Does God love Satan?
Behind this question stands a real challenge people raise against the gospel: if God loves everyone, does that love reach the devil too? Scripture speaks plainly about where God's saving love is aimed, about how Satan fell, and about what is still open to him — and what is not.
Nothing was created for the fire
Commentators start further back than the fall. The question of whether God loves Satan meets the fact that God made nothing with ruin as its purpose, and that the place of confinement came after the rebellion, not before it.
H. B. CoderGod has created no class of beings for the lake of fire. God is love, and everything He creates has perfect love for its destiny. When Satan rebelled against God, and other angels followed him, God prepared a place in which to shut them up, so that they might not disturb His dominions forever. Either the God of love must remain sovereign, or His rebel creatures become that and drag everything down into misery.
A fall with no tempter behind it
The difference between Satan's case and ours is not that God is fond of one and cold to the other. It is a difference in how each fell — and one writer draws out what that means for the place Jesus names in Matthew 25.
William KellyHell was not prepared for poor guilty man. He deserves it; but it was prepared for the devil and his angels… There was no hope of deliverance for these fallen angels — no redemption for them. They willfully and without a tempter departed from God. Man was tempted by an enemy; and God feels for guilty man, drawn away by a mightier, if not more guilty, rebel than himself.
Christ became a man, not an angel
The clearest test of where God's love went is what the Son of God actually became. Hebrews 2 says He does not take hold of angels but of the seed of Abraham — that is, He took up the cause of human beings.
The Bible TreasuryHe became man to die for men; He did not become an angel to die for angels. The grace of God appeared accordingly, bringing salvation to all men, though it is useless to them if they do not believe; but not one word of God speaks of salvation for angels. The holy angels do not need it; the fallen ones await their everlasting doom. They were not tempted as man was, and they have no Saviour, no Mediator, like Christ Jesus a Man.
The same writer puts the contrast in one line when answering a book that made angels and men one family:
The Bible TreasuryThe door of repentance is still open for him (and we may thank God for that), but not for them.
A hatred that never changes
Love, if it were to reach Satan, would have to find something in him that could turn. Writers describe his settled condition instead — not a wavering creature, but a fixed enemy, and one whose final state involves no change of heart.
W. W. FeredayThere will be a restricted area (a "lake") somewhere in the universe of God where evil will be confined and punished eternally. No activity in sin can be permitted, even though heart hatred against God and His Son must go on, for neither new birth nor repentance is possible in Gehenna.
How the argument gets misused
The question is often raised not out of curiosity about Satan but to shrink God's love toward people — as if proving God does not love the devil proved He does not love every human being. One writer meets that reasoning head-on.
Paul WilsonAnother bit of clever but empty reasoning is found on the subject of God's love: "God does not love everybody; if He did, He would love the devil." What semblance of authority is there for such a baseless conclusion? Does John 3:16 include infernal beings?
His answer rests on what God is, not on what the objector can infer:
Paul WilsonThe author of this has not considered that love is God's very nature. God cannot deny Himself, or act other than He is — He is love and will always be so; and judgment is "His strange work."
Alongside this, writers insist that love is not the whole account of God. Leaving out that He is light, one puts it, "is to conceive a false god who can let off sin and sinners easily, not the True Self-existent One, who is Love also."
Summary
- Created — God made no being destined for the lake of fire; that place was prepared only after Satan and his angels rebelled.
- Fell — Satan departed from God by his own will, with no tempter; man was drawn away by an enemy stronger than himself, and God feels for him.
- Sent — the Son became a man to die for men, not an angel to die for angels; Scripture announces salvation for people, never for fallen angels.
- Closed — the door of repentance stands open to any human being today; for the fallen angels it does not, and their hatred of God never turns.
- Open — none of this narrows God's love toward you. Love is His very nature, judgment His strange work, and John 3:16 is addressed to the world of men.