Also See Hated By God ON THIS PAGE Christian Clichés that Contradict Christ God's Love/Hate Relationship with the World A Silly Gospel
********
Christian Clichés that Contradict Christ
It has been said that if you repeat something often enough, people will start to believe it even if it isn’t true. This certainly seems to be true concerning many oft-repeated Christian clichés about God's love. Consider the following statements that so frequently reverberate within our Christian circles: 1.) God loves everyone unconditionally.
2.) God loves everyone the same.
3.) There isn’t anything you can do to earn or deserve Jesus’ love.
4.) Jesus’ love for us is not based on our performance.
5.) There is nothing you can do that would make Jesus stop loving you.
6.) There is nothing you can do to make Jesus love you more or less than He does right now.
We’ve all heard these, but are these true according to Scripture? Consider the following words of Christ, spoken to His very own disciples: Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love (John 15:9-10, emphasis added).
Notice the conditional word if in the declaration, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.” Jesus’ disciples are responsible to abide in His love, just as He said, and they do that by keeping His commandments. Only those who keep Jesus’ commandments abide in His love. If we don’t keep His commandments, we don’t abide in His love. That means Jesus’ love for us is conditional, and there is no getting around that fact. (Other scriptures besides this one, which we will consider shortly, make the same point.) So the first cliché under consideration— that God loves everyone unconditionally— is false according to Christ. Incidentally, the Greek word translated love in these two verses of John’s Gospel is agape, which is often defined as “unconditional love,” a definition that is obviously not correct according to these verses.
[Also See What is "Agape" and How Did It Work? We tend to assume at once that "love" means what it does to us in modern times -- a mushy sentimentality that never says a harsh word and never steps on the toes of others.]
But doesn’t Scripture declare that God loves those who don’t keep His commandments? What about John 3:16: “For God so loved the world…”? That must mean that God also loves sinners, which must mean that His love for them is not conditioned upon their obedience. How then are we to reconcile these two apparent contradictory facts of God’s love being conditional and also unconditional? It seems to me that the only way to reconcile them is to simply acknowledge what we all know to be true from experience— that not all love is the same. Some love is conditional, while other love is not conditional. Non-conditional love is known as mercy, and could be called “merciful love” or “merciful favor.” (When someone loves you, he bestows his favor on you, and you experience some benefit because of that favor.) In this article, I will refer to unconditional love as merciful love. It is a love that says, “I love you in spite of.” It loves undeserving people. It is the kind of love God has for those who are not submitted to Him, the unregenerate. His merciful love for them is temporary, however, lasting only until they die. God forestalls His judgment upon them all of their lives as He gives them years to repent. Jesus gave His life for them, providing a way for them to be forgiven. To that degree and in that way, it can be said that God loves them. But there is also such a thing as conditional love. It is known as approval, and it could be called “approving favor” or “approving love” as I will refer to it in this article. It is a love that is earned or merited. It is a love that says, “I love you because you deserve my favor." God of course never loves those who are not submitted to Him with an approving love. Or it could be said this way: God never has a love for them like a father has for his child. Rather, Scripture declares, “Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him" (Ps. 103:13, emphasis added). God has fatherly compassion only on those who fear Him (which implies that they therefore obey Him). God does not have the same compassion on those who don't fear Him. His love for sinners is more akin to the mercy a judge has on a convicted killer who receives a life sentence rather than the death penalty. In light of these truths, clearly God does not love everyone the same, which means that cliché #2 is also not true. Unfortunately, many of us mistakenly think that if love is conditional it is not love at all. Or we even belittle such a love, saying it is purely selfish, and contrary to God’s love. The truth is, however, that God does indeed possess conditional love, as we have just read from the lips of Jesus in John 15:9-10: “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.” Thus approving love should not be sneered at. Approving love is the primary love that God has for His true children. Stop and ask yourself this question: “Which kind of love would I rather people have for me—merciful love or approving love?” I’m sure you would prefer that people love you “because of” not “in spite of.” For example, would you rather hear your spouse say, “I have absolutely no reason to love you, and there is nothing about you that motivates me to show you my favor” or, “I love you for so many reasons, because there is so much about you that I admire”? We all, of course, would prefer that our spouses love us with an approving love, and that is the primary kind of love that draws couples together and keeps them together. When there is nothing that a person admires in his or her spouse, when all approving love has ceased to exist, few marriages last. If they do endure, the credit goes to merciful love, which stems from the godly character of the giver of that love. All this being so, we see that approving, or conditional love, is not an inferior love at all. While merciful love is the most praiseworthy love to give, approving love is the most praiseworthy love to gain. We should desire God’s approving love much more than His merciful love. Moreover, the fact that approving love is the only kind of love that the Father has ever had for Jesus elevates it to its rightful place of respect. God the Father has never possessed even a drop of merciful love for Jesus, because there was never anything unlovely in Christ. Jesus testified: For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again (John 10:17, emphasis added).
