God's Character
The Stakes
The Gospel rests on an oath. God swore it by Himself. The Word went out from His mouth in righteousness and will not turn back. Every knee bows. Every tongue confesses.
That oath is load-bearing. Every other statement about God stands on it. If it fails for anyone, every verse about His character has to be softened to match.
Love
Love that fails at the end is not the love Paul named.
1 Corinthians 13:8
Love never fails.
Love that runs out has an expiration date. Jeremiah heard something else.
Jeremiah 31:3
Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.
Paul, writing to Corinth on what love is, listed what love does not drop.
1 Corinthians 13:7
Love bears all things.
And Paul told Titus exactly what did not earn God's kindness.
Titus 3:4-5
When the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, he saved us, not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy.
Four verses. Love that never fails, never ends, bears all things, saves apart from works. A God whose love fails on part of His creation cannot be the God of any of the four.
Mercy
A God who abandons some forever had a mercy with an end.
Lamentations 3:22
...for his mercies never end.
A God who shows mercy to the chosen and withholds it from the rest does not match what Paul wrote to Rome or what the Psalmist sang.
Romans 11:32
For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that He may have mercy on all.
Psalm 145:9
The LORD is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all He has made.
And when mercy and judgment come head to head, James said which one wins.
James 2:13
Mercy triumphs over judgment.
Three verses. Mercy that never ends, mercy over all He has made, mercy that triumphs. Every one of them has to be trimmed to fit an ending where some are lost for good.
Justice
Justice that settles into permanent loss is not the justice Deuteronomy named.
Deuteronomy 32:4
The Rock, His work is perfect; all His ways are just. A faithful God, without bias, He is righteous and true.
Isaiah ties justice to mercy, not to endless loss.
Isaiah 30:18
Therefore the LORD is waiting to show you mercy and is rising up to show you compassion, for the LORD is a just God.
The Psalmist measured the length of His anger.
Psalm 103:8-10
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love.
And a God who keeps a ledger forever does not love the way Paul said love loves.
1 Corinthians 13:5
Love does not keep a record of wrongs.
Faithfulness
Paul to Timothy, on the kind of faithfulness that does not depend on us.
2 Timothy 2:13
If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.
Lamentations 3:22
Because of the LORD's faithful love we do not perish.
And on faith itself, Paul does not locate its source in the believer.
Philippians 1:29
For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him.
Galatians 2:20
The life I now live in the body, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
A salvation that requires our faithfulness to hold it together is not the salvation Paul described. Nor is a salvation we produce our own faith to earn.
Ephesians 2:8-9
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.
Romans 6:23
The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Gift language and wages language are not interchangeable. Paul keeps them apart on purpose.
The Will of God
Proverbs locates the final say outside of us.
Proverbs 19:21
Many are the plans in the heart of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will prevail.
Paul, seeing ahead to the objection, writes the question no one would ask if they thought His will could be blocked.
Romans 9:16, 19
So then, it does not depend on human will or effort but on God who shows mercy... For who resists his will?
Daniel watched a king learn it the hard way.
Daniel 4:35
All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing, and He does what He wants with the army of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. There is no one who can block His hand or say to Him, "What have you done?"
And the Psalmist said it plainly.
Psalm 115:3
But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.
A will that does whatever it pleases does not settle for half the creation lost.
Grace, Victory, and Kingdom
If sin outlasts grace, Paul did not see it.
Romans 5:20
Where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more.
The cross, by Paul's account, is not a partial thing.
Romans 6:10
For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all.
Paul closed his longest chapter on resurrection with a word the tradition cannot quite fit.
1 Corinthians 15:54-57
But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And a Kingdom that peaks and then stops is not the Kingdom Isaiah described.
Isaiah 9:7
Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.
Reconciliation
If the Gospel is not for all, the reconciliation Paul preached to Colossae has to shrink.
Colossians 1:19-20
And by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
And the angel who announced the birth has to be corrected.
Luke 2:10
But the angel said to them, "Don't be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all people."
Good news of great joy for all people. Or good news of some joy for some people. Scripture says one. The tradition says the other.
The Character That Cannot Change
Everything above rests on one thing: He does not change.
Malachi 3:6
Because I, the LORD, have not changed...
Hebrews 13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
And if He goes back on the Word He swore, He has done the thing He said He would never do.
Numbers 23:19
God is not a man, that he might lie, or a son of man, that he might change his mind. Does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?
The Price
Every verse above has to hold, or the picture fails. "Never fails" does not mean "fails for some." "All" does not mean "most." "Everlasting" does not mean "long but finite."
The words are not ornaments. They are the text.
The God Scripture names cannot be the God required by a Gospel that stops short of all. The character does not stretch that far. The oath does not come back empty.
The Burden Is Yours
Disagreeing with any of the above requires work, and the work is specific.
Pick an attribute. Love, mercy, justice, faithfulness, the will, the Kingdom, reconciliation. Pick one and hold the reading where the Gospel is not for all.
Then show the verse.
Show, from Scripture, where Paul's "love never fails" means fails for some. Show where Jeremiah's "everlasting" means finite. Find the verse where "all" in Romans 11:32 means "most." Cite the one where "mercy triumphs" ends with mercy lost. And explain how "He does whatever He pleases" squares with a God who did not get what He pleased on the subject most pleasing to Him.
Do it without softening the verse. Do it without pulling in a tradition the verse does not name. And find it in the same place the verses above were found: in God's own mouth.
The work has to cover every attribute above, not just one. Love has to be made less than Paul wrote. So does mercy. So does justice, faithfulness, the will, the Kingdom, reconciliation. All of them.
Until the work is done, the reading has not been defended. It has only been stated.
Pick the verse your reading most needs to overturn, and prove it does.