It is a hard thing for people to think of their friends who are nice and perhaps very religious as being those who hate God. It is even harder to think of ourselves as being those who hate God. It is, however, a very simple thing for those who hate God to deceive themselves into thinking that they love Him. First, each human being has a deceitful heart (Jer 17:9). This heart is more deceitful than all things. This heart will deceive others, but it also deceives itself. This heart is deceived by the lusts of deceit (Eph 4:22) and the deception of sin itself (Rom 7:11). This heart is deceived and enslaved by various lusts and pleasures (Titus 3:3). If a person is religious and yet does not bridle his or her own tongue, that person has deceived his or her own heart (James 1:26). Our hearts are full of self and self-love and so will distort the clear evidence in its own favor. Our hearts are really idol makers in the service of self and all pretenders to the throne must go down in our estimation. If God comes in the way, we will do something in order to take care of Him in our own way. We will deny certain things about Him in order to be able to sleep and in order to retain our “rightful” throne.
The second thing that a person does which, quite clearly, flows from a deceitful heart, is to distort the teaching of God. This will take on a rational approach or perhaps more of a human centered angle. But the deceitful heart will do anything to convince itself that it does not hate God. It will take up various forms of religion and religious practices trying to convince itself that it does not hate God. It begins to deny certain things about God because it convinces itself that those things cannot be true. It takes the things it hears about God and makes self out to be the standard and then judges God by that standard. It is to judge God by self rather than to judge self by God. It is a trick of the heart that trusts in its own reason. But clearly that is a practice that is widespread and is a very wicked practice. But the knowledge of God will not be allowed to stand in these hearts.
John Calvin wrote that the human being cannot understand who self is apart from knowing God. Since human beings are made in the image of God, this is an evident truth. However, the fallen human heart hates the knowledge of God and also the knowledge of self. This is one reason why the human heart hates the knowledge of God and that is because that knowledge is instructive about the self as well. The proud heart that is given over to self-love will not retain the knowledge of God because it shows self to be wicked and vile. That is simply more than the proud heart can handle. This is also why people must arrive at a true knowledge of self and of sin. If they do not it means that they have not seen the truth of God and they are still deceiving themselves rather than receiving the truth of Christ.
We must understand that the religious person is seeking to justify self in the eyes of self. S/he will water down the teachings of the Law and of the character of God so that self can be justified in the eyes of self. S/he will set up stringent religious standards, but it is still possible to keep them. Others will arrive at the truth of certain doctrines in an intellectual way and never see the glory that shines out of them and so never see the depravity of their own hearts while they hold to a creedal form of depravity. If evangelism is thought to be the height of obedience to God that can become a regular practice but still be nothing but a way to hide the heart from the truth of God and of self. Doing work on a church building and being involved in social issues can also be ways of hiding the truth of who God is from us and deceiving ourselves from seeing our own hearts. People can take up the duties of a priest or a pastor in an effort to hide the truth of God and of their own hearts from themselves. This may be one reason that so many pastors and church leaders are found to be hypocrites in their sin. The people take up the practice of religion to hide their own hearts from themselves and make an effort to disguise themselves before God.
It will probably be admitted that many people do this, but not so many are ready to say that those people hate God. However, what is it but an aversion to who God really is in His holiness that these people are hiding from themselves? True enough they are trying to hide something about themselves, but they are also trying to hide their hatred of God from themselves. It is the light of God shining in them to some degree that shows them something of their sin that they don’t like and then they try to hide that from themselves and others. But it boils down to a hatred of God. What is it that people hate when the truth of God is preached to them? It comes out as against the one preaching or teaching, but the real hate is toward God. Men and women have an aversion to the truth of God and they are trying to flee from it by wrapping themselves up in religious activities. The hatred of God is spread far and wide in all the heretical teachings that are going on, but there are also many who are hiding their hatred of God beneath orthodox teaching and committed external lives. The heart must love God or all it does is hate Him.
God Loves... Himself 
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