The Gospel of Love – a False Gospel
The Gospel of Love – a False Gospel
Many are preaching and teaching the false gospel of love, which comes from Satan and not from God. Why would Satan say God is love, and how can this be false? God most certainly is love (1John 4:8 & 16), but the gospel of love teaches that God is love alone. These teachers might allow that God is other things, but these other things are subordinate to love, covered by love and, therefore, not truly important or relevant. Vast stretches of scripture must be ignored to teach this false gospel, (Hebrews 12 especially). This is unfortunately easy to do since so few bother to read what scripture actually says.
Every scripture must be taken in the context of all scripture – not isolated “sound bites” to support a particular point of view while ignoring anything that contradicts that point of view. Of course, this only works on audiences who cannot fill in the blanks for themselves because they have no knowledge or understanding of the whole of scripture, or they choose to ignore it.
If you challenge a minister of this gospel with the scripture that God corrects those whom He loves, they will reply that He does it in love; i.e., gently, without anger or passion, or any real intent to get you to change. In their view God only says “repent please” never “repent or else”. In other words, He would like you to change, but if you don’t – that’s ok – He loves you anyway. You are therefore free to compromise and determine your own beliefs and standards since God loves you too much to actually act against you in any meaningful way. To swallow this gospel is to ignore the history of Israel (a large portion of the Old Testament scriptures) and many, many prophecies (another large portion of the Old Testament plus parts of the New Testament and the whole book of Revelation).
What is God besides love? We can do a simple exercise by searching the scripture for “God is” and see what we get. With a computer this is quick and easy. The same thing can be done manually with a concordance – it will just take longer. Performing this search with e-Sword (a free Bible study program) with the NASB translation generates the following partial list.
God is… witness, not a man, giving, fighting for us, a consuming fire, compassionate, God of gods, testing you, covenant maker, a dwelling place, among you, terrorizing you, a strong fortress, greater than man, mighty, exalted, awesome majesty, righteous judge, our refuge and strength, in the midst, King of all the earth, my helper, for me, my strength, a refuge, deliverances, good, strength of my heart, my king, the Judge, holy, in the heavens, my salvation, ruler, righteous, jealous and avenging, victorious warrior, able, one, true, spirit, glorified, not one to show partiality, going to strike, revealed, evident, for us, the one who justifies, able, faithful, wiser and stronger than men, not concerned about oxen [sacrifices], the head of Christ, not confusion but peace, not mocked, witness, not unjust, a consuming fire [quote from OT], opposed to the proud, light, greater than our heart, and yes…love.
God is all this and more and yet the purveyors of the gospel of love say God would never beat you with a whip (read Hebrews 12:6). He would never raise His voice; He would never call you a rebellious brat; He would never criticize you in any way. He loves you too much to do that – after all God is love. Those who preach this gospel typically define love as the absence of pain or discomfort. If you are happy, that is an expression of God’s love to you. If you are unhappy for any reason, then that is not God. This is an evil, evil lie from your, and God’s, enemy designed to harm you not help you.
Yes – God is love and a whole lot more. To know the whole God you have to reject the gospel of love that teaches love is all warm and fuzzy happiness and never involves stern correction for our own good. By rejecting God’s true love and adopting their own definition, they condemn themselves and any who believe them to a miserable end.
And God will say, “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23), and their protests that they taught His love and performed mighty deeds in His name will fall on deaf ears. How can you love if you do not understand love, and how can you stand after preaching a false gospel? You cannot.
Don’t respond to a weak and pleading “repent – please”, but rather a roared “repent – OR ELSE!” That is an expression of love unrecognized by the gospel of love … “but He disciplines us for our good,
so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” (Hebrews 12:10-11 NASB).