Unstoppable Love?

The other day I came across the song "Unstoppable Love" by Jesus Culture. It's definitely a song from the worship genre of contemporary Christian music. So if you don't like this genre you might not like the song, musically speaking.

What struck me about the song, especially given the song's popularity in evangelical circles, is that, well, it's a song that beautifully expresses the theology behind universal reconciliation. Seriously, if you sing this song you believe in universal reconciliation.

From the chorus of "Unstoppable Love":
God, You pursue me, with power and glory
Unstoppable love that never ends
You're unrelenting, with passion and mercy
Unstoppable love that never ends

No sin, no shame, no past, no pain
Can separate me from Your love
No height, no depth, no fear, no death
Can separate me from Your love
God's love is unstoppable, unrelenting and it never ends. Not even death can stop it. I don't know how this song, theologically, avoids being a song about universal reconciliation.

Well, I guess you can sing this song if you endorse the doctrine of election that God's love is "unstoppable" for the very few people whom God elects, the belief that God's love is "unstoppable" if God happens to love you. And if not? Sucks to be you!

But if you believe what 1 Timothy 2.4 says, that God "desires all people to be saved," and that God's love is "unstoppable," I don't know how you avoid the inevitable conclusion of universal reconciliation.

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31 thoughts on “Unstoppable Love?”

  1. You're thinking about the music again. Hush. Just let it wash over you like a flood of Pepto-Bismol coating the digestive tract of your soul.

  2. Turn the bass up loud and rave for Jesus. Or is it Jam with the Lamb?

    All snark aside, Richard, that has been a good area of discussion with my kids. What exactly are we singing to with each song.

  3. Confirmation bias is evident within most every aspect of our daily lives. Looking through our own personal lens shapes (distorts?) and often confirms our preconceived perception on any topic, especially our personal theology -- It's how humanity copes with all the data with which we are bombarded daily. Seeing clearly is often the real challenge; suspending our personal biases is often a very difficult task.

    One of the many reasons I read ET daily is to get a thoughtful review of things I often don't think about - to see more clearly. For that I am grateful.

  4. Hillsong. Hmm. From their statement "What We Believe":

    We believe that our eternal destination of either Heaven or hell is determined by our response to the Lord Jesus Christ.

    No "universal reconciliation" there I'm afraid. "Relentless" can mean persistent, unwavering, indefatigable, but, alas, it can also mean remorseless, pitiless --

  5. Well said. Totally agree.


    I don't understand how most Christians affirm both God's love and eternal torment for those who do not believe in that love? How can they not see that conflict? Is it some sort of dissociation?


    How can those who believe in UR live in community with those who don't? This is a big conflict for my son who goes to a Calvinist leaning high school. He HATES singing about God's never-ending love in chapel because he knows they don't really believe what they are singing. I feel horrible for putting him in this situation.


    Our church believes that God truly loves all and desires all to be saved, but believes in eternal torment too. We are afraid to open our mouths about what we believe in either setting because we don't want to be divisive. We were already rejected by one Christian school because we were up front with our beliefs, even though we said we would keep them to ourselves if our children were accepted to attend there.


    Does Freedom Fellowship agree with UR? Are they just more accepting of differing beliefs? Any advice for how UR believers can live in community with non-UR believers?

  6. Universalist in song, Arminian in sermon? But remember, the eschatology of "Love Wins" Rob Bell is also an Arminian.

  7. When I was little my church sang the hymn "When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be."


    These were the same people that would read Romans 3:23 and ask rhetorically, "what does 'all' mean?"

  8. Not saying that Hillsong are universalists. I just think that Calvinists and Arminians are often spouting things that sound universalistic, if your really stop to think about it.


    I would posit that these songs listed above fit better in a universalistic framework than Calvinistic or Arminian.

