The State of the Church, Part 23

June 12, 2008

Another sign of judgment upon the professing Church today is an extreme lack of prayer. During times of revival prayer meetings were held several times a day and it was a seeking prayer. In our day even the Wednesday night prayer meeting has fallen away and few have those any longer. In the few places where that is held the prayer is primarily for the physical problems of people that few in attendance have even heard of. We would rather pray for a church member’s 122nd cousin who has a hangnail rather than pray for true revival in repentant hearts. We would rather pray for a bodily problem than the spiritual strengthening of the person. We would rather feel good about doing our duty in prayer rather than seeking the Lord for true prayer. We have previously noted from Isaiah 64:7 that when no one is calling on His name and no one is arousing himself to take hold of Him that the Lord has turned His face from them and that is a very hard judgment. When we see the death of prayer meetings, we know that no one or at least very, very few are seeking the face of the Lord in truth from a heart that aches for the Lord.

Without going into the specifics of prayer at the moment, one of the reasons that prayer has fallen into disuse and is really more of a formality in churches today is that our hearts are laden with sin. God does not hear the prayer of the wicked and is far from them. While the liberal ministers believe that they know better now than in former times and sin is not that bad, we have conservatives trying to explain sin away as well. Even if many conservatives don’t explain sin away, their humanistic views of sin have blinded them to the truth of what sin really is. As long as we think of sin as just harming human beings rather than as acts of cosmic rebellion and treason against God we will not see sin as all that bad. Other conservatives are so taken with exegetical preaching that they deal with the words of the text and never get to the sins of the heart. All of those methods or ways of preaching amount to the same as they practically ignore the real issue of sin. This is a sign that the judgment of God is upon us. This should also awaken us to one reason that we don’t truly pray. When we regard sin in the heart, the Lord will not hear us.

Ezekiel 3:26 tells us that it is a judgment of God on the people when the prophet or minister does not rebuke the people. When people are not rebuked for their sin, they don’t see it and so remain under the wrath or judgment of God. “Moreover, I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be mute and cannot be a man who rebukes them, for they are a rebellious house.” When people are not rebuked for their sin, they don’t see it and so remain under the wrath or judgment of God. God was going to judge these rebellious people and so He restrained the tongue of the prophet so that he would not rebuke them for their sin. This should awaken us to the nonsense going on in our day where we are told to stay away from and not teach about sin so that people will be comfortable in our churches. That is no less than saying that we want people to be comfortable in their sin and under the judgment of God. When a minister or leader has degenerated to the point where others are encouraged not to speak against sin we know that the judgment of God is upon us.

It is a sign of bondage to sin and the judgment of God when sin is not exposed. “Your prophets have seen for you False and foolish visions; And they have not exposed your iniquity So as to restore you from captivity, But they have seen for you false and misleading oracles” (Lamentations 2:14). This is surely a word that makes a direct hit on our day. Ministers are saying many false and foolish things and they are not exposing the sin of the people. When the sin of the people is not exposed, the people are not restored. In the Old Testament the false prophets were speaking from the vacuity of their own brains and were not declaring the words of God. They were giving their false and misleading visions. When they did that and did not expose the sin of the people, though indeed the people loved it and the prophets and priests gained financially, the people remained in captivity in another land. This applies to preachers and ministers today who will not expose the sin of those who are in bondage to sin and so the people remain in darkness and are captives to their lusts of deceit and to the bondage of the domain of darkness. A minister that will not expose sin is one that joins hands with the devil to do his work. The devil wants people to remain in the ignorance and darkness of their sin so that he will keep his power over them. A minister that will not expose sin is simply an agent of the devil in doing his work. It is also not enough to preach against certain actions, we must preach to the fountain of sin, which is the heart, and reach the sins that people love.

Surely it is a sign of judgment when the devil can sit easy while the ministers within the professing Church do his work. The ministers will not expose sin because of their love for honor and for fear of running people off. So they have given in to the lies of the devil who is using religion to blind sinners to his vile work in the domain of darkness. Sinners are in such darkness that they do not see the chains that bind them and they need someone to stand up and shine the light of the glory of God in their eyes so they can see who they really are and what it is that truly binds them. It is a terrible judgment when enough truth is taught to deceive people into thinking they are truly saved when in fact their sin is not exposed and so they remain fast in their bonds of sin while thinking they are free. Leviticus 26:39 then tells us the result of being left in sin and the blindness of sin: “So those of you who may be left will rot away because of their iniquity in the lands of your enemies; and also because of the iniquities of their forefathers they will rot away with them.”

What did Paul do in his letter to the Romans in order to get them to the point where their mouth was closed and they had no excuse before God? He preached to them about their sin. From Romans 1:18-3:20 he set out to shut the mouths of Jew and Gentile so that they could see who they were before God and of their great need for Christ and His righteousness. The great doctrines of the Gospel only came out after all that effort in showing people that they were helpless before God in sin. In our day we think we are smarter than Paul and that all we need to do is be nice to people and show them how nice Jesus was and is and they will make a decision to be saved. We think that we are smarter than Paul and that we need to stay away from the teaching of sin in order not to offend these poor people who just need to make better choices. However, Paul tells us that he would not have come to know sin apart from the law. It is through the law that we die to the law and so come to Christ. The preaching of the law is meant to show us how vile we are and the depths of our sin against a holy God.

The law must be preached because the heart must be contrite for its sin and humbled in order to have Christ dwell in the soul. The law must be preached because the unbroken heart is full of pride and self and, though it may have an intellectual belief, it is full of unbelief (Hab. 2:4). We must preach the law in order to be broken from our unbelief, pride, and self in order for Christ to dwell in the soul. We must get that into our heads and our hearts. Unbelief is not just an intellectual problem; it is a problem of the entire soul. The soul must be broken from its unbelief (pride and self) before Christ will dwell in the soul through belief/faith. The law must be applied to the heart and the heart must be reached and broken in order for faith to be in the soul and therefore Christ. When ministers will not preach the Law and deal with the heart so that it is thoroughly broken, they are not doing what it takes for there to be true faith in the soul. In our day we tell people to believe but we don’t tell them that their unbelief is of the heart and that it must be driven out by contrition and brokenness in order for there to be true faith. If we continue to refuse to preach the Law and apply it to the heart faithfully and forcefully, there will be no true repentance for sin and we will not seek the Lord in truth. The judgment will continue.

