Beware of the ‘God is Love’ Gospel

 I intended to write an article on God’s holiness for this edition of the magazine, but had to change my mind in response to a sermon presented in my church last Sunday (April 10, 2022). The sermon series was on the character of God as revealed in both the Old and New Testaments. The preacher used many Scriptures to reinforce her assertions that God’s love is unconditional and non-discriminatory. Earlier, two brethren in the church declared that we can do nothing to make God love us more or less.

I was not particularly alarmed by these declarations until the Holy Spirit gave me understanding about the source of the ‘God is Love’ gospel that is very popular in the West, especially America. I also got an understanding that it is the foundation of the Ecumenical movement promoted by Pope Francis of the Catholic Church. Essentially, the proponents of this false gospel insist that God is too loving to send anyone to hell. They also assert that all religions are acceptable to Him, and that there is no justification in proselytizing to convert people of other faiths to Christianity.

 Having gotten a better understanding of the issue based on revelations received from the word of God, I feel duty bound to make a special appeal to the children of God to be careful with what they assimilate into the souls. If we allow ourselves to be deceived by satan and his agents, we would not have any grounds to accuse them before the Father on the day of judgment. How would we be able to defend ourselves if we neglected the word of God in favour of the contaminated milk peddled by charlatans who pretend to be angels of light?

          No one can dispute the fact that God’s very essence is love. But is that all there is to Him? If we want to know what God said about Himself, we do not need to go outside the Bible. His pen picture or portrait of Himself is captured in Exodus 34:6-7,

“Then the LORD passed in front of Moses and called out: ‘The LORD, the LORD God, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness, maintaining loving devotion to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished; He will visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations”.

A similar depiction is recorded in Jeremiah 9: 23, “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches. But let him who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know Me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight, declares the LORD”.

           So, why would a Christian choose to promote only an aspect of God’s nature and ignore others? Is the same God that is love (1John 4:8) different from the One who is a consuming fire? (Hebrews 12:29). While addressing Athenians in Acts 17:30-31, Paul said,

“Although God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all people everywhere to repent. For He has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead”.

According to Scripture, repentance is a critical step in man’s reconciliation with God. When the Jews asked Peter and other Apostles what they needed to do to be saved, Peter said to them, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the LORD” (Acts 3:19). In our time, we would have told them, “God loves you as you are. There is nothing you can do to make Him love you more or less”.

What is happening in Christendom is clearly a manifestation of the spirit of seduction. According https://www.definitions.net, seduction is the process of deliberately enticing a person, to lead astray from right behaviour. Paul had through the Holy Spirit warned us about what to expect in the end times. 1 Timothy 4:1 states: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils”.

How does anyone read the Bible and still propagate the falsehood that God’s love is unconditional? Even in His relationship with physical Israel, there was always an ‘if’ in His promises to them. In Exodus 19:5-6, God said to them, “Now, if you will obey Me and keep My covenant, you will be My own people. The whole earth is Mine, but you will be My chosen people, a people dedicated to Me alone, and you will serve Me as priests”. Exodus 15:26 also has another ‘if’- “If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His eyes, and pay attention to His commands, and keep all His statutes, then I will not bring on you any of the diseases I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you”.

In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus Christ also gave conditions for a productive relationship with Him. In John 14:23-24, He said, “Whoever loves Me will obey My teaching. My Father will love Him, and My Father and I will come to him and live with him. Whoever does not love Me does not obey my teaching. And the teaching you have heard is not mine, but comes from the Father, who sent Me”. The conditionality of the relationship is also expressed in John 15:5-6, “I am the vine, and you are the branches. Those who remain in Me, and I in them, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without Me. Whoever does not remain in Me is thrown out like a branch and dries up; such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, where they are burnt”.

Even the popular John 3:16 makes demands on humans to respond to God’s love and sacrifice of His Son to atone for sin. That Scripture says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life”. My understanding is that God’s sacrifice and man’s response to His love are both important. None can take the place of the other. A gift that is rejected is useless to the recipient. If a person refuses to accept God’s mercy in Christ, he has condemned himself to eternity without God. That is what Jesus said in John 3:18, “Those who believe in the Son are not judged; but those who do not believe have been judged, because they have not believed in God’s only Son”.

Those who peddle the false gospel of God’s unconditional love would do well to read 2 Thessalonians 1-5-9, “All of this proves that God’s judgment is just and as a result you will become worthy of His Kingdom, for which you are suffering. God will do what is right: He will bring suffering on those who make you suffer, and He will give relief to you who suffer and to us as well. He will do this when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven with His mighty angels, with a flaming fire, to punish those who reject God and who do not obey the Good News about our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the LORD and from His glorious might”.

 What stands out in the cited Scripture is the punishment for those who reject the Gospel. God created us with a free will and does not infringe on it. That is why John 3:16 demands a response from us to God’s love and sacrifice of His Son to atone for our sins. God did not create us as robots. If He did that, He would not have needed to send Christ to the cross to atone for our sins. He could have just opened every man’s heart and put the Holy Spirit there. But that is what satan and his agents are propagating when they tell people that God loves them so much to judge them for their sins. Do not fall for this lie which is from the pit of hell.

You need to collaborate with the Holy Spirit to have a productive relationship with God. That is why Jesus Christ sent Him down to this earth to help us overcome the wiles of satan and have victory over our flesh. Flee from any pastor, overseer of by whatever name they are called that tells you that God loves you too much to allow you to go to hell. Where you spend eternity is entirely your choice. God will not accept you into His home if you do not meet His requirement. Romans 10:9 spells it out: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved”.

Of course, your life must show that you have repented of your sins. As John the Baptist told the Pharisees in Mathew 3:8, “Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance”. Christians are called to be light of the world and salt of the earth (Mathew 5:14-16). Light illumines while salt prevents corruption and decay. Does your life mirror these virtues? I am ending this discourse with an exhortation by Peter on how to make our election in Christ full-proof: