“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17, NIV). These Scriptures make it absolutely clear that God’s divine love is the same for everyone; however, the reason that some people believe that God loves other people more than He loves them has more to do with how each person responds to God’s divine love rather than with whether or not He unequally distributes His divine love. In other words, to some extent, each person determines the measure of God’s divine favor that he or she will receive.

Even though God’s divine love never discriminates, God’s divine favor often seems unfair. For sure, God is partial to the people who have received His Son (Jesus the Christ) as their personal Savior. God automatically extends His divine favor (His goodwill, grace, and mercy) to these believers. Since Jesus the Christ is the reason why God is gracious, merciful, and GOOD to believers, God’s spiritual sons and daughters never have to entreat Him for His divine favor because believers already have been granted full access to the natural and spiritual blessings that are in Jesus the Christ. Moreover, EVERY natural and spiritual blessing is in Christ! Nonetheless, not only do most believers have a difficult time wrapping their heads around the idea of worshipping a God who favors doubting believers who consistently fail to exercise their God-given measure of faith, but also most believers have a difficult time wrapping their heads around the idea of worshipping a God who allows wicked and perverse individuals to increase financially, or to heal completely (physically and spiritually), or to rise to fame and success effortlessly.

While there seems to be no rhyme or reason to why God’s divine favor seems unfair, the truth of the matter is that mere men and women are not responsible for who will be blessed or cursed. It is God, and Him alone, who decides if and/or how He will favor a person, and God’s decisions are based on how He judges a person’s heart (human spirit). Indeed, whatever a person has in his or her heart (like how much genuine love for God and others is there, or how much sincere compassion for the needy is there, or how much total trust in God’s mysterious and supernatural workings is there) is that which God uses to decide, for example, the people He will bring down or the people He will exalt (cf. Psalm 75:6-7).

So now the question is not: Does God love some more than others? The question is: What do people need to do to receive and grow in the kind of divine favor that prospers them? The Scriptures declare that people first must be born again so that they can become the children of God who have clean hearts. The Scriptures also declare that God’s children must wait for and listen to divine wisdom, because only the ones who find divine wisdom will receive an abundant, eternal life and “…favor from God” (cf. Proverbs 8:35, NIV).

Most Christians understand that divine wisdom is more than common sense and good judgment. For sure, any person can make good decisions that are based on a person’s understanding of the available knowledge or information. Divine wisdom, however, is hearing, understanding, and doing the Word of God in such a way that God is both reverenced and glorified. For this reason, believers who obtain divine wisdom also understand why it never is enough just to profess Jesus the Christ as their personal Savior. They know that like Jesus the Christ grew strong in the Spirit and became “…filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him” (cf. Luke 2:40, KJV), and like Jesus the Christ “…grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52, NIV), every believer who truly loves God and mankind also must become spiritually strong in the Holy Spirit and they must seek to be filled with divine wisdom.

This spiritual maturity is the only way that any believer will be able to stay connected to Jesus the Christ and thereby remain eligible for God’s divine favor—the kind of favor that prospers their soul, spirit and body. Even then, believers must realize that God’s divine favor doesn’t mean that He will grant EVERY one of their requests/prayers exactly how they have petitioned Him to do. Additionally, believers must remember that God’s divine favor also could come in the form of chastisement (cf. Hebrews 12:6-7 and Revelation 3:16-19). Lastly, believers must remember that God lets it rain on the just and the unjust—showers His generous blessings on all of His believers who exercise their measure of faith in Him, as well as on all of the people who neither believe in nor trust in Him as their Creator God!

God is immutable, and because He is the same today, yesterday, and forever, He is incapable of showing varying degrees of His love. For this reason, God doesn’t choose to love some people more than others. He chooses to love everyone equally, and His indisputable love offering—Jesus the Christ—evidences God’s evenly distributed love.

God, however, does demonstrate His favor according to His knowledge and understanding of what is in people’s hearts. Only God knows the depths of people’s hearts, which is why His only begotten Son, Jesus the Christ, wisely teaches that “…the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual  immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’…” (Matthew 15:18-20a, NIV). Perhaps when people learn how to discern (spiritually speaking) why some people have received blessings that God didn’t see fit to give to them, especially during the most troubling seasons of their lives, instead of accusing God of loving others more than He loves them, they first will have reached a conclusion concerning whether or not that which is in their own heart is clean and holy, i.e., their own “thinking” (faith, beliefs, or moral conduct and moral communication).