Notice the phrase “for this reason” and the word “because.” Both indicate that there is a condition. The Father loved Jesus because of His obedience to suffer death. So there must be nothing wrong and everything right about approving love. Jesus earned and deserved His Father’s favor. (Incidentally, the Greek word translated love in this verse is also agape, proving again that agape should not be defined as “unconditional love.”) Looking again at John 15:9-10, we note that Jesus said that he abided in His Father’s love by keeping His Father’s commandments: Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love (John 15:9-10, emphasis added).
So there is another scripture that reveals the Father’s approving love of Jesus. Moreover, as I have already pointed out, this same scripture indicates that we are to follow Jesus’ example and abide in His love by keeping His commandments. Jesus was clearly speaking of approving love in this passage, telling us that we can and should earn His love, and that we may take ourselves out of His love through disobedience to His commandments. We abide in His love only if we keep His commandments. Again, this is completely contrary to what we so often hear, but we just read it straight from the lips of Jesus. And this exposes the fallacies of clichés number 3, 4, 5 and 6. According to Jesus, we (#3) can earn or deserve His love, (#4) His love is based on our performance, (#5) there is something we could do to make Jesus stop loving us, and (#6) there is something we can do to make Jesus love us more or less. Of course, God still reserves plenty of merciful love for His children. When we sin, He mercifully delays His discipline. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to mercifully forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Yet the fact remains that Jesus only affirmed God’s approving love for those who keep His commandments. Here are two other scriptures besides what we read in John 15:9-10 which make that same point: For the Father Himself loves you [and why does He love you?], because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father (John 16:27, emphasis added). He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me [that is, he who meets that condition] will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.... If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and [because of that] My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him (John 14:21, 23, emphasis added).
Note that in the second quotation, Jesus was not making a promise to uncommitted believers that if they started keeping His word, He would draw closer to them in a special way. No, Jesus was promising that if anyone would start loving Him and keeping His word, then— once those conditions were met—His Father would love that person, and both He and His Father would come to live in that person, a clear reference to being born again. Everyone who is born again has both the Father and Son living in him by the indwelling Holy Spirit (see Romans 8:9). So we see, as Scripture so often affirms, that those who are truly born again are those who have repented and have begun to obey Jesus, and they are the only ones who thus gain the approving love of the Father. God favors such people in a special way—He comes to live in them. He doesn’t do that for those whom He favors with only a merciful love.