Surely, then, we can see why prayer is nothing more than a formality in so many churches and why the prayer meeting is considered to be of no importance. A sinful heart does not truly want to see the truth of God and it does not really want to deal with God as He is. If we do not see our sin, there is no real need to seek the Lord as if something is really wrong with us. If we do not see our sin, then we don’t really understand what sin of the heart is and so we think a little behavior modification will serve us quite well. If the Law is not preached, we don’t see the need for a new heart and so we don’t see the need to seek the Lord for a new heart and will settle for a trip up an aisle or to repeat a prayer. If the Law is not preached to show the sin of the heart and the true nature of the heart, then we think that external and formal prayer will do all we need. We will miss what true prayer is and we will miss what is needed for true prayer. We will just go on with a vast amount of self-satisfaction in our formal prayers while we remain deluded in our sin. It is a terrible judgment upon us when even our prayers are forms of judgment and delude us to the true state of the heart.

We must remember that the Pharisees prayed a lot. Their very prayers were also form of delusion on them. But at least they thought that even their external prayers were important. It would appear that in modern America we are worse than the Pharisees because we don’t even practice much external prayer. Can we say that we believe if we do not pray? What is it that we believe if we don’t pray? Jesus told us that eternal life consisted in knowing God (John 17:3). Can we claim to have eternal life if we don’t commune with God in prayer? If we don’t commune with God in prayer, how can we claim to know Him? Thus we see that the professing Church has been plunged into an awful darkness. Unless the Law begins to be proclaimed and applied to the hearts of the people, we who are without prayer have no prayer at all. The Lord has turned His face from us and has left us in our sin and our external and formal prayers. It is truly a judgment that we cannot bear up under much longer. When even what we think is prayer is really a covering up of the sin of our hearts, we are in dire need of God turning His face to us.

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God’s Love for Himself – Applications

June 12, 2008

We will continue with how important it is to know that God loves Himself as His real object of love in all things. We have heard that God loves people and so their suffering is used for good. That makes little to no sense if God does not love Himself in Christ primarily. If God does not love all for the sake of Christ, then there is no true love in a person’s suffering. If God’s love is to the person in a direct manner and is for the person him or herself, then His love does not come through Christ and is not primarily for Christ. Our suffering, then, would not make sense because we think that love would prevent suffering and in a human sense it does. But instead God loves us for the sake of Christ and His love is such that what is best for us is to be conformed to Christ from the heart. God will also use suffering to bring to the top the remnants of our humanism and self-centeredness. When we suffer it is so “natural” to focus on ourselves first and expect God to remove the pain. But the purpose of the pain is conformity to Christ in our inward person. God’s love is for Christ and so all He does is to make people like Christ. But since conformity to Christ is best, what He is doing is true and real love to the suffering believer as well.

It is only when the fog that is brought upon our minds and hearts by humanism and man-centeredness begins to be burned off by the brightness of God’s love for the Son that we can begin to understand these things in their proper relationships. The man-centered view of love is that if God is love then He must love me and if He loves me then these bad things will not happen to me. In one sense the logic itself is flawless, but the premises that the argument or position is based on are heavily flawed. The argument is based on a wrong idea of what love is and a wrong idea of what it means for God to be love. We can see, then, that this is a very practical teaching as well. Many people have left the idea of God and have become professing atheists when they were diagnosed with a serious illness or see an illness in one they loved. Others have stopped believing in a personal God when they had a serious accident. They are told that God has a purpose in the illness or accident and that He is working all things for good and they are to believe that. However, if one does not have a true conception of love or of God as love, then those words are as empty as their former belief. Though it is biblical and true that God works all things for good, we need to understand that in a different way than is commonly set out. The good that is mentioned to these people is not what is spiritually true and does not refer to God’s true love, which is Christ and His love for human beings as seen in conforming them spiritually to Christ. If we tell people who love themselves and think that because God is love He must love them and that means that He must do what they want, then we are simply fueling their self-love and misconception when we tell them biblical things as if all is focused on them. It is nothing but man-centeredness and fuels people’s inordinate self-love and focus on themselves. They need to understand things from God’s view.

When hard things happen to us, we must know that God loves Himself as triune and is focused on the expression of His glory. He is not focused on my physical welfare and His love is not to be judged by how things go with me physically. The glory of God is the primary issue in the entire universe and it is primary in the affections and loves of God. To become a believer a person must be turned from the love of and focus on self to the love of and focus on God. The Greatest Commandment is to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Our very holiness consists in love for God and in being holy as He is holy. If God is truly holy, then, He will do nothing but what will produce holiness in people. If God is truly love, then His love for Himself will not allow for Him to do anything but what produces love for Himself in those He loves. All that God does, therefore, must be working love for Himself in people or He would not be holy and He would not be doing what is best for those He loves.

Suffering makes no sense in a humanistic and man-centered world. It makes no sense in a very religious world or a very Christianized world either if it is presented in a man-centered way. It makes no sense in a Reformed way of looking at the world either if these things are presented in a man-centered way and even of a man-centered God. We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with humanism and man-centeredness and even worse a man-centered God. When we do this, even within the realms of Reformed theology, we have a different God than the biblical One. We have also changed the very heart of Reformed theology into something that is man-centered. When people are suffering, the easiest thing to do is to say something to make them feel better. While it is harder, it is true love for God and them to tell them about the true God. We are encouraged to be nice and to be gracious, but those things can be nothing but lies about God and about other people. The God who loves is the One who sends suffering to conform people to Christ. Those He lives in must speak the truth about God and human beings because only in that will true conformity to Christ take place. Being nice and gracious can be true hate in disguise since it may be from nothing but man-centeredness and a man-centered view of God. True love is all about God.

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Do You Have a Selfish View of God?

June 9, 2008

The natural man can be and many will be centered upon God if God is man-centered. This is simply another way for man to be centered upon Himself. We see this in the teachings of the Gospel very clearly. If we teach a God that is man-centered, a man never has to repent of his man-centeredness in order to believe in that God. As long as man can work up a belief in a God who is centered upon him and loves him as he is, then man can remain self-centered and simply love those who love himself. This does not require a change of heart or a change of love. It is just another way for man who loves himself to expand his self-love. This is the so-called gospel that has so permeated and wrecked the professing Church in America in our day. This is the so-called gospel that has been permeated by man’s depraved desire to love himself and make himself the center of all things. This is the so-called gospel that has been so influenced by the self-esteem movement and a secular psychology that is based on evolutionary teachings and the idea that depraved desires of the heart of man are something natural rather than sinful.

