God loves sinners in Christ alone...

From Calvin's 4th sermon on Ephesians. Ch. 1:7-10.

I have shown already that we cannot be loved by God, but by means of his only Son. For if the angels of heaven are not worthy to be taken for God’s children except through a head and mediator, what all become of us who do not cease daily to provoke God’s wrath by our iniquities [Isa. 59:2]. In fact, we fight against him! God, then, must of necessity look upon us in the person of his only Son, or else he is bound to hate and abhor us. In short, our sins set such a distance between God and us, that we cannot approach him without immediately feeling his majesty against us, armed, as it were, to destroy us all...

He confirms the thing in better fashion still by saying that the same was done in Jesus Christ. If we had been elected in ourselves it might be said that God had found in us some secret virtue unknown to men. But seeing that he has elected us outside of ourselves, that is to say, loved us outside of ourselves, what shall we reply to that? If I do a man good, it is because I love him. And if the cause of my love is sought, it will be because we are alike in character, or else for some other good reason. But we must not imagine anything similar to this in God. And also it is expressly told us here, for St. Paul says that we have been elected in Jesus Christ. Did God, then, have an eye to us when he vouchsafed to love us? No! No! for then he would have utterly abhorred us. It is true that in regarding our miseries he had pity and compassion on us to relieve us, but that was because he had already loved us in our Lord Jesus Christ. God, then, must have had before him his pattern and mirror in which to see us, that is to say, he must have first looked on our Lord Jesus Christ before he could choose us and call us...

Therefore we have to observe, first of all, that we can obtain no grace at God’s hand, nor be received by him, till our sins are wiped out and the remembrance of them completely erased. The reason for this is (as I said before) that God must hate sin where-ever he sees it. So then, as long as he considers us as sinners, he must needs abhor us, for there is nothing in us or in our own nature but all manner of evil and confusion. We are, then, enemies to him, and he is contrary to us, till we come to this remedy that St. Paul shows us here, which is, to have our sins forgiven. We see by this that no man can be loved by God because of any worthiness that is in himself. For wherein lies the love that God bears us I have told you already that he must be willing to cast his eye upon our Lord Jesus Christ and not look at us at all.

Me: Calvin states that apart from viewing and accepting us in the person of his Son, God is bound to hate and abhor us due to our innate sinfulness and rebellious nature. Apart from Christ we are rightfully abhorred by God because we, in and of ourselves, are opposed to his righteousness and rule. It is the lack of grasping even an inkling of both the majestic holiness of God and the enormity of our moral corruption that so confounds us in this matter. Even now as his children, adopted of the Father and sealed by his Spirit, there is no inherent quality originating within us that commends us to him. He accepts and loves us solely because in mercy he identifies us in his Beloved Son. God, who chose us in him before the foundation of the world, established irrevocably that he would know and love us only in and through the person and finished work of Jesus Christ. For it is Jesus alone who bore the penalty of our sins thus wiping our slate clean. And it is Jesus who alone is well-pleasing to the Father. To be identified in him is to be loved of God.