Is God’s Love “Limited”? A Scriptural Response to Frank Turek

I recently came across an interesting video on the Cross Examined YouTube channel in which Christian apologist Frank Turek responds to a young Calvinist.

Dr. Turek asks: If God “desires all to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4), why doesn’t He regenerate everyone? His answer: human free will. But is that how Jesus explains why some believe and others do not?

Jesus plainly taught that not all would be saved (Matt. 7:13–14) and repeatedly warned about hell. The issue is not whether God can save all—of course He can—but why many do not believe and are not saved.
In John 6:37, Jesus gives a direct answer:

“All that the Father gives me will come to me.” (John 6:37)

According to Jesus’ teaching, the difference between belief and unbelief is not autonomous free will, but the Father’s sovereign giving. Those given come. Those not given do not. Scripture nowhere says the Father gives every person to the Son in this saving sense.

This does not “limit” God’s love. The existence of hell already establishes that, in the end, God does not save everyone. The question is not whether salvation is exclusive—it is—but on what basis that distinction is made: human will or divine mercy.

Dr. Turek suggests that God’s love would not be “limited” if salvation ultimately hinged on human free choice. Yet Scripture repeatedly grounds salvation not in man’s will, but in God’s purpose.

John 1:13 says believers are born “not of the will of man, but of God.”
Romans 3:11 teaches that “no one seeks for God.”
Ephesians declares that salvation is “by grace… through faith… not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8–9).

If salvation ultimately depended on an unaided human decision, that decision would become the decisive distinction between the saved and the lost. One could claim that having “chosen Christ” is what ultimately distinguishes them from the one who did not. But Paul excludes boasting precisely because salvation rests entirely on grace.

People truly choose Christ—but only because God first gives life to the dead. As Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father draws him” (John 6:44). And again: “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16).

Later in John 6, Jesus makes the same point even more explicit. The distinction is not human initiative, but divine granting:

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” (John 6:63–65)

The claim that God’s sovereign choosing somehow diminishes or limits His love places the debate in the wrong category. God’s love is not deficient or lacking compassion simply because not all are saved. Using “free will” as the explanation does not ultimately resolve the tension—it simply relocates it.

Scripture addresses this directly. In Romans 9:15–16 Paul writes:

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. (Romans 9:15–16)

Paul does not ground salvation in autonomous human decision, but in God’s merciful purpose. The dividing line is not human will, but divine mercy.

The young Calvinist’s central instinct was sound. Challenged by Dr. Turek to explain why God, who can regenerate all, chooses not to, the young man answered that this accords with God’s eternal plan. And we have seen that Scripture concurs. Salvation is ordered according to God’s sovereign initiative, mercy, and purpose.

Dr. Turek objected that such a view makes God “finite in His love but infinite in His justice,” even comparing it to a conception of God (Allah) foreign to Christianity.

But Scripture itself grounds salvation in divine mercy rather than human will. The real issue is not whether God’s love is limited, nor whether sovereign election diminishes compassion. The question is whether Scripture teaches that fallen humanity possesses the independent ability to come to God apart from sovereign grace.

According to Jesus and Paul, the answer is no.