What we must understand is that man’s self-love and pride knows no discernible bounds. This horrible part of man’s nature is a rebellion against God as expressed by the Greatest Commandment (which tells man to love God with all of his being) and yet man loves himself with all of his being. Instead of man exalting God and seeking His honor and glory, in pride man seeks to exalt himself and seek his own honor and glory. Man is so great in his own eyes and loves himself so much that he believes God will save man from hell and do all to serve man in man’s drive for glory and honor out of self-love and self-interest. Man is so blinded by self-love and pride that he thinks that he can do things for God and God will be pleased that man is doing something for Him, though in fact man is in simply using what he thinks of as God for his own purposes.

A man-centered approach to God being man-centered is really one way man tries to use God to serve himself. God created man to be His image and the purpose of man is to be a way for God to manifest His glory. But instead man wants God to be his servant and to do his pleasure. This is easily seen in the way that man prays. Man prays for himself and his own benefit. He prays for God to do things for him that he cannot do. He prays for God to fulfill his plans and do his desires. So we come up with a god that we like that is more powerful than us, yet He is love in such a way that He does not really threaten us and we can control Him by being good and praying. Prayer then becomes an effort to manipulate God to do what we want and we do that by using the name of Jesus.

Man’s pride is such that he tries to do missions, evangelism, and start churches for his own honor and glory. He will invoke the name of God and he will have pious externals, but as the Pharisee who crossed land and sea to make one convert much is done in the name of the honor of self and in man’s pride in thinking that he can do something for God though in fact his own interests are there. A lot of work can be done in and around “churches” simply out of the desire for honor and of self-love and pride. Man in his great pride tried to erect the tower of Babel in order to reach God, and now man is trying to reach God by erecting towers of works and honor for self. He does this because he thinks that God loves him as he loves himself and is focused on him as he is focused on himself. He thinks, as Scripture sets out, that God is like himself.

Until man begins to see that God is God and as God He is focused in Himself within His triune being, man will not see himself for who he is. Until we see that God is focused on Himself and all must be done for His glory in truth, man will continue to think that he can do something for God. Until we see that God’s love is focused on God, we will think that we are the center of the universe and live for ourselves and think that God is focused on our world for our purposes too. Until we can see Christ as the eternal Son of God who is the Beloved of God, we will think that God is focused on us. Until we see that God has an eternal purpose which He is carrying out in Christ, we will carry out our own purposes thinking we are doing something for God.

In the past the KKK thought God was on their side as they espoused racism. There are many now in the African American community that think God is on their side. Both are very wrong. God is fully centered upon Himself and His own glory. Man was created in the image of God and now man wants a god like himself. The fall occurred when our first parents wanted to be as God. That is the essence of sin and of our rebellion. We want to love ourselves and be focused on ourselves rather than God. We want God to be focused on us as we are focused on ourselves. As long as we can think that God loves us and serves us, we will love Him and serve Him. It is not until we see God as utterly glorious in His focus on His glory that we will see our sin, true repentance, and the Gospel.

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The Glory of God Who Loves Himself

June 7, 2008

The true Gospel of God makes men new creations (II Corinthians 5:17). These new creations are new creatures in Christ and have new desires and goals in life. These are creatures with new loves, comforts, and hopes. These are not like the old creatures that lived for themselves and loved only that which loved them, but their old hearts have been crushed and broken and now they have the very love of God in their souls. Now these souls love God for who He is and love His glory and honor rather than their own. Now these souls have pleasure in Him rather than in the pleasures of the world. These are souls that have had their hearts of pride and self crushed and broken and now there is room for Christ to make His home in them. Now Christ is Lord rather than self. Now that new soul is emptied of self and is humble and so Christ is truly at home there. All of these glorious teachings are based on a God who loves Himself within the Trinity rather than from a teaching that focuses on the love of man for self.

A soul that is content with being saved from hell and not being saved from self-love and pride does not understand the glory of God who loves Himself which is displayed and manifested in the face of Christ, and to those who have Christ they become instruments through which that glory is manifested. The soul that wants to retain its position of self-love and pride is one that believes that God loves him or her and will save him or her without changing his or her heart. That is a false gospel. The true Gospel is that there is hope that God will save based on grace which has its cause within the God who loves Himself. The true Gospel is that there is hope that this God will have mercy and will change the heart of the sinner so that it now loves Him rather than itself. This is the Gospel that looks upon the sinner as one that by nature is a child of wrath and dead in sins and trespasses. It looks upon the sinner and sees nothing but a mass of sin and idolatry. The Gospel of God and of the glory of God in the face of Christ is glorious in grace because it starts with nothing but sinners and God Himself. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-7)

Verse 4 is a very intriguing verse. The wording of the verse is a little different, but it shines with His glory. The text tells us that God is rich in mercy and all who know they need even a little mercy are happy to see that. But the verse goes on to say why God has mercy. It is “because of His great love.” This fits with our modern thinking that for some reason God loves human beings and has mercy on them. But so far we don’t have the answer as to why God loves man. When we add the words as the text adds the words (“with which He loved us”), something different is going on. God does not just love a human being and thus it fits the modern perspective of God being love and therefore loving man, but it tells us of this great love with which He loved us. This points to a love within the Trinity and then from that love God gives a love to man. This love is such that it takes dead sinners and makes them alive together with Christ. The purpose of all of this is so that “He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

We can see in the Ephesians 2:4-7 text that God is love and from that love He loves human beings. But a human being is not loved and cannot know that s/he is loved until s/he is raised from the spiritual dead. That is because all of God’s saving love is in Jesus Christ. We must remember that in the Trinity the Father loves the Son. When this text tells us that God’s grace, kindness, and love are in Christ Jesus, we must not discount what that means. It means that human beings are loved in truth only when the love of God is set upon them and they are in Christ. In other words, the love of the Father is still in Christ and is still primarily for Christ. The text tells us the reason that He saves sinners and that is to manifest the riches of His grace in Christ. God’s primary motive in saving sinners is for the sake of Christ and to display the glory of His grace. In other words, His motives in salvation have to do with His own glory. His love in salvation is based on Himself in His triune being.

The Gospel of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of the kingdom, and the Gospel of grace are all the same Gospel and all teach us to trust in Christ alone. We are told many things about what it means to be justified by faith alone, but do we trust in the love of God in Christ alone in order to be saved by grace alone? Can God save sinners to the glory of His grace alone if His love for sinners is based on anyone or anything other than Himself? Can the sinner trust in Christ alone if the sinner believes that God’s love for him or her is based on anything but Christ? If all of God’s saving love is in Christ, and surely no one who believes the Gospel will argue anything different, then a person must be in Christ to be loved in a saving manner. Can this mean anything other than that God loves the Son and all that are united to the Son by faith? Does the Father love sinners and save them in a way where His saving love is not in Christ alone? You see, the Gospel is glorious and gives sinners hope in God only to the degree that it is based on and flows from God’s love for Himself. If it is based on sinners, there is not hope.

