It is true that this series on hating God might be chilling to the bone, but our revulsion of it does not reflect against the truth of it. In fact, revulsion of it might just show that we hate God in truth. Romans 8:7 tells us that “the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.” Even if the mind sees the truth that it hates God, it will not want to subject itself to that truth. A person may hate the fact that s/he hates God, but the fact remains that the hatred for God is still there. Many people try to deal with their own hearts and tell themselves that they do not hate God. In order to convince themselves that they do not hate Him they will either change their behavior or change something about God. Since people love themselves so much, it is easy to project a God that will love such a loveable person as themselves. But once that move is taken, God is no longer God who loves on the basis of grace. If a person lives in love for the god of his or her own imagination and it is a love based on the thought that God loves him or her, that is loving a god on a false basis and is most likely hiding a heart that hates the true God.
Luke 6:32-34 teaches us the basic heart of the sinner. Sinners love those who love themselves. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 “If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount.” Sinners do for others in order to get something back for themselves. The only love that they really have is for self and when another does something that benefits self the sinner will respond in ways that reflect self-love. So when a sinner is evangelized and is told that God loves him or her, that is nothing that is surprising to the sinner. It also does nothing to show the sinner his or her heart of hatred which must be repented of. What it does, however, is delude many people because when they hear that God loves them and desires wonderful things for them (which they interpret as they please) they react as a sinner does. Sinners love those who love them and so they think they are converted because they have made some form of commitment to the god they think they love. It is a very strong delusion. The Greatest Commandment is to love God and now these people think they do love Him. In fact, however, all they are doing is continuing on in their sin by loving themselves and a distortion of God.
These poor deluded people are then admitted into a “church” and set about serving the god they think they love. In fact they do nothing but continue on in their self-love and delusion. Some will attend a liberal “church” and others will go to more conservative ones. Why do they do that? It is because they can be around the kind of people that they love (which is really self-love). They can get involved in “Christian” activities and make themselves think that they love God. The “fellowship” that these people have is really based on modern ideas of being polite and kind rather than a true fellowship of the Spirit. They might talk a lot about what it means to be loved by God, but the conversations are generally governed by things about life and of what is of general interest to people. Some people prefer Arminian thinking and so they like to hang around those like that. Others like the intellectual challenge of Reformed thinking and so they hang around those. Those who are into social and moral issues like to find congregations that stress those. But all of those things can be nothing but the exercises of loving those who love self. When a religion has degenerated to loving those who love me and attending a “church” on that basis, you can know that God has turned a nation and a professing Church over to self and He has abandoned it.
These kinds of “churches” can be Reformed and can be very conservative. But they all have a God that loves them and what they do. The hearts that hate God are not changed, but instead religion and an idol have been conformed to the self-love of those that attend. The sermons, though indeed thoroughly orthodox, may dull hearts and leave people in their self-love. The thoughts of God may be all about a God of love. After all, that is what we want to hear more than anything else. We want to hear about a God that loves us. Why do we want to hear that? It is because we want to be comfortable in our self-love and of a god that loves us like we are. Hearing about a god that loves us and makes much of us allows us to hide the hate for the true God in our hearts from ourselves. When the fellowship of these “churches” is not biblical fellowship but religious fellowship built on the model of self-love, that is a fellowship of the devil in a “church” rather than of God. The devil loves himself and does not care if people are very religious as long as they remain focused on self. Hatred for God keeps the devil busy in trying to keep people from a real love for God. He does not want people to see the hatred they have for God in their hearts and so he works at deception. The professing Church of today has fallen for self-love out of self-love and has twisted the truth of God so as to feel loved. It is nothing more and nothing less than the work of the devil.
God Loves... Himself 
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