Please notice the quotation marks in the previous statement (“ “). The “love” that most people claim to possess for their Creator falls short of what I would call genuine love. In fact, the vast majority of “God-lovers” show by their words and actions that they are actually God-haters.
The words “God” and “love” are mighty important terms.
Jesus Christ affirmed that the greatest commandment in God’s law is: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Loving God with a person’s entire being is the most important duty of that person’s existence. Therefore, the failure to love Him with your entire being surely amounts to the most grievous of all sins.
Merely claiming to love God can be a very dangerous thing.
Both “love” and “God” are terms that have been cheapened, twisted, and emptied of meaning. The Bible stands alone (in my opinion, at least) in adequately--in fact, fully--defining both of those terms. There in the pages of Holy Scripture is the truth of who the true God is, and what true love means. That truth must be heard, read, understood, believed, and appropriated.
When it comes to loving God in truth, the doctrines of the Bible absolutely must come into play.
But unfortunately, this is the point at which most “God-lovers” lose their way. Either their ideas about God are inadequate or even untrue, or their definition of love is somehow deficient. People either pick and choose among the characteristics of the true God to create a supreme being they like, or else they reject the Biblical God completely. People assume that their church attendance on occasion, or their charitable work or contributions, amount to a kind of “love” that God should be very pleased with.
In point of fact, the “God” most people “love” is a being who is extremely easy to please.
This is because sinful, fallen men and women “create” gods who closely resemble themselves. You and I tend to be satisfied with a watery, anemic, fair-weather kind of love. And we tend to assume that the god we’ve created in our minds is equally satisfied with an on-again-off-again devotion from its worshipers. When confronted with the glorious, all-knowing, transcendent, sovereign, eternal God of the Scriptures, we tend to think, “Come on, now. God couldn’t be like that really. I like my version much better, thank you.”
The Bible asserts the alarming truth that humanity is fallen. “Fallen” in a spiritual sense. Fallen in our relationship toward God. Fallen in a way that affects every facet of our humanity. You and I are wayward from our Creator--especially in our minds.
We enter this world in a fallen state, with fallen minds. This is why there are seemingly brilliant thinkers in our society who claim not to believe in God at all. These thinkers open their windows on the same wondrous world of creation that Christians do. They look at all the beauty that exists, the order, the design, the absolute genius of the cosmos...and they reject the obvious fact that Someone beyond creation brought it all into being. This rejection of the obvious is a dishonest one. Every thinking person knows that nothing comes from nothing.
Fallen thinkers don’t want an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God to interfere with their self-centered, self-directed, self-satisfied world.
But fallen people are more than mere thinkers. People have feelings. They evaluate things not only in intellectual terms, but in aesthetic and moral terms as well. Our consciences are too active to allow us to dispense with God entirely. The fact that we are moral beings who interpret choices reveals that people realize that there is an ultimate standard of right and wrong. And an ultimate standard of judgment necessitates the existence of the ultimate Judge!
Scripture reveals that this ultimate Judge is not only a God to be feared, but is also a God of truth and love. The true God is a loving Being who expects--even demands--that His creatures love Him in return. Love Him with our whole being.
The Bible also declares that only one human being in all of history has done that. Jesus.
Fallen men and women withhold from God the love and honor and thanks and devotion He deserves. We do it by habit, by nature, by choice. Because we reject the truth God has clearly revealed about Himself, as well as what He teaches us about true love.
But God loved humanity so much that He sent the Lord Jesus to die for those who hated Him!
This God-man, Christ, rose from the grave and ascended to the Father’s right hand. He offers His grace, forgiveness and salvation--eternal life--for all who believe, trust and follow Him. Believers in Jesus Christ receive the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of adoption that cries out “Abba! Father!” The Spirit who connects us to Christ and enables us to love God and worship Him “in spirit and in truth.”
Jesus--God the Son--has loved the Father from the beginning. Perfectly. And trusting in Him as Savior and Lord is the one and only way you and I can hope to love God truly.
(869 words)
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