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The Vital Importance of Understanding God’s Love

June 5, 2008

As we continue to discuss what the phrase “God is love” means, we must wake up to reality though some will think it is brutal. What some call God’s love in saving sinners is really nothing more than sentimental humanism. If God saved sinners from hell and did not give them a true love for Himself in their heart, then the new birth did not happen and sinners have wicked hearts and yet would be delivered from something called hell. What this ends up as is simply a false god and no true salvation. What we end up with is a group of sinners who love nothing but themselves and what is good for them ending up in heaven where all the focus is on God. They would absolutely hate it there. Saving sinners from hell is not the whole of true salvation. True salvation is being saved from a sinful heart which earns hell and being given a love for God in order to love Him. If we only have a God who is focused on doing external good for human beings, then there is nothing but hell left for us all.

When men and women want to be loved for who they are and what they are, they are cutting their own spiritual throats in their pride. How wicked it is to wish for God the Father to turn from His love for His Son to love human beings. How wicked it is for us to want the Son to focus His love on us rather than on the Father. This shows us that we don’t really want to be saved from sin, self, and pride, but we want to be saved with the wickedness of our sin of self and pride intact. Until we desire for God to save us from our self-love and pride, we don’t really want to be saved from sin and to love God in truth. Until we desire to be delivered from our self-love and pride our only desire is to be delivered from hell. Our desires to be delivered from hell also reflect our idolatry in many cases. If we desire to be delivered from hell even if God has to change and be idolatrous to do so, then we don’t love God and instead love ourselves at the expense of God.

The so-called “Gospel” in most of America today is about a god that loves human beings so much that he could not live without them. He wanted them so much that he sent his son to go and do something so that human beings would not have to suffer. That is not the Gospel of God, that is the gospel that sinners love while staying in their sins. They want to be delivered from the guilt of their sins and not the power of sin itself which resides in their hearts in self-love and pride. Oh sure they will go to church and start to live better in an outwardly moral way. Oh sure they will make some self-sacrifice because escaping hell is worth it. So we end up pleading with men and women who are in the bondage of self-love and pride to trust in Christ out of motives and intents that are no better than their self-love and pride afford. The true Gospel demands that men and women repent of their sin of self-love and pride. The true Gospel is that God changes the hearts of men and women from their self-love and pride and gives them a love for Himself and even shares His life of love with them.

It matters little whether people are Reformed or not in the academic or creedal sense if they do not see that God loves Himself in perfect love and the only hope of sinners is that God would change the hearts of sinners based on His love for Himself and give them that fountain of love that He has and will rejoice in for all eternity. When the evangelism of modern people who call themselves Reformed really has no difference with the Arminians and Pelagians except a little better theology, then we know that there is a problem. Most likely it is located in the area we are discussing now in what the phrase “God is love” means. If we do not believe and love the teaching that God loves Himself and our only hope is in that, then our foundation to understand the Gospel is weak at best. If people are going around evangelizing people based on a method that God loves them so much and now they must do something, they have missed the true Gospel. If we go to people to get them to believe something or to get them to make a choice based only on their self-love, we have a message for them that will leave them in their sins and perhaps harden them in their self-love and pride. We have given them a false gospel and not the Gospel of God.

I hope that it has become obvious that the teaching that God loves Himself has important and vital ramifications for all theology and of life. It is not just something we can tack on here and there, it is utterly vital to all of Christianity. As we have seen in previous posts, it is this understanding of God which helps us to understand grace in its beauty and glory. It is this understanding of God which alone allows for a perfectly sinless Savior and so a true Savior. It is this teaching alone that gives the sinner any true hope of being delivered from self and pride and so to deny self and go to Christ. Self-love and pride will never move a sinner to anything more than self-love and pride. Self-love will never cast out self-love and pride only blinds us to our pride. We must have a triune God who loves Himself so much that He sent His Son to deliver us from hell and from the bondage of self-love and pride. That same Beloved Son lives in His people by love and faith. That same Son gives and is grace itself.

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The State of the Church, Part 22

June 4, 2008

In our day we see a lot of activity under the guise of the Lord’s name. But we must never forget that the Lord is holy, holy, holy and He hates sin even of the heart. We have arrived at the point in the professing Church in America where the externals are thought to be sufficient without attention to the heart. We have arrived at the point, perhaps long ago, where our righteous acts are as filthy rags or garments (Isaiah 64:6). In conservative circles these things are thought about, but still mostly in an external way. We might agree that the so-called righteous acts of the liberals are as filthy rags, but they are liberal. We might even see this as true of other denominations, but we have a hard time seeing ourselves in the mirror of Scripture because our mirror is clouded with the fog of self-love and self-righteousness. In other words, our pride has blinded us to the point we cannot see our own pride. The uncleanness of our pride has blinded us to what is really unclean and so we think we are clean while we are filthy.

The literal meaning of this verse is something that is not nice in our sterile society. We think of our sins as making us unclean, but Isaiah 64:6 in its Old Testament context is brutally hard on our pride if the Lord is pleased to open our eyes. “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Notice the assertions and how they are connected in this verse. 1. All of us have become like one who is unclean. 2. All of our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment. 3. All of us wither like a leaf and our iniquities like the wind blowing a leaf takes us away.

The Israelites to a person had become unclean. In modern thought the idea of being unclean is something that a little soap and water along with the application of some deodorant will fix quite nicely. The thought in this text is something far different. It is the thought of being ceremonially unclean. When a person was unclean in this way, that person was apart from God and the Assembly of God. This thought is also seen in the New Testament in John 18:28: “Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.” The Jews were in the act of lying to get Jesus legally murdered and yet they did not want to enter into the Praetorium because there were Gentiles there and it would make them defiled or unclean. If they were defiled or unclean, they would not have been able to eat the Passover. They were not concerned about the sin of their hearts, but they were concerned about being ceremonially clean. If they were unclean, they could not take part in their religious rituals.

