Hodge:

There are two ways of conceiving of God, the philosophical and the religious, as he stands related to the reason and as he stands related to the heart. According to the one method we regard God as the first ground and cause of all things, as infinite, immutable, eternal, incapable of any relation to space or duration, without succession and without passion or change.

According to the other, we regard him as a person to whom we bear the relation of creatures and children, of responsibility and dependence, to whom we must look for all good, and with whom we can have intercourse, who has towards us the feelings of a father and to whom we can make known our joys and sorrows.

Both these are right, so far as limited and determined by the Scriptures. The one limits the other. If we press the philosophical method so far as to lose the object of the religious affections, we end in Atheism. If we let our affections have full scope we lose the infinite and absolutely perfect, as did the mystic enthusiasts. In the Bible both elements are harmonized; though the latter is the predominant, as it should be with us.

In the interpretation of all such passages as this in which human affections are attributed to God, two things are to be avoided. 1. That we do not ascribe to him anything inconsistent with his nature as the eternal and immutable Jehovah, any perturbation or excitement. 2. That we do not merge everything into figure, as though nothing real was intended; as though the God we worship was a God without consciousness, without knowledge, without regard for his creatures. There is in him something which really answers to the words we use, and which is the proper object of the affections which we exercise.

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Johnson:

2. That, as a Free Agent, man has life and death set before him, with the liberty of choosing the one, and rejecting the other. As a fallen creature, he is an enemy of God, and without the provision of mercy in his Son, would for ever remain such. Descending to the abode of the Devil and his angels, as a company of kindred spirits, he would for ever unite with them, in their unhallowed opposition to their common creator. Mutual crimination and joint blasphemy against their maker would render them as miserable as their capacity would admit. But now the announcement of pardon and restoration invites him to return. “Come, now, let us reason together saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow: though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” “Ho! everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat: yea, come buy wine and milk without price.”

As moral agents, for whom there is hope, I call upon you, then, fellow sinners to turn to the Lord, For he saith the Lord; “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his evil way and live; turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” Your God commands, invites, entreats. Open your ears–hear “the word of this salvation, Which is sent unto you.” “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.” As disobedient subjects, as prodigal sons, come back. Your sovereign is ready to receive you—your father’s arms and house are open to embrace, and entertain you. Come, then, the fatted calf shall be killed for you, the best robe shall be put on you, joy and gladness shall thrill your ransomed heaven born souls. The Church on earth shall rejoice. Attending angels shall bear the tidings to the throne of the eternal, and the holy company of Cherumbim and Seraphim in his presence, shall make all Heaven resound with hallelujahs of praise to God and the Lamb.

But if ye refuse the invitations of love and mercy, and will not have the man Christ Jesus to reign over you, if ye will continue in sin, you must receive its wages–death—eternal death. You must see, that man Christ Jesus on the judgment seat, and hear from his sacred lips, the sentence–“Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.” But you will be your own destroyer; the Judge will only, as the organ of insulted justice and violated law, pronounce sentence, which you will have already drawn down upon your head.

Now, Now, O fellow sinners, you have it in your power to place yourselves under influences, that are spiritual and saving; or under influences that are carnal and damning. You can read the Bible, or the book of infidelity; the sermon of truth, or the novel of fiction; you can attend the party of sinful pleasure, or the meeting for holy prayer; you can go to the midnight revel, or to the house of God. You can lift up the prayer of the publican, or the howl of the bacchanal. You can utter the praise of the Most High, or belch out the blasphemy of the Arch fiend. How solemn the responsibilities that are upon you. Under what awful accountability does your free agency place you? The freedom to chose is the freedom to reject. O! Exercise this freedom aright. Pause, consider your latter end. “Chose you this day whom you will serve.” Difficulties attend the decision. For their removal, search the scriptures, implore the teaching of that Holy Spirit, whom God will give to all that ask for in sincerity. And oh may He enlighten the eyes of your understanding, and give you to see Christ in the scriptures as your “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.”

William Bullein Johnson, The Sovereignty of God and the Free Agency of Man: A Sermon Delivered Lord’s Day, May 30, 1842 (Published at the request of the Congregation, by William Bullein Johnson), 25-27. [Underlining mine.] [Note, Johnson was the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention.]

Johnson:

7. God is Love or Infinite Benevolence. “He left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from Heaven and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness.” All the arrangements of God’s works are adjusted to promote happiness. For when he had ended his work of creation, he pronounced it all good. It is this love that prompts him to action. Of which the most ample proof is given in the death of his Son to redeem man. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to die for us.”

William Bullein Johnson, The Sovereignty of God and the Free Agency of Man: A Sermon Delivered Lord’s Day, May 30, 1842 (Published at the request of the Congregation, by William Bullein Johnson), 6. [Underlining mine.] [Note, Johnson was the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention.]

Samson:

They are right, then, who place stress on these declarations; for they are statements of fact. They certainly err who, from these and such like statements, infer that Christ’s Atonement has efficacy only for the redeemed. These are strong statements, indeed: “Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it” ( Eph. v. 25); ” He loved me, and gave himself for me (Gal. ii. 20); but they are not statements which exclude an efficacy that, reaches another end in another class. There are other declarations that assert a positive efficacy, though not a redeeming power, over others than the redeemed. Such are the declarations of Christ and of Paul and of John to this effect. Christ declares (Matt. xx. 28), “The Son of Man came . . to give his life a ransom for many,” which the Apostle Paul makes synonymous with the declaration (I. Tim. ii. 6), “He gave himself a ransom for all.” Again Paul (Heb. ii. 9), “We see Jesus, made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man.” Yet again, John (I. John ii. 2), “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world;” in which expression the word rendered “world” is, in the Greek, “Kosmos,”  or universe. It is impossible to suppose that Paul and John used, without special design, these expressions of an influence exerted by Christ’s Atonement which reaches beyond the redeemed. They are right, indeed, who seek, in the connection of the statements just quoted for proofs that the redemption secured by the Atonement is limited to those who accept it; and yet the form of language chosen by the inspired writers is not by this qualification of the context made of no account in the writer’s design.

G.W. Samson, “The Atonement,” in Baptist Doctrines, ed., Charles A. Jenkens, reprint. (Wisconsin: Baptist Heritage Press, 1989), 497-498. [Italics orginal, underlining mine.]