Hating God, Part 6

If what this series of BLOGS is saying is correct, then it shows the true nature of false theology and doctrine. The reason that people have false theology and doctrine is not because they are intellectually inferior, but because they hate God. The reason that people love false theology is because they hate God and don’t want the knowledge of Him in their hearts. The reason that people like to hang around others with false theology is because they also have developed idols in their hearts out of hatred to the true God. False theology is simply a display of religious hatred toward God. God created human beings in His own image and then humanity fell. As fallen beings humans now try to create God in their own fallen image rather than seek to be restored to His. Those are acts of extreme hatred.

Psalm 50:21 points to the same thought: “These things you have done and I kept silence; You thought that I was just like you; I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes.” In our day we put God on trial because He is not like we are. We hate suffering and so deny that God can be good and all-powerful while there is suffering. We think love will forgive all wrongs and so we think God cannot be perfectly loving and send people to hell. We think that love is simply being nice and so we can only think of God as being nice. What we have done when we do that, however, is demonstrate our hatred of the true God and to make Him into our own image. While we are more comfortable with that idea of god, it is a lie and shows our hatred of the true God. God alone is the one who can define God. He who is true love can alone be the standard and definition of true love. God must reveal Himself to us in truth or the hatred of man combined with a self-deceptive heart will never arrive at the truth of God at all. Instead of studying and praying to know God in truth, we will study and pray to know God as we want Him to be. This is indeed religious, but it is a religious hatred of God.

Why is the Gospel of God and of Jesus Christ so hated by sinners when it is set out in truth? It is because human beings hate God and love themselves as their own gods. Why does it offend the sinful heart to think of Jesus Christ as going to the cross to die in the place of sinners? One reason is that the proud hearts of sinners hate the shining forth of true holiness and love. Another reason is that proud hearts cling to self-righteousness. Sinners do not want to love as Christ loved. Sinners want to be self-sufficient and do things themselves. Sinners want to be righteous in their own eyes. The Gospel, however, is the shining forth of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (II Cor 4:6). If we take the Gospel and change it to be centered upon human beings rather than God, we show that we love human beings more than God Himself. That in itself is hatred toward God.

Pelagianism is the teaching of self-effort and self-sufficiency in human beings. It is directly opposed to the teaching of salvation as found in Augustine. Since the fourth century these two teachings have stood as polar opposites in the theological realm. The Pelagian teaching is that man is not born dead in sin and can be good because God has commanded man to be good. The teachings of Augustine focus on how man is dead in sin and needs God to restore His image in man by grace and grace alone. Both claimed to take their teachings from the Bible. Other teachings came (semi-Pelagianism, Arminianism) along and tried to find a middle ground. In a rather simplistic way of putting it, semi-Pelagianism (at best) was found in the Roman Catholic teaching at the time of the Reformation. The Reformers found the Gospel in Augustinianism. The battle was renewed in many ways. In the modern day people are trying to put aside these distinctions and come together in a show of unity.

The teaching of the Bible is that there is only one Gospel (John 14:6; Galatians 1:6-10). It is by the message of the Gospel that God shines the true glory of Himself in and through hearts and restores them to His image. Pelagianism is not just wrong teaching, it is an act of hatred toward God. It is human beings casting God out of their knowledge and being filled with humanism and idolatrous thoughts of God. Wrong theology is not just an intellectual glitch here and there; it consists of wrong ideas of God. The word “theology” simply means the study of God. If we are wrong in our study of God, then we are wrong about who God is. The study of theology must not be diminished, but instead it must be magnified. When we study theology we can be hating God and trying to banish the true God from our knowledge rather than study to know and love Him. The Gospel does not just forgive human beings their sins so that they can escape hell; it restores human beings to the image of God and gives them a love for Him. Ephesians 4:24 shows us this: “and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” We must be made like God if we are going to know Him and love Him in truth. If we are not made like Him in truth, then we are rejecting the truth about Him and pursuing what He hates and what is hatred of Him. Our religion itself can be hatred of the true God hidden in pseudo-love.

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