Let us look deeper into this issue from parts of Leviticus 15:19-27:

‘When a woman has a discharge, if her discharge in her body is blood, she shall continue in her menstrual impurity for seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. 20 ‘Everything also on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean, and everything on which she sits shall be unclean. 21 ‘Anyone who touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening. 22 ‘Whoever touches any thing on which she sits shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening. 23 ‘Whether it be on the bed or on the thing on which she is sitting, when he touches it, he shall be unclean until evening… 26 ‘Any bed on which she lies all the days of her discharge shall be to her like her bed at menstruation; and every thing on which she sits shall be unclean, like her uncleanness at that time. 27 ‘Likewise, whoever touches them shall be unclean and shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening.

In Isaiah 64:6 the literal rendering of “filthy garment” is really “menstrual cloth.” What Isaiah is telling us, therefore, is that the righteous acts of the people were the same as tying that which was unclean on us. Instead of being righteous acts, those did nothing but make us unclean and separate us from God. If we are wrapped in a menstrual cloth, then all that we do is unclean and separates God from us even more. Our hearts are unclean in the professing Church and all the outward things that appear as good to us appear to God as if they were wrapped in a menstrual cloth. Anything touched by a woman in her menstrual period made it unclean and it had to be purified. Instead of making things holy or instead of pleasing God with good deeds, when under judgment all we touch and do is filthy and vile to God because we are as unclean as a woman’s menstrual cloth was in Old Testament times.

We have to enter into the mind of the Old Testament to understand what is going on here. To do that I will quote several verses in an effort to bring out the meaning of Isaiah 64:6 and apply it to our hearts:

‘Or if a person touches any unclean thing, whether a carcass of an unclean beast or the carcass of unclean cattle or a carcass of unclean swarming things, though it is hidden from him and he is unclean, then he will be guilty. 3 ‘Or if he touches human uncleanness, of whatever sort his uncleanness may be with which he becomes unclean, and it is hidden from him, and then he comes to know it, he will be guilty (Leviticus 5:2-3)

When anyone touches anything unclean, whether human uncleanness, or an unclean animal, or any unclean detestable thing, and eats of the flesh of the sacrifice of peace offerings which belong to the LORD, that person shall be cut off from his people (Leviticus 7:21).

20 ‘But the man who is unclean and does not purify himself from uncleanness, that person shall be cut off from the midst of the assembly, because he has defiled the sanctuary of the LORD; the water for impurity has not been sprinkled on him, he is unclean (Numbers 19:20).

The unclean person is not just a little dirty, but is one that is guilty of uncleanness. Even touching an unclean thing or person made the person unclean. We see why the Jews did not want to enter the Praetorioum as that would have made them guilty and banned from any religious ceremony. They would have to have been cut off from the people as a whole which was to set them outside the camp or apart from all the others so that the others would not become unclean. At times there was even a final cutting off from the people and the person was not to come back. If an unclean person came to the tabernacle, he was to be made clean by purification. If s/he continued to be unclean and went through the ceremony, it was an extreme violation and that person defiled the very sanctuary of God.

What Isaiah was communicating to the people in his day must be communicated today. When people are under the judgment of God, they are unclean. This is like a person in the Old Testament with a menstrual cloth wrapped around him and yet does not see it as unclean. All that he does is in violation of the laws of God and all that he does, whether outwardly good or not, is unclean. All that person did in his uncleanness, rather than make him right with God, only defiled the sanctuary of God and made it even worse for himself. Surely it can be seen how a person like that would be carried away with sin as a wind blows a leaf. All that a person like that did was sin and even worse than a person who did not try to be religious. This person violated God in an especially unholy manner.

Until a church or the professing Church at large wakes up and sees that it is wrapped in a large menstrual cloth, all that it does will do nothing but bring more judgment upon itself. It is unclean and in its uncleanness it is adding more and more works in an effort to rid itself of its uncleanness and yet all it does is unclean. Each soul in one sense and the church in another sense is a temple of the living God. There is nothing we can do as those who are unclean that does not defile the temple of the living God. As those who are unclean all of our religious deeds and all of our righteous acts are like a menstrual cloth that separated people from God. Are we so blind that we do not notice that God has turned His face from us? Of course He has because we are full of the world and unclean things. Of course He has turned His face because we have the love of the world in us rather than His love in us. Of course we are under His judgment when we love the methods of the world rather than following His Word.

We can be wrapped in the externals of Reformed theology but without a changed heart we have wrapped ourselves in menstrual cloths and are unclean. We can have conferences and teach Reformed theology forever, but until our hearts are purified and contrite our very conferences and services will be as those with menstrual cloths on their hearts. We may think that by bringing the creeds of historical theology into the churches and seminaries that revival is coming, but without clean hearts all that we do is like wearing Old Testament menstrual cloths. We may try for unity in all sorts of ways, but unless it is with people who are pure in heart we are uniting with that which is unclean. We can try to drum up all sorts of interest in historical revivals and prayer meetings, but until we seek the Lord for broken and contrite hearts all that we do is simply unclean. Until our hearts are broken and contrite in truth, the Lord will not turn His face toward us and return. We are involved with so many things instead of the main thing of hearts that are broken from our pride and self-sufficiency. It is easy to continue on with business as usual seeking reputations in denominational circles, but it is far harder to seek the Lord for a broken heart. To seek the Lord for a broken heart means we have to see the pride and wickedness of our own hearts and to repent before the Lord. A broken heart is beyond our methods and so it and the presence of the Lord are very rare in our day.

What we must learn from this is that our hearts must be clean for anything we do to be clean. If our hearts are defiled then all that we do is defiled. The professing Church is under the judgment of God; He has turned His face and has turned it over to a hardened heart. Because it is defiled in the core of its being, all that it does is unclean and vile to God. It has turned to man-centered methods, methodologies, and outward Christian practices while indeed tacking the name of God on to its methods and methodologies. But its heart has not been cleansed and so all of its methods and methodologies are from unclean hands and hearts. The biblical method is to seek the Lord for grace in order for our hearts to be turned back to Him and for His face to be turned back to us. While we seek large numbers and buildings large enough to hold them, our hearts are still far from Him which means that even our outward successes are as impressive to God as menstrual rags. The Word of God brings light to our hearts. It may not always be pleasant to see what is there, but it is still true. We can either hide our eyes from the light or we can bow to God asking for grace to turn from our pride and self-centeredness. We must have grace or we perish.

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Is Your View of God’s Love Idolatrous?

