Scripture teaches 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” (Rom 8:7). The unbelieving person lives out of self-love and then hatred of God. The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile toward God and it is not able to do anything else but be hostile to God. Many are talked into saying prayers, walking aisles, and signing cards. Those things are professions of religion but they do not change the fundamental nature of the heart. For a person to be truly converted that person’s heart has to be changed from hatred of God to love for God. All the prayers in the world will not change a heart from hating God to loving Him. The Pharisees prayed much and hated even more.
What we see, one would hope with clarity, is that a person of flesh that is hostile toward God cannot subject him or herself to God. This means that the only hope is for God to change the person’s heart and indwell that person with Himself so that the person can love Him. What that means is that all the religions of self are nothing but acts of hatred toward God. That also means that much of what has the name of Christianity today sure appears to be the works of the flesh and so is hatred toward God. The flesh will always be the flesh and will always act like the flesh apart from the regenerating work of the living God. Religious works and activities apart from the work of God can be nothing but the work of the flesh and as such is hatred of God. The flesh will not and cannot change apart from God doing it. All that the flesh can do, despite the appearance of religious activities, is hatred of God. As can be seen from the Israelites God seemed to hate their religious activities when done in the flesh more than the world that did not have the revealed ways of God.
We know that the Greatest Commandment is what is to guide all that a human being is to do. A believer has the love of God in the soul and so lives out of love for God. However, the believer is still far from having a perfect love for God. But the fact that there is some love in the act shows that God is at work in the soul. But the unbeliever has nothing but hatred for God. The unbeliever has no love for God at all because the God of love is not in his or her soul. Nothing the unbeliever does can possibly be acceptable to God apart from the love of God in the soul. Yet the believer is acceptable to God because Christ has died for the believer and God lives in and works love in the soul of that person. What the believer does is accepted on behalf of Christ. All that the unbeliever does is moved from a heart that hates God in all that it does.
It is true, however, that unbelievers do not hate the god they believe in. But the god they believe in is not the holy and just God who revealed and reveals Himself in nature and Scripture. Professing atheists try to convince themselves that they do not believe in God, yet others try to convince themselves to twist the Bible or other things enough to enable them to believe in a god but not the God. Much religious activity happens in the spoken name of the God of the Bible but it has nothing to do with love for the true God. Many will weep and shed tears for many things in the name of love for the god of their own imaginations while using the name of the God of the Bible. This is very deceptive to them and to the watching world. It is no wonder that the world mocks Christianity so much because the fake gods that are presented are worthy of nothing but disdain. The world mocks “Christians” because of their behavior and irrational outlook, and the truth of the matter is that the world is right much of the time. Many of those who speak name of Christ actually hate the true God and so their religious and moral behavior is indeed irrational in many ways. A false god leads to false behavior. A fleshly person following a god of the imagination is not one that will gender anything but contempt. But the world and religious people alike, apart from the regenerating work of God, hate the true God. While they come at it from different ways and are hidden under different guises, the hatred of all those that hate God comes from a love of self which is the true idol.
People are afraid to hate God, so they must do something to cover their hatred of Him. They will twist and turn to get out of a conscious awareness of being in His presence. They intellectually try to deny Him or distort who He really is. Psalm 10 gives us a picture of this. In verse 4 it says that “The wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him. All his thoughts are, “There is no God.”” Yet it says in verse 11 that “He says to himself, “God has forgotten; He has hidden His face; He will never see it.”” On the one hand the wicked tries to make self think that there is no God in order to commit the wicked acts. Yet after the wicked acts s/he will try to convince himself that God will never see it. Both are acts of hatred against God. Both come from a desire to be god to self and to distort reality for the sake of self. Both reflect the heart that hates the idea of the true God because He is in conflict with the desires of the sinful self. Both are undiluted hatred of God, religious or not.
God Loves... Himself 
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