The Essence of Love is Found in Truth

Love! Love! Love! Everywhere we go in this world, people talk about love as the greatest need of mankind. People who subscribe to a secular worldview say that in order to truly love all people we must be tolerant of all religions and strive for ecumenical unity. Sadly, we are living in a day when the world's mentality has almost completely taken over "the Church".

Recently, my youngest son replied to a comment made on Facebook by one of his "friends" which really drove home the point I am trying to make today. He has never met this person, but somehow they got to be "friends". My son and I are "friends", too. I know this may sound bizarre, but as I think about it, I'm not all that surprised by it. One Saturday morning I happened to go to his Facebook page, and this person's picture just seemed to jump out at me. I clicked on the picture and started reading just the information page. The thing that I noticed first was, "I love God." I love to see a young person glorifying God, so I continued to read. It soon became obvious that this person is very active in a local youth "outreach" that involves "Christians" of every denomination. They meet together, pray together, worship together, go on mission trips together, study the Bible together, serve the community together and play games together. As I read much of the other information listed on the page, I started to get really upset (a) that this girl was not giving a right picture of who God is -- it is not honoring to God to say that you love Him and belong to Him but to live a life as if He isn't Lord of your life or doesn't exist, (b) that this person was so deceived to believe that she truly loves God, but obviously doesn't know what that involves, and (c) that our youth are being given a watered-down gospel without the whole truth about their sin and about the life of righteousness that God expects them to live. I did the only thing I know to do -- I went to my prayer closet and starting weeping and crying out to my God and Father to save these children from the delusion of their false profession of faith, to plow up the hearts of our youth to hear the real message of salvation and to deliver us from this evil world system and all its lies. And I specifically started praying for this girl.

A little later my son got up. After breakfast, he said to me, "Mom, could you come look at something; I want to make sure that I didn't do anything wrong." Imagine my surprise when he went to this exact person's Facebook and showed me the conversation that they had the night before. This girl had joined a "club" on line that promoted same sex marriage. My son simply put a link to a verse of Scripture that says homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God. He didn't make any other comment. I was so taken back by what I read next.

Here's a copy of the dialogue. Notice the "logic" by this girl for her defense of same sex marriage.

RECENT ACTIVITY

So and so joined the group I bet we can find 1,000,000 People who Support Same Sex Marriage.

My son
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%206:9-11&version=NIV

Other person
Seriously..
You really are going to be the inconsiderable jerk who thinks they're funny?
Well listen here, bud, I highly doubt we share the same God, because MY god wants everyone to love everyone, and HE loves everyone equally. I will support gay marriage every time, and I think its more legit than straight marriage, because so many people out there marry for all the wrong reasons: fame, money, etc., and they have forgotten how to love. But it's not like that in a gay marriage. They are going against society because what they feel is REAL! My God approves of real, I don't know about yours...

So do not, I repeat, DO NOT leave anymore comments on any of my activities, status, etc., for you have ***** me off to a whole new level.

My son
I'd like to know what I did wrong. I'm not trying to be funny. I only posted 3 verses from the Bible that show that in God's eyes homosexuality is sin. I'm not hating on anyone. I just find it odd that a Christian would get upset because I posted something from God's Word.

Other person
Yes, I'm a Christian. But I believe God believes opposite of what you propose. I believe the bible is a handbook, not guidelines, therefore I don't support everything it says. God loves everyone.

My son
That statement is such a contradiction. You don't support all of the Bible, but you say you're a Christian. How much of the Bible did Jesus believe? Every single solitary syllable of it. Don't tell me you're a disciple of Jesus Christ and you're following Him and He is the supreme standard by which the Scriptures can be interpreted, and then take a view contrary to that of Jesus concerning the Word of God.

Other person
Dude...Honestly...STOP COMMENTING...
I seriously want to punch you in the face.

Most would say, "Well, you need to correct your son for being so unloving and intolerant. That wasn't a very loving thing to do." Did I do that? No. On the contrary, I was so proud of what God is doing in his life. I was so thankful for the good soil of his heart to not only hear the truth and believe the truth, but to defend the truth in LOVE! And, I told him that. He was being obedient to his Father.

We know that the greatest commandment in the Word of God is this: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. -- Deuteronomy 6:5 Jesus came along and affirmed this commandment in Matthew 22:37 -- "You shall love your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." He said the second commandment originally found in Leviticus 19:18 is like this greatest commandment: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' -- Matthew 22:39 He said that on these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets. In other words, to live the life required of all human beings by THE one, holy God of the universe would be to obey these two commandments perfectly throughout his or her lifetime. People everywhere today "say" they love God. God says, "They don't." 2 John 1:6 -- And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is not an isolated verse if one is familiar to any extent with His Word. it is repeated over and over again throughout. Jesus said, "If you love Me, you will obey Me." If we truly love God, we will walk as He walked. We can see that theme repeated in 1 John.

Humanly impossible, you say? Yes, it is. But, that is the standard if we are to have "fellowship" with our God. To break either of these two "love" commandments even one time results in the judgment of every human being with a sentence of guilty, condemned to hell for all eternity. That's how holy our God is. He is a righteous judge who has indignation every day says the Psalmist in Psalm 6:11. Why is He indignant? Because His creatures sin against Him every day over and over again. They don't love Him. Romans 1 says that they don't honor Him as God or give thanks. They profess to be wise, but they are fools in His sight. They think that they don't need Him, that they can make it to heaven on their own in their own way. Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The glory of God is His holiness; it's all that He is. We miss the mark every time, even when we try to do good. Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. This is THE only hope for any human being. Left to ourselves, we would perish, being eternally separated from God for all eternity. But God so loved His own that He would not leave them in this state. Jesus (fully God and fully man) came into the world and lived a perfect life in order that He could be the perfect substitute for us -- He would be our very own sacrificial Lamb. But He died only for those who would believe in Him and trust Him for their eternal life. Those who would believe would repent of their sins and yield to His Holy Spirit so that they would glorify Him on earth and for all eternity. This is love.

The Bible (which all professing Christians should believe in its entirety and in its literal interpretation) also ties together our love for God with our love for others. We can almost convince ourselves that we love God, even if deep down we know we do not. But to convince ourselves that we love all human beings as God loves is extremely difficult. But what does true love look like for the believer? One misconception that is being stressed today is that we shouldn't judge anyone because to love truly is to be tolerant and to strive for unity at all costs. But is that what God's love looks like? God's love is the basis for understanding what love is, because God is love. And, it must be the God of the Bible, the one and only God of this universe, Creator and Sustainer of all things. To use any other standard to measure love is foolishness, blasphemous and eternally deadly.

I've written enough to think about today. Tomorrow I want to pick this up and talk about false teaching and how we MUST come against it if we are to show the love of Christ to this delusional world.