June 3, 2008

When people say the phrase “God is love,” it appears to me they believe that since God is love, then God must love human beings and themselves. Even Reformed people write and speak like that. But what is this but a man-centered view of God? While it is a fact that “God is love,” we must deal with what that this statement means. A man-centered view of God just assumes that because God is love then He must love human beings and, of course, me. We must fight this tendency to view God and His glory from man-centered ways and motives. We make many assumptions based on deeply held presuppositions that if God is love then He must love all human beings and then we assume that we know what love is based on man-centered views. To put it bluntly and perhaps even callously, what can pass as theology in our world today, and in particular the discussion of the love of God, is an abomination to God and is an idol to human beings. Our views of the love of God have not been developed from a study of Scripture and of the character of God, but from and by the depths of darkened hearts that interpret everything by self-love. In our teaching, writing, and preaching on the love of God we have exchanged the glory of God for something made in our own image. Though we have claimed to know God, we have not honored Him and have been given over to futile speculations and so our foolish hearts have been darkened and we have become fools while professing to be wise (Romans 1:18-23). We have suppressed the truth of who God is by distorting His love and so we have exchanged the truth of God for a lie and have ended up in worship of ourselves rather than God (Romans 1:25).

It is utterly preposterous to determine what it means for God to be love by what it means for a fallen human to think he is loved. Even worse, it is a vicious and wicked form of idolatry. It is a wicked thing for a human being to make himself the standard of love for another human being, but when we make ourselves the standard of love for God we have just committed a sin that is beyond human expression or comprehension. We are so blinded by our self-love and our pride that we have made human beings the standard for God’s love and then we try to have as our standard that same god. It is exactly what the Pharisees did in other ways. They saw the standards of God and then moved them to where they were hard to keep but still attainable. We have done the same thing with the love of God. We have changed it to something we can obtain by our own effort and in our own strength. This is simply to say that we have lowered the character of God to make it more like ourselves. It is also to say that when we think of love in a way that is contrary to the character of God, we are vicious in our idolatry.

The only standard for the love of God is His love for Himself. To say that “God is love” according to the Bible is to say that within the triune God there is perfect and infinite love. Was God love from all eternity before He created human beings? Is God love now while untold numbers of people suffer His wrath? Will God be love in eternity while untold numbers suffer His just and perfect wrath for all eternity? If we use the standard of human beings to measure His love, then we will not understand what is really going on and we will not understand love at all. God is love and is perfect in that love for all eternity because He exists in perfect love for Himself as triune and He cannot change from that perfect love because He is life itself and is so immutably.

When we move the focus of God’s love from Himself to human beings, the focus and core of Reformed theology and all of theology has changed as well. The doctrines of God, salvation, of Christ and everything else will have changed. When Christ went to the cross, was His main motive and intent out of love for the Father or out of love for human beings? What is the Greatest Commandment? If Christ went to the cross out of love for human beings then He sinned and no one is saved. Instead of Christ hanging on the cross with a primary love for human beings, He had to have been on the cross out of perfect love for the Father or He was not a perfect sacrifice. This is not to deny that He loved sinners and gave Himself for them, but we must understand that His focus was not primarily on sinners or we end up with an idolatrous Savior, which is no Savior at all.

As we begin to grapple with what the phrase “God is love” really means, we must never back off from insisting that the meaning must be obtained from God’s love for Himself within the Trinity. We must also never back off from the doctrine of human depravity and know that the proud in heart are an abomination to God and that He will not dwell with the proud. All human beings are born in sin and are proud in heart and are at enmity with God. Unless God loves Himself within the Trinity there is no hope for human beings. Unless God loves Himself within the Trinity there could be no possible way for God to have a motive toward sinners other than loathing or disgust. We must get real about the nature of the love of God and of ourselves if we are going to understand the grace of God and of the Gospel. If we don’t, we will look like modern America sliding into the pit, which in fact we are.

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The Cause of God’s Love

June 1, 2008

In the last post we started looking at what the phrase “God is love” might mean. We must also realize that any discussion of an attribute of God must also include His sovereignty and so all love must be sovereign. We must know that God only operates toward human beings by grace and so all of His love toward a human being is by grace. While there is much talk in the modern day of grace coming by works, Scripture tells us that if it is of works it is not of grace (Romans 11:6). In fact, if it is by works it is no longer of grace. Many Reformed people see that but still hang on to certain aspects of it in their quest for holiness, and appear to make grace contingent on holiness. What we forget or don’t understand is that it is grace that makes us holy in the first place rather than works. Rather than our works for holiness making us fit instruments of grace it is grace that makes us truly holy.

Romans 3:24 is a key to this thought: “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” In English the words do not convey the same thought as in the original. What the NAS translates as “gift” others have translated “freely.” But when God justifies freely, what does that mean? It does not have the idea of no cost involved, but the idea of being free of cause within human beings. In other words, for grace to be truly grace, the sinner has no cause within him or herself for God to show him or her grace. The cause for grace is within God Himself. It is only when there is no cause within the human being that grace can really be grace. In that case grace is totally glorious grace.

Ephesians 1:4-6 sets out the same concept in different language: “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” God chose people before the foundation of the world. Now what would move Him to choose people before the world began? Would it have been their holiness or good works eons before they were born? In contrast to that the text tells us that He chose “us” so “that we would be holy and blameless before Him.” Notice that His choice came before the holiness here. We were chosen to be holy rather than us being holy in order to receive something. In light of the fact that He chose some to be holy, it is in love that He predestined sinners through Christ to Himself. We can simply note at this point that saving love is always in Christ the true Beloved. But now notice that the text itself tells us why He did this. He did it “according to the kind intention of His will.” That is not the best of translations. It literally means that He chose according to His own good pleasure or to the good pleasure of His desire or will. Saving love is given according to His desire.

Predestination or choosing to holiness that is done out of love is according the good pleasure of the desire or will of God and the purpose for that is “to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” The text mounts one phrase on top of another to get it through thick skulls and hard hearts that grace is always according to the purposes of God rather than the works or merit of man. The text then goes on to drive another nail in the coffin of the works or merit for grace crowd. That grace is “freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” Grace is graciously given or given without cost or cause within those who receive it. Grace is given only in the Beloved which shows us that it is given us for His sake. The term “freely bestowed” in Ephesians 1:6 is not the same words in the original as Romans 3:24. In this text the word “freely” is from the same root as grace and has the idea of giving without cost or bestowing on free of cost. But to bestow it on freely does not mean simply without cost or merit, but as with true grace it has the idea of being given with the cause of it found in God alone.

