mercy is ultimately restricted to a predetermined group while the rest are passed by.