The Conclusion
Let’s revisit those six clichés again:
1.) God loves everyone unconditionally. Not true. God’s approving love is certainly conditional. And even His merciful love is conditioned upon a person being physically alive. After death, God’s merciful love ends, so it must be conditional, being temporary. 2.) God loves everyone the same. Not true. God doesn’t love anyone the same, because all, sinners and saints alike, He disapproves or approves to varying degrees. And certainly it is true that God’s love is not the same for His children and the devil’s children. God loves His children much more than those who are not born again. He primarily loves them with an approving love because they have repented and are striving to obey His commandments. As they grow in holiness, He has less and less reason to love them with a merciful love, and more and more reason to love them with an approving love, which is exactly what they desire. 3.) There isn’t anything you can do to earn or deserve Jesus’ love. Not true. Anyone can and everyone should earn Jesus’ approving love by their repentance and obedience. It is true, however, that no one can earn His merciful love, as it is unconditional. 4.) Jesus’ love for us is not based on our performance. Not true. God’s merciful love is not based upon our performance, but God’s approving love certainly is. 5.) There is nothing you could do that would make Jesus stop loving you. Not true. A Christian could forfeit Jesus’ approving love by returning to the practice of sin to live like an unbeliever, putting himself in a position to experience only Jesus’ merciful love. And, similarly, the non-believer could die, and that would end Jesus’ merciful love for him, the only love Jesus ever had for him. 6.) There is nothing you could do to make Jesus love you more or less than He does right now. Not true. There is something believers can do that can make Jesus approvingly love them more: they can be more obedient. And there is something they can do to make Jesus approvingly love them less: become disobedient. For those who are not children of God, there is something that they can do that would make God love them much more: repent. Then they would gain God’s approving love for the first time. And there is something they can do that would make God love them less: die. Again, they would then forfeit the only love Jesus ever had for them, His merciful love.
I hope you can see that these common clichés are not only wrong, but are also very damaging to the cause of Christ, because unbelievers who hear them are deceived into thinking that they don’t need to repent, and professing believers are deceived into thinking that holiness is not very important, whereas Jesus warned that only those who do His Father’s will shall enter the kingdom of heaven (see Matt. 7:21). See Article on Repentance and Section on Holiness ©2007 David Servant and ShepherdServe.org. God's Love/Hate Relationship with the World
David Servant In last month's e-teaching [above] I questioned the truthfulness of six Christian clichés concerning God's "unconditional" love. There was one more cliché that I wanted to mention but didn't have enough space, the very common saying, "God loves the sinner but hates his sin." This particular cliché is actually more biblically accurate than the six I listed last month, because it attempts to affirm God's love for sinners while at the same time upholding His holiness. Yet like the six clichés I listed last month, this one also falls short of the full truth, and it can thus be misleading to people and damaging to Christ's cause. Why do I say this? One reason is because Scripture not only teaches that God loves sinners, but also that He hates them. Surprised? Read for yourself: The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity. You destroy those who speak falsehood; the Lord abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit (Psalm 5:5-6, emphasis added). The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates (Psalm 11:5, emphasis added). I have forsaken My house, I have abandoned My inheritance; I have given the beloved of My soul [God’s people Israel] into the hand of her enemies. My inheritance has become to Me like a lion in the forest; she has roared against Me; therefore I have come to hate her (Jeremiah 12:7-8, emphasis added). All their evil is at Gilgal; indeed, I came to hate them there! Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of My house! I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels (Hos. 9:15, emphasis added).
These verses of scripture are all in your Bible as well as mine! Your Bible declares that God hates "all who do iniquity" (Ps. 5:5). Since all unregenerate people "do iniquity," we can conclude that God hates them all. (Incidentally, this verse among many others leads us to believe that God's "free gift of righteousness" is more than just a legal standing of righteousness that results in no practical righteousness, otherwise God would hate His own children.) But how can it be true that God both loves and hates sinners? The only way to reconcile this apparent contradiction is to once again recognize that not all love is the same. As I stated in last month's e-teaching, some love is conditional, what I referred to as "approving love," and some love is unconditional, what I referred to as "merciful love." (See http://www.shepherdserve.org/e_teachings/2005_06.htm) From the standpoint of His merciful love, God loves sinners (see Eph. 2:4-6; Tit. 3:5; 1 Pet. 1:3, and look for the word mercy). But from the standpoint of his approving love, God utterly hates them—they are in fact abhorrent to Him. Can you imagine how you would feel if you had created a race of people who inwardly knew just how to please you yet who ignored and disobeyed you continually, even using your name as a curse word? Might you not be somewhat upset with them?