It may appear as if the conversation has moved from “God is love” to the grace of God, but it has not. If all grace from God is from God as its cause and man cannot earn or merit grace from God in any way, then this is very instructive as to the nature of true love as well. All love from God comes to human beings by grace rather than it being earned or merited. If love comes by grace and rather than something the human being has done, then why are we loved and what is the basis for the love of God? The basis for the love that God gives human beings by grace is His own love for Himself. The causes of grace and of love are from within the triune God rather than from the human being. In order for grace to be truly grace, the cause for it must be from within God and not man. The cause of love, therefore, can only be found in God rather than anything man is or has done. When we think of what it means for God to be love, therefore, we must take into account that His love is such that it is moved from within the Trinity rather than anything human beings are or have done. In order to receive the love of God, then, we must be broken from any hope or merit within ourselves. Anything less is to base it on ourselves rather than God alone.

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The State of the Church, Part 21

May 30, 2008

As we look back into the Old Testament to see how God judged His people and of the means in doing so, it is hard to separate and make distinctions with utter certainty. We know that the people were judged by having prophets who were unfaithful to the Word of God and in our day we know that ministers are judged by being unfaithful to the Word and by having congregations that do not listen. But it is hard to know the cause and effect relationship between the two. We do know with certainty that there is a correlation between the minister and the congregation as to the judgment. One can be and is a judgment on the other. Both are signs of judgment.

The Congregation:

Ezekiel 33:30 – “But as for you, son of man, your fellow citizens who talk about you by the walls and in the doorways of the houses, speak to one another, each to his brother, saying, ‘Come now and hear what the message is which comes forth from the LORD.’ 31 “They come to you as people come, and sit before you as My people and hear your words, but they do not do them, for they do the lustful desires expressed by their mouth, and their heart goes after their gain. 32 “Behold, you are to them like a sensual song by one who has a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument; for they hear your words but they do not practice them. 33 “So when it comes to pass– as surely it will– then they will know that a prophet has been in their midst.”

In the text above we see a people under the judgment of God. These were a people that said they wanted to go and hear the Word of God, but they were a people that did not do what they heard. Instead of hearing the Word of God with an understanding heart that desired to love and obey the Lord, their hearts went after their lusts and they wanted to fulfill their own lustful desires. The prophet was nothing more to them than one who had a beautiful voice because they heard the words and did not do them. Even when the minister is preaching the truth, God may be withholding understanding from the people. Even when the minister is preaching the truth, God may be judging the congregation. We know that the prophets were not always sent to preach and be the means of revival, but instead their message of truth was sent to harden the hearts of the people. When a congregation will not listen to the Word of God, it is being judged. When a congregation is receiving the truth of God and it does not understand, that can also be a judgment of God. In America there are many who are willing to go and “listen,” but not many who obey.

The Ministry:

Ezekiel 34:1 – Then the word of the LORD came to me saying, 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to those shepherds, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “Woe, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock? 3 “You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat sheep without feeding the flock. 4 “Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost; but with force and with severity you have dominated them. 5 “They were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and they became food for every beast of the field and were scattered. 6 “My flock wandered through all the mountains and on every high hill; My flock was scattered over all the surface of the earth, and there was no one to search or seek for them.”‘” 7 Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: 8 “As I live,” declares the Lord GOD, “surely because My flock has become a prey, My flock has even become food for all the beasts of the field for lack of a shepherd, and My shepherds did not search for My flock, but rather the shepherds fed themselves and did not feed My flock; 9 therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: 10 ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will demand My sheep from them and make them cease from feeding sheep. So the shepherds will not feed themselves anymore, but I will deliver My flock from their mouth, so that they will not be food for them.”

The ministry, however, seems to be a means of judgment upon the people and the minister receives a terrible judgment for being an agent of error to the people. In fact, we can see from verse 10 that there are times when God delivers His people from the shepherds. The sheep or the congregation is seen as largely under the care of the minister. In Israel the ministers were to feed the sheep instead of themselves. They were seen by God as slaughtering the sheep without feeding the flock. They were seen by God as not strengthening the flock or healing the diseased. They were seen by God as not binding the broken, not gathering the scattered and not seeking the lost. The people were scattered because they had no true shepherd and they became food for every beast. What does that picture? It sounds like modern America. We have people filling the pews in some building and yet they are without a shepherd. They come and go as they please and yet no one is really looking after their souls. Sure there are programs enacted and ministries carried forth, but there are few shepherds in the land.

The ministry in America is really more of a profession rather than men that God has raised up to feed and nurture the sheep. The minister is now a CEO who is in charge of the vision and of the public relations of the church. When that business model is brought in, who is to feed the sheep? God’s people were scattered then and they were easy pickings and became prey. That is exactly what has happened to the flock today. As the ministry has become busy with everything else, the sheep are starving without true food and have become prey to all sorts of heretical teachings. Instead of shepherding the flock of God that He has purchased with His own blood (Acts 20:28-31), the ministry has become all about numbers, honors, respect and climbing denominational ladders. Instead of feeding the sheep with the Word of God and understanding, the shepherds feed the sheep with the pollution and wisdom of the world. Instead of preaching the Word of God and driving it to the heart, we have become experts at stories and jokes to make the people laugh and feel comfortable as they continue on their path into the flames of hell.

It is not enough to blame the congregation and it is not enough to blame the ministers. There is enough blame for all. We can blame the liberals all we want, but we must understand that this is true of conservatives and the Reformed as well. Just because a man is labeled a conservative does not mean that he is preaching the truth about God and the sin of man. Just because a man is labeled as Reformed does not mean that man is preaching the truth about God and the sin of man. We must ask some real questions and pray for God to grant us all repentance. Could it be that the Gospel has all but disappeared in America today? Could it be that what we are hearing today is really nothing but the intellectual husks left over from the days when God was moving in true revival? Could it be true that a conservative resurgence is nothing more than a resurgence of conservatism rather than a move of God? Could it be true that a return to Reformed theology is simply the externals of orthodoxy rather than a return of God to His people?

The description of the congregation from Ezekiel 33 fits the professing American Church almost exactly. We still have many attending locations where the name of “church” is on the door, yet how very few really hear the Word of God with understanding and do it. The passage in Ezekiel 34:1-10 describes the ministry of the professing American Church. It is a self-absorbed group that is more concerned with degrees, stature, and packages than with the sheep bought by the blood of God. It is not a group that appears interested enough in the Word of God to labor in the Word and prayer. It is not a group that appears interested in the return of God enough to spend time confessing its sins to God and crying out for Him to break its own hearts and work true contrition and repentance in its own hearts. It is not a group that appears interested in true prayer meetings. Instead it would rather gather at conferences where “experts” come to give academic lectures rather than seek the living God. Then all can leave after a good time of hearing ear-tickling lectures and enjoyable “fellowship” thinking all is well. But where is God in all of this?