  9. Rise:


    All the earth come alive
    Lift your eyes to the morning
    Let our hearts beat again
    With a lifeblood that never fails
    Your love it will never fail

    Breaking down the divide in a holy collision
    The divine in disguise
    Took the cross for our sin and shame
    Our God You will never fail

    See the lost in return
    Swing the doors ever wider
    See the tide as it turns
    Love and mercy is on the rise
    As the world folds into Your light
    All creation will see Your light

    Hear the sound of freedom rise
    As our song breaks the silence
    Echoing the angel cry
    Let us lift up Your holy Name
    Hereafter to sing Your praise
    Forever and ever

    We will hold, we will love
    We will fall in surrender
    We will rise, we will run
    We will live to declare Your Name
    Forever to bring You praise
    Forever we'll lift up Your Name

    The universe on its knees
    See the stars in surrender
    God above kings and queens
    Every idol will bend and break
    But our God You will never fail
    Forever and ever

    We will hold, we will love
    We will fall in surrender
    We will rise, we will run
    We will live to declare Your Name
    Forever to bring You praise
    Jesus, Jesus
    We will hold, we will love
    We will fall in surrender
    We will rise, we will run
    We will live to declare Your Name
    Forever to bring You praise
    Forever we'll lift up Your Name

    Swing the doors wider
    Sound the praise louder
    All our hearts cry out
    For the glory of Your Name
    Our God You will never fail

    Lift the Name higher
    Shine the light brighter
    All the earth cry out
    For the glory of Your Name
    Our God You will never fail

    We will hold, we will love
    We will fall in surrender
    We will rise, we will run
    We will live to declare Your Name
    Forever to bring You praise

    Swing the doors wider
    Sound the praise louder
    All our hearts cry out
    For the glory of Your Name
    Our God You will never fail
    Jesus, Jesus
    Lift the Name higher
    Shine the light brighter
    All the earth cry out
    For the glory of Your Name
    Our God You will never fail
    Forever we'll lift up Your Name

  10. In my observation practically all who say they believe in hell do not act as if they do. And that is not meant as a harsh criticism. I once heard a person say, "If I REALLY believed in that, I would be crawling on my hands and knees until they bled, trying to keep people from going there".


    What it comes down to for most, is that they see hell as a "Biblical doctrine" that must be given mental assent and agreement, which is still, for many, a definition of what it means to be faithful. So, with an open Bible, they "agree with the book"; when they open their front door to meet the day, they step out into "non-Bible land", where they forget for a while, and actually feel a bit of peace.


    Final note: In life, or in death, and whatever they may bring, I am with God.

  11. The "Farewell Rob Bell" response to Love Wins of the neo-Calvinists was rather bad-tempered and spiteful, wasn't it? And Bell did get close to universalism -- his God is a party-thrower alright -- but he did come up short, C.S. Lewis-like, in/at the end: "God extends an invitation to us, and we are free to do with it as we please." That's Arminianism. And if Bell is an Arminian under a technicality, it's a technicality that will land you in the Hot Stuff.

    David Congdon (Blog: "The Fire and the Rose") is one of the best a-plague-on-both-your-houses commentators I know. Here he puts it succinctly:

    "The old doctrine of double predestination is indeed a diabolic position to hold. But the Arminian alternative fares no better. Is a God who sends people to hell really much worse than a God who is impotent in the end to save those who reject the gospel (or never hear it in the first place) [or, I would add, here a terrible distortion of it]? The former is a God who is sovereign but cruel; the latter is a God who is weak but loving. The former is protologically monstrous, while the latter is eschatologically monstrous. But it's unacceptable either way. If all are not finally saved, then God cannot be said to have 'won.' And a God who does not 'win' -- who does not fully and finally accomplish God's own perfect will -- is simply not the God attested in scripture."

  12. @Kim Fabricius
    Have you read the Warfare and Weakness: A Vision for Progressive Theology on this site? I found the hypothesis quite compelling. No plagues needed. :-)

  13. Hmm... I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "land you in the hot stuff." Are you saying that rejecting the invitation of God will consign one to eternal conscious torment? Or are you saying that holding that particular UR form of Arminianism will get you in trouble with the neo-calvinist tribe?