[Also See What is "Agape" and How Did It Work? We tend to assume at once that "love" means what it does to us in modern times -- a mushy sentimentality that never says a harsh word and never steps on the toes of others.]
Note that all of the above-quoted scriptures do not say that God only hates what people do—they say He hates them. We cannot separate a person from what he does. What a person does reveals his character—who he is. Thus if God disapproves of sin He of course must disapprove of sinners. God is so pure that His disapproval is very strong, and the word hate describes it well. To separate the sin from the sinner by saying "God loves the sinner but hates the sin" is potentially misleading. Other scriptures declare that certain people—not just what those people do—are an abomination to God.See, for example, Deut. 22:5, 16; Lev. 26:29-30; Ps. 5:5-6; Prov. 3:32, 11:20, 16:5, 17:15. Beyond that, there are many other expressions of God's hatred of certain people in Scripture. For example, when we read, "the Lord did not turn from the fierceness of His great wrath with which His anger burned against Judah" (2 Kin. 23:26), we don't get the impression that we are reading about God's love for sinners.
[Also See Hated By God?]
Regrettably, very little is said of God's hatred or abhorrence of sinners among modern Christians. Most preachers, it seems, emphasize God's love for sinners, and their audiences consequently are often misled into thinking that God approves of them in spite of their sin, which couldn't be further from the truth. The truth is that God utterly hates them, but He is mercifully giving them time to repent and gain His approval before they die, and only in that sense does He love them. When they die His mercy ends, and they will then experience the fullness of His hatred. The people in hell do not think that God loves them. They all know that He utterly hates them. And the truth is that when they were alive He hated them just as thoroughly, but then He showed them mercy, or merciful love. If unrepentant people who are still alive knew how much God hates them, they would be astounded at His merciful love towards them. This also indicates to us that God's holy hatred of sinners and His merciful love toward them are not contradictory aspects of His character. Rather, they perfectly blend together. God's mercy is magnified even more by His holy hatred, and vice versa. Preachers who want to emphasize God's true love for sinners must first emphasize His holy hatred for them. If the history of revival teaches us anything, it teaches us that revival occurs when people are awakened, not to some false concept of a grandfather God who "loves everyone unconditionally," but when they realize their present precarious condition before a holy and wrathful God. For example,Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards, whom God used as a instrument of revival during America's Great Awakening in the 1740s, certainly didn't mislead his congregation about their slippery state before God. In his classic sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Edwards simply affirmed biblical truth about God's attitude toward the unrepentant: The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment....O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder...
What a picture of God's anger and His mercy! Although Jonathan Edwards witnessed wonderful revival in his church and community, he was ultimately dismissed from his pastorate for holding to his biblical convictions. Only preachers who truly love their audiences and who aren't afraid of losing popularity and money can possibly preach such truth. Of course, Jesus was one of those kinds of preachers. Never once did He tell an unsaved audience that God loved them, and there is only one record of His telling one unregenerate individual one time about God's love for the world (and that is found in John 3:16). Rather, Jesus regularly warned sinners of God's wrath and called them to repentance (see, for example, Matt. 4:17; 5:22, 29-30, 8:11-12; 10:28; 11:20-23; 13:41-42, 49-50; 18:19; 22:13; 23:33; 24:50-51; 25:30). What Jesus told one person one time we have made our universal theme to the unsaved, and what He constantly emphasized to them we have kept a secret! Are we really being seeker-sensitive with our non-offensive evangelistic sermons, or are we actually ashamed of Jesus and His words? (See Luke 9:26.) Why are so many pastors afraid to tell the biblical truth even to professing Christians in the church? What does that reveal about those pastors? What does that reveal about their congregations? John the Baptist, whom Jesus called the greatest man who ever lived (Matt. 11:11), never mentioned God's love when he preached the gospel (see Matt. 3:1-12; Luke 3:1-18). He sounded much like Jonathan Edwards, warning his audiences of God's coming wrath. Likewise, there is not a single case in the book of Acts where anyone preaching the gospel told an unsaved audience that God loved them. Rather, the biblical preachers warned their audiences that God did not approve of them, that they were in danger, and that they needed to make dramatic changes in their lives. Had they only told their audiences that God loved them and all they need to do was "accept Christ as Savior" (as do so many modern ministers), they may have misled them into thinking that God approved of them, that they were in no danger, were not storing up wrath for themselves, and had no need to repent. This is of vital importance, because salvation cannot occur without repentance. Jesus told His apostles to "preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Luke 24:47). We may be filling churches with evangelistic messages about God's love, but are we filling heaven? God's love is greatly distorted when modern preachers, under the influence of pop psychology (whether they realize it or not) tell their unsaved audiences how Christ's death proves their value before God. "You were worth dying for" they say. Even the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price is perverted to show supposedly that Christ gave up everything to gain what was of inestimable value—us! (Wasn't God blessed to get YOU?) Paul, however, stood amazed, not at how the cross proved the alleged value of a race of rebels, but how it displayed God's amazing merciful love, because Jesus wasn't dying for good people, but for ungodly sinners (see Romans 5:6-10). His death saved us, not from underestimating our true worth, but from God's righteous wrath that we all fully deserve(see Romans 5:6-10). Apart from God's holy hatred of sinners, His love for them is essentially meaningless. Why don't we follow the example of Jesus and John the Baptist, telling the unrepentant the truth found in Scripture?: God is a righteous judge,
And a God who has indignation every day.
If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword;
He has bent His bow and made it ready (Psalm 7:11-12).
This is the biblical picture of God's love toward the unrepentant. His merciful love restrains Him from releasing the arrow that He has already drawn in His bow, the arrow that is tenuously aimed in righteous indignation at every sinner. This is a biblical example that would have fit right into Jonathan Edward's sermons, or John the Baptist's. The unsaved inside and outside the church are under a huge delusion as they mistake God's mercy for His approval. They will be shocked at their judgment, just like the goats Jesus described in Matthew 25:31-46. They don't understand that God is very kind to His enemies, so they imagine that they are at peace with Him. What a tragedy it is when the church reinforces this delusion. I'm afraid that the bumper sticker that says, "Smile, God Loves You!" speaks volumes about modern theology and evangelistic preaching. Should we really be encouraging hell-bound rebels whom God utterly abhors, to smile? ©2007 David Servant and ShepherdServe.org. A Silly Gospel
David Servant 1.) What about all that the New Testament teaches about the "father-heart of God"? Jesus called God "Father" over one-hundred times in the Gospel of John. How could our loving heavenly Father be said to hate anyone?
The answer is that God is not the Father of everyone. He is only Father of those who have repented and believed in Jesus. They, and only they, are born of His Spirit and have become His children (see 1 John 3:10). All others are spiritually children of Satan (see John 8:44, Ephesians. 2:1-2). Jesus referred to God as His Father, but certainly not as everyone's Father. So to say that God has a father-heart towards those who are not His children is nonsense. [See Salvation] We might also ask, "Because God has a father-heart, does that motivate Him to love Satan and demons?" Obviously not. Neither does God's father-heart motivate Him to love Satan's spiritual children. His love for them, as I've emphasized in my two previous articles, is a merciful love that is temporary, lasting only until they die. I should also add that whenever a certain teaching about God is widely emphasized and becomes popular, even good teachings such as "the father-heart of God," we so easily forget or neglect aspects of God's character that Scripture emphasizes as much or even more. This has certainly been true regarding teaching about the father-heart of God. To emphasize that God loves His children is good, but to reduce God to nothing more than the equivalent of an earthly father does Him a great injustice. He is so much more. How many earthly fathers do you know who have no beginning or end, have created a universe, invented animals, reign over angels, possess infinite knowledge and power, never sin, will one day judge everyone, and are the sum of perfection? Scripture says that God is love, but it also says that He is a consuming fire (see Hebrews 12:29). Both are equally true. Paul wrote, "Behold the kindness and severity of God" (Romans 11:22). To focus solely on one aspect of God's character while neglecting other aspects is a form of idolatry---the worship of a god of our own invention. How many of us are at least a little bit guilty of this kind of idolatry? Take a look at your Bible. What verses have you underlined or highlighted? I'll bet they're all "good ones"! But God gave us the whole Bible. We would be better to underline every verse in the Bible, even those that plainly speak of God's hatred and abhorrence of sinners, as well as His wrath upon them. Every one of those verses is just as inspired as those we have underlined.
