God Loves… Himself

The idea of some people hating God is not a popular one today, but it is necessary to understand what love for God is and why the new birth is necessary for a person to love God. The conversion of a soul is far more than a prayer or a trip up an aisle; it is God converting a person from one thing to another. It is the mind, heart, affections, the bias of the will, and all else being changed from one thing to another. It is to take a person that loves self and hates God and changing that person to one that loves God and hates self. This is the same thing as saying that it takes a person from the domain of darkness and being children of the devil to being in the kingdom of God and to be children of the living God.

Numbers 10:35 – “Then it came about when the ark set out that Moses said, “Rise up, O LORD! and let Your enemies be scattered, And let those who hate You flee before You.”

Deuteronomy – 5:9 “‘You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me.”

Deuteronomy – 7:10 “but repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face.”

Deuteronomy – 32:41 “If I sharpen My flashing sword, And My hand takes hold on justice, I will render vengeance on My adversaries, And I will repay those who hate Me.”

Scripture is so clear on this subject. Why do people follow their own wills and have such hostility to God’s? It is because they have a love for self and an aversion to the truth of God and what holiness is. The commandment in Deuteronomy 5:9 is the second commandment which is a prohibition against idolatry. Evidently God sees idolatry as acts of hatred. If we follow the New Testament on what idolatry is, then we can trace this to Matthew 6:24 and see how devastating this is. According to Colossians 3:5 greed is idolatry. Ephesians 5:5 tells us that coveting is idolatry. Both of the previous verses point to something that is clear in the New Testament. Idolatry is a thing of the heart and is not just bowing down to a statue. We bow down to what we love the most. If what we love is not God then we hate God. Matthew 6:24, then, helps us to see what is really going on: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” A greedy person and a covetous person are devoted to something other than God and all that is done is for the fulfillment of self. Self is the idol that most bow down to.

If we follow this thought, we can begin to see how all sin is idolatrous. The sin of coveting, according to Scripture, is far more than coveting money. Deuteronomy 5:21 shows this clearly: “‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field or his male servant or his female servant, his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.'” Coveting is the desire of the heart and from this verse alone we can see how coveting is at the root of the sins in the rest of the Ten Commandments. But if coveting is idolatrous (as Ephesians 5:5 shows), then all sin has idolatry at the root of it. Yet idolatry is hatred of God. This points to a few things that are utterly vital to understand to some degree.

1. All sin is to covet something rather than God and so all sin is idolatry.
2. The heart of sin is in the desires and loves of our hearts.
3. A person can think s/he loves God when in fact s/he loves a wrong idea of God & that is religious idolatry.
4. The unbeliever is a walking idol since s/he covets things more than God each moment.
5. The unbeliever as a walking idol is a person that lives in the hatred of the true God each moment.
6. The wrath of God is on unbelievers each moment as walking idols who hate Him.
7. The Gospel must be declared to people who hate God and are not neutral toward Him.
8. The Gospel is the Gospel of God and so the truth of God must be declared to those who will at the very least have an inner response of hatred and aversion to God.
9. That inner response demonstrates that those who hate God must have new hearts so that their hearts will respond with love and joy rather than hatred and aversion. They must change, not God or the Gospel.

This entry was posted on January 17, 2009 at 8:29 am and is filed under Hating God. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.