    I think Bell's form of Arminianism is still a rejection of a God who consigns people to eternal conscious torment. RB makes use of the parable of the prodigal son in Love Wins. What happens to the older brother at the end? Does he relent and join the party or does he just stew outside while everyone else is having a good time. To say he has that choice is to be what I'm calling Arminian-on-a-technicality. But the real issue for me is what the father character is like. I don't see him after story ends hiring bouncers at the party tent and telling them to beat the $#!+ out of the older brother and forbidding him to come in. (That would be compatible with forms of Arminianism that do embrace ECT.) On the contrary, I think he keeps calling the older son to join in until the son eventually does.

    I certainly don't see that as a weak but loving/eschatologically monstrous God at all. I see that as a God who wins by loving all.

  14. As a UR minority struggling to maintain a Christian identity within the church, I either have to find a way to suppress my frustration during worship or find a UU church and be done with it. Music is one aspect of worship that I can tolerate most of the time. I enjoy some of the old "blood hymns" because I grew up with them and love to sign them. I usually just chuckle at the theology within some of those hymns; various atonement theories within the hymns are the most troubling. But, at 70, I'm all about the universal love of our creator, I'll let someone else sort through all the orthodoxy.

  15. By "Hot Stuff" I meant I meant the fires of hell; that's why I capitalised it. Too clever by half -- sorry about that!



    But that's what I find so puzzling about Bell. You're right: his God is not a Cosmic Consigner. He has all the attributes of a Universalist Lover, except, or yet ...



    ... Everything hinges on the wonderful little word "until" in your penultimate paragraph. As Richard points out in one of his brilliant posts on universalism, one thing the eternal God has is infinite patience and oodles and oodles of time (world without end) to wait and wait and love and love until all are reconciled to him. That until is the preposition of a universalist. Bell, however, evidently eschews this until, allowing the possibility of the elder brother ultimately deciding not to join the party and get drunk out of his mind (as Herbert McCabe inimitably puts it) but rather remain outside in the cold and dark. And for the Father to say, "Well, it's his choice; there's nothing I can do about it," well, yes, that's finally monstrous.

  16. I should add how interesting it is that the elder brother is such a conscientious, scrupulous, pious -- in a word, religious -- man.

  17. I haven't read LW in a few years. I seem to remember RB leaving that question unanswered. Either way, to me that seems like a minor point to argue when for a long time the questions have revolved around a Father who kicks his son's @$$. As for "nothing [He] can do about it"? How about if instead the Father says, "It's his choice, but I struck up the band to play his favorite song, I'm serving his favorite dessert, all his friends are here..."

    The nature of love *is* inherently one of weakness. (Love does not insist on its own way - I Cor 13:5). I'm not convinced, though, that it is monstrous.

  18. Sorry to continue down this rabbit trail, but, if I understand what Girardian atonement theory is saying is this: Humanity, the victim, is innocent of its proclivity for violence in the eyes of our creator (we can't help ourselves?), our creator (God/Jesus in the Christian vernacular)) stands with the victim/humanity and restores it to a new understanding (the original design?) of how life is to lived (exhibiting unconditional love - God is love) and this new understanding (enlightenment?) opens up our being able to enjoy the fullness of creation/life as if death is of no concern, or does not exist.



    I need to chew on this awhile... Thank you, Richard.

  19. Yeah, some of them thar old crucifixion hymns -- it's like singing in an abattoir. But we should remember that, biblically, "blood" is simply a metonym for death and that it's life that is in the blood.

  20. Yep, God loves hell-fire tub-thumpers, and they too will get to heaven. They might not like the company at first, but they'll get used to it and finally enjoy it.

  21. I remember the Rob Bell controversy very well. The Gospel Coalition folk were condemning the book for its supposed "universalism" two months before the book even hit the racks.

  22. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMn3ThuvGMo

    If love is what you're looking for, all roads lead to an open door.

  23. Sometimes when i am in a time of major doubt, congregational singing fills me with beautiful and illogical belief - some songs more than others...

  24. "If Jesus said love your enemies I think it's small potatoes to love fellow Christians with whom I have hermeneutical disagreements."


    oh, I love this. I have to save this somewhere and remind myself of it, like, a few times a day.

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