2.) When Jesus was on the earth, He didn't exemplify the kind of hatred for sinners that you have attributed to God.
Of course not. God's hatred of sinners is manifested primarily when His mercy for them ends. "Mercy triumphs over judgment" (James. 2:13), and temporary mercy temporarily triumphs over judgment.
While Jesus ministered on the earth, He related to the unrepentant in the same way that the Father is relating to them every day---with merciful love. "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45). But Jesus continually warned everyone that God's mercy would one day end for the unrepentant, and then His wrath would fall. He couldn't have made it clearer that sin offends God. He spoke of sin and holiness all the time. He called people to repentance as the only way to escape sure judgment. But wasn't Jesus called "a friend of sinners"? He was, but I don't think we should base our understanding of Jesus on one sentence of criticism aimed at Him by self-righteous, religious hypocrites who had no concern for hell-bound sinners. They condemned Jesus only to justify themselves. They also called Jesus "Beelzebul," meaning "ruler of the demons" (see Matt. 10:45). Shall we build our understanding of Jesus on that remark by the same critical group? Jesus indeed spent time with sinners, but He was certainly not their friend. The Bible that Jesus inspired says that anyone who is a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God (see James. 4:4). Jesus was not an enemy of God, and neither was He a friend of the world. They hated Him and ultimately crucified Him. Jesus Himself declared that the world hated Him because He testified that its deeds were evil (see John 7:7). That is, He preached repentance. They didn't like His message of repentance and holiness. So let us not imagine Jesus hanging around with unrepentant people, laughing at their dirty jokes and joining in their gossip. Unrepentant sinners were extremely uncomfortable around Jesus. [Also See The Inclusiveness of Jesus] Did Jesus preach a message of God's universal love as we continually hear today? We would do well to ask the scribes and Pharisees, whom Jesus continually condemned, that question. Or, ask the money-changers in the temple, whom Jesus drove out with a whip, or the Syrophoenecan woman, whom Jesus initially ignored and called a dog. These all heard Jesus when His mercy was wearing a little thin. They could all give us a good sermon about Jesus' true character that would be more scriptural than what can be heard in churches where preachers make rebels feel all warm and fuzzy about God's love. [Also See The Message of Jesus] To understand the full character of Jesus, we must read His warnings of the future judgment, when He speaks of the Son of Man coming "in the glory of His Father with the holy angels" (Mark 8:38). The Jesus of the book of Revelation---who pours out His wrath and kills millions of people---is the same Jesus of the Gospels. The only difference is time. Over time, His mercy runs out. When it does, we read that sinners cower in terror at the wrath of the Lamb? (see Rev. 6:6), the not-so-gentle Lamb. Is this the Jesus whom you believe in and serve? If not, you don't believe in and serve the Jesus of the Bible. Additionally, to understand the full character of Jesus, we need to read the entire Old Testament as well, as it covers a greater period of time where we can observe God's mercy ending on numerous occasions. Jesus said, "If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father" and, "I and the Father are One" (John 14:9, 10:30). Thus, when we read about God's judgments in the Old Testament--- when God kills people by the tens and hundreds of thousands--- we're reading about the judgments of Jesus. He wasn't watching from the sidelines and whispering to angels, "Wow, Dad needs some anger management... He's really losing His cool today!" Jesus was just as righteously enraged at those times as His Father. His mercy had also ended.