The professing Church in America has bought into the business approach to ministry and the psychological approach to counseling. In many ways the “church” is a business to get people in and the Bible is no more than a prop to feed and counsel people with the psychology of the day. As ministers grow in popularity their bank accounts grow larger as well. They have become a success in the eyes of the world and of the religious world as well. But in the eyes of God those men have become nothing but vile and wretched shepherds who have fed themselves and not the sheep. Is God going to move in such a way as to remove His sheep from the shepherds and so deliver the sheep? Is God going to move and rescue His sheep from all the heresies that America is flooded with now because the truth has been taken from the land?

While some might call me an alarmist and perhaps worse, we should remember that Arthur Pink believed that the Gospel had virtually disappeared from the land in the 1940’s. Certainly things are worse now. Could it be that we are in such darkness now that we are like the Israelites who were under the judgment of God and did not recognize it? Could it be that the Gospel itself is truly hidden from our eyes and we are so man-centered and man-focused that we simply don’t see our own blindness and idolatry? Have we truly become so blind that we think God is like ourselves? Could it be that we are so deep in our pride that we don’t see the depths of our pride? Could it be that we think we are being so gracious and all we are doing is being friends with the enemies of God? Could it be that we are being nice because we fear man more than God? Something is terribly wrong and we must begin to seek the Lord for broken hearts in order to seek the Lord in truth. We must do this sooner rather than later.

The ministry must function as the watchmen did in ancient Israel. Ezekiel was appointed a watchman (33:7) and told to hear a message from the Lord’s mouth and give the people warning. If Ezekiel did not warn the wicked, the blood of the wicked would be required from Ezekiel. The watchman was to watch for the enemy coming and to warn the people. Those who take the mantle of a watchman should know that the enemy is already among us and they need to be ringing the bell and lifting up their voices. But instead the watchmen are too busy worrying about what they look like, their finances, and being sure not to offend anyone or wake them up. The spiritual slaughter is immense and the darkness is thick. Yet the watchmen are still busy feeding themselves. While the enemy is busy in the darkness and slaying souls through deceit, the watchmen are not taking up the sword of the Lord and delivering His message. Surely the watchmen have a lot of blood on them in our day. When will they awaken from their self-induced sleep and begin to proclaim the message of the Lord? When will they quit breathing the spiritually toxic air of the world and begin crying out to the Lord? Only the Lord can reverse such a sorry state of things. Only the Lord can open the eyes of those who are running around crying peace, peace when there is no peace. But they have yet to see that and continue on in their own strength upholding the name of conservatism and orthodoxy. We must be broken.

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What Does “God is Love” Really Mean?

May 30, 2008

As we go on in this line of thought, in the background we should keep Reformed theology in mind. No matter how pious it sounds and no matter how biblical we are in the sense of being in line with scholarly Reformed theology, we must remember that the heart of Reformed theology must be the heart of what is biblical. If we do not have at the heart of our theology, even if it is orthodox, the biblical God, then we have an idolatrous theology. A theology that agrees with orthodox confessions by the letter can still be idolatrous if we have a different God than found in the Bible and by the authors and signers of the confessions. The God of the Bible is supreme in all that He does and is all about His own glory in love to Himself as triune. Regardless of our orthodoxy and confessions, if we have a God that is focused on human beings and His love is determined by how He behaves toward them, then we have a god that is an idol rather than the biblical God.

With the previous paragraph in mind, could it be that the massive paradigm shift that has occurred within Christianity as a whole and Reformed thinking specifically has moved dramatically with regards to what love means and what it means for God to be love? What does “God is love” really mean? We see that on church signs and we hear it over and over, but many things are assumed by that statement. In fact, there is a massive theology necessary to sustain the statement as it relates to the God who has revealed Himself in Scripture. The statement is certainly biblical, but it is also a statement that can be massively heretical depending on what one means by it. In fact, all liberals who have any belief in God at all would agree that God is love. But they would mean something entirely different by it than a conservative believer. But then the modern conservative believer would mean something entirely different than Jonathan Edwards and others would have meant.

The more I reflect on the statement “God is love,” the more I see how important it is to be clear on what it does mean. If we are man-centered or even think of ourselves as God-centered (where God has a focus on man), we will think of that statement, with its corresponding theology, in a far different way than one who thinks of God being God-centered. The idea of God and His love will naturally have a heavy weight of influence on the way we think of the Gospel and what it means for God to love a human being. The idea of God and His love influences the way we go about doing anything in life. In other words, if we are wrong on what the statement “God is love” means, then we go way off the path in many other beliefs as well. If in fact one vital part of God is that “God is love,” then if we have that wrong we are at the very least very close to a different idea of the true God. If the way we think of “God is love” has a great influence on why we do evangelism and missions, we must get this right. If this has a lot to do with how we view ourselves and other human beings, then this is something we must get right.

But the statement “God is love” seems so self-evident that this has to be an easy statement to deal with. How could we be wrong on something so simple and clear? But we must always remember that we are fallen human beings. As fallen human beings we do not see the truth of God with any degree of clarity at all apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. It is also true that what we do see we want to distort and suppress. If we think of the love of God as something self-evident because we think we know what love is, we are terribly wrong on the issue. We must force ourselves to the reality of the issue and that is that Scripture must teach us the true nature of love and that the character of God is what determines what love is rather than our fallen minds and natures.

If it is true that fallen humans suppress the truth of God and trade the glory of God for a lie, why do we think that the love of God (essential to God) is something that is easy to understand and easy to accept? An example would be helpful at this point. When perfect love came and walked on earth, He did nothing that was not in accordance with the perfect love of God and that was not an expression of perfect love. Yet He was mocked, persecuted, and then killed. We must understand that fallen man hates God and therefore hates true love. We are terribly deceived if we think that by being loving we can talk a fallen man into changing his mind about God. Fallen men hate the true God of love whenever they see it or hear of it. We are greatly mistaken if we think that we can present the love of God in its true form and fallen man will love it. It is a sign that our generation has fallen far away from the truth of God when no one gets mad at us when we talk of the love of God. It is a sign that our preaching is really at odds with the truth of God when unregenerate men will hear us gladly without some hostility. Oh, some will say, we just need to be more gracious. Perhaps that is another word that we have linked with grace and then with love. Perhaps it is just an excuse to be nice without the true love that flows from the true God. Perhaps we should go to Scripture on our knees asking God to show us Himself and therefore what true love is.

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