3.) Preaching about God's love for sinners is more effective than preaching about holiness, judgment and repentance. People don't want to hear about those things. But if we preach about God's love for sinners, sinners respond. The Bible says that "it is the kindness of God that leads men to repentance."
This reveals the basic problem. It doesn't seem to matter if our message is the same as Jesus', John the Baptist's or the apostles'. Success in Christianity today is most often measured by how many come to church. Using the same marketing principles as Wal-Mart, churches cater to the customers with the hopes of gaining more. If more customers will come to church by means of telling them a message that is agreeable to them, then let's tell them what they want to hear. "That's using wisdom," church-growth specialists tell us. But that is not how to make disciples who love Jesus more than their own lives (as He required; see Luke 14:26). And true wisdom, by the way, begins with the fear of the Lord (see Proverbs 9:10). [See Section on The Church Growth Movement]
Currently, the U.S. armed forces are having a hard time finding enough recruits. What if they adopted a seeker-sensitive policy? What if they promised potential recruits that if they joined, there was nothing expected of them? Soldiers could get up in the morning whenever they wanted. They could practice training drills if they wanted to, but they had the option to watch TV instead. If war broke out, they could chose if they wanted to participate in battles or go to the beach. What would be the result? No doubt the army's ranks would swell. But the army would no longer be an army, and it would become unfit for its task. So it is when the gospel is altered. Lowering the standards inflates Sunday attendance, but erodes discipleship and obedience. And since only those who do the will of the Father will enter heaven (according to Jesus; see Matt. 7:21), this is not the way to get people ready for their judgment. Of course sinners would rather hear about God's love for them than God's displeasure with them or His impending judgment upon them. Of course they are more likely to join churches that don't preach against sin. That is a no-brainer. But is it right in God's eyes to accommodate them?
I'm sure that doctors would rather tell their cancer patients that they are healthy and are going to live long lives. I'm sure their patients would rather hear such diagnoses as well. But doctors tell their patients the truth hoping that they will cooperate and be cured. Likewise, preachers who really love sinners as God does will tell their audiences the truth, hoping that they will repent and be saved. Preachers of repentance are not "hate-preachers" any more than Jesus or John the Baptist were hate-preachers. Rather, it is those who preach of God's supposed fatherly love for sinners, who never mention His righteous wrath or holy hatred, who are the true "hate-preachers." They demonstrate no love at all for their audiences. They are fulfilling Paul's prediction that the last days would see a proliferation of ear-tickling preachers (see 2 Tim. 4:3). They are only sealing the doom of hell-bound people and helping Satan by spreading his lies. They are preparing more chaff for the fire. No exaggeration. And even if they justify their gospel by means of the small percentage of people who are genuinely saved when they hear it, does the accidental salvation of a few justify the deadly deception that seals the doom of thousands? [See Repentance and Salvation] Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would convict the world "concerning sin and righteousness and judgment" (John 16:8). He does that continually, but so often the church works against Him, broadcasting a message that doesn't convict in the least. When the apostle Paul conversed with unrepentant Governor Felix, Scripture says he spoke to him of "righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come" (Acts 24:25a). Sound familiar? And the result? "Felix became frightened and said, 'Go away for the present, and when I find time I will summon you'" (Acts 24:25b). The Holy Spirit convicted Felix---he was frightened---but he didn't repent. Was Paul a failure? Would it have been better if he had talked to Felix about God's love for him, and how he could just "accept Jesus" and be saved? Perhaps he could have led Felix to Jesus...but it would have been "Vending-Machine Jesus," not Lord Jesus. [Also See Seeker Friendly, Church Growth Failures in The Bible] Scripture does indeed say that God's kindness leads men to repentance (see Rom. 2:4), but I would suggest reading that phrase in context. [Also See Never Read a Bible Verse] As Paul explains his gospel in the first two chapters of Romans, he begins by establishing the two foundational pillars of the gospel, humanity's sinfulness and God's holy wrath against sin (see Romans 1:15-2:3). Only after that does he make his statement about God's kindness leading people to repentance. That statement is packed before and after with verses about God's holiness and wrath. Read for yourself: And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each person according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation (Romans 2:2-8, emphasis added).
Taken contextually, Paul means that when people realize how kind God has been to them in mercifully stalling His righteous wrath that they fully deserve, they repent. Just telling people that God is kind does not lead them to repentance any more than telling career criminals that judges are kind leads them to become law-abiding citizens. This gospel that includes sin and judgment has proven to work quite well for Jesus, John the Baptist, the apostles, and countless other preachers over the past 2,000 years. It has spawned every genuine revival in history. It works today in America in thousands of churches, big ones like Times Square Church in New York City, and little ones like the house church I taught at last week in Canada. In either case, the congregations are full of true disciples of Jesus, not typical evangelicals who, as George Barna reports, are virtually indistinguishable from those who make no profession of faith.
4.) What about the Parable of the Lost Sheep? What about when Jesus wept over Jerusalem? Don't those reveal God's love for sinners?
They certainly do, and if you asked those questions, you need to go back and read what I wrote. I never said that God doesn't love sinners. I said that He loves them with an amazing merciful love, and yet from the standpoint of His approving love He hates them, just as Scripture clearly teaches. The Parable of the Lost Sheep certainly reveals something about God's merciful love toward sinners. He is merciful to pursue them. They don't deserve it.
But that parable is not the sum of all truth about God and salvation. It was spoken by Jesus to Pharisees, who didn't understand how someone who claimed to be the Messiah could spend time with sinful people (although they themselves were just as sinful as the sinners they condemned). Loving those Pharisees also with a merciful love, Jesus mercifully took time to explain to them why He spent time with other sinners besides them. But in one of the next parables, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, spoken to the same group, Jesus revealed a little more about God's merciful love and salvation: God mercifully forgives the repentant. And when Jesus wept over Jerusalem, His tears weren't tears of joy motivated by an approving love, but tears of mercy, as He thought about their coming judgment. His merciful love is so great. God doesn't want any to perish, but for all to come to repentance (see 2 Peter 3:9). In light of His holiness, His merciful love for the unrepentant is astounding. But don't forget that the very same Jesus who wept over Jerusalem did nothing to stop the Roman Legions forty years later from crucifying tens of thousands of Jews who rejected Him. It was His sovereign judgment upon them (see Luke 21:22). His mercy ended and His holy hatred was revealed.
5.) The scriptures you cited about God's hatred of sinners were primarily from the Old Testament. Can you show us some from the New Testament?
As I have already stated, the Old Testament is just as much of a testament to the character of Jesus as is the New Testament. Jesus and His Father are one. God never changes (see Malachi 3:6). "Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews. 13:8). So if God hates the unrepentant in the Old Testament, He hates them in the New just as much. And His hatred of sinners is certainly revealed all through the New Testament. In every warning of future judgment, in every description of hell by Jesus or the apostles, and in every terrible judgment foretold in the book of Revelation, God's hatred of sinners is strongly shown. Are we to think that God loves the people whom He kills and casts into hell? (Strange love indeed.) As I asked last time, Do people in hell think that God loves them? If God hates them when they are in hell (which He obviously does), when did His hatred begin for them? Are we to think that He cherished them dearly all their lives like a father does his child, and then suddenly, at their death, His attitude toward them completely changed? The answers to these questions are obvious. [See Section on Hell... Not exactly what it is usually made out to be]
The answers to these questions also show us how silly the modern "all-love" gospel has become. Without mention of sin righteousness or judgment (the three things Jesus said the Spirit would convict people of), we tell them, "Jesus loves you dearly, more than anyone has ever loved you, like a father loves his precious child. Just invite Him into your heart." "What will happen to me if I don't invite into my heart this Jesus who loves me so dearly?" "Well, uh, um, well...." "So what will happen to me if I don't invite into my heart this Jesus who loves me so dearly?" "He will cast you into hell where you will weep and gnash your teeth as you burn in eternal flames." Doesn't that message sound just a wee bit inconsistent? | 
