The Love Delusion :: By Sean Gooding

Matthew 22:37-40

“Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Mark 12: 30-31

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

As Jesus reached the end of His earthly ministry, the disciples asked Him, as they sat together on the Mount of Olives, what would be the sign of the end times? Look at Matthew 24:4, “And Jesus answered and said unto them, take heed that no man deceives you.” Two other times in this discourse, Jesus will warn the apostles about being deceived as we get closer and closer to the end of the age. Just a few days ago, I saw a man pose a question and ask why more Christians did not affirm the gay, lesbian, and trans lifestyle as a part of ‘love your neighbor’ that Jesus called us to do. The man stated that this was the most important command to Christians, that we should love others.

Sadly, this kind of deception has eaten into the fabric of many churches, and it has eroded our doctrinal stands from the inside out. Too many churches see that the most important job of the ‘local church’ is to love our fellow man. As such, we are doing exactly what Paul warns us about in Romans 1: 25, “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” The most important command in the Bible, from the Old to New Testament, is to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and being. We find these words spoken to Israel by Moses in Deuteronomy 6: 4-7,

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.”

We are called to love God first and only first. It is only when we have our love for God in its proper place that we can then truly love our fellow man; all else is a false love. As such, when we love God first, when we cherish Him above all else and hold Him dear and superior in our hearts, then we can love our neighbor in true righteousness. But what we see in the ‘Christian’ world today is anything but love. When we condone sin (I am a sinner), when we don’t encourage the ones we claim to love to obey God, to repent and seek to do right, we are not loving them. When we call evil good and good evil, we are not loving our fellow neighbor. This is not to say that we are to berate them and shun them like the Amish. But if one is in sin, we are to lovingly and humbly help that person to see and choose what God says is right.

All too often, I have seen Pastors and church leaders who have decided that they were wrong about what the Bible says about same-sex relationships because one of their kids is gay or lesbian, and they don’t want to alienate them, so it is God who is wrong or the understanding of God’s word that is wrong, and they begin to ‘love’ their kid more than they love God. This is a delusion. Invariably, they lead the church they serve into heresy, and once one step is taken in that direction, other heresies will soon follow. The fact of the matter is that we are called to love God above all else. No spouse, no child, no grandchild, no friend, no church, and no amount of money is to be loved more than God. Anything we love more than God is an idol, and God hates idols.

Sometimes, loving God will be expensive. There will be loved ones who will not understand why you did not attend the same-sex wedding, or give a gift at the wedding shower, or send a congratulations card to the person getting married. There will be loved ones, even saved loved ones, who don’t understand why you did not let your daughter’s boyfriend sleep over and stay in her room or why you don’t let her sleep over, and on and on we can go.

There is a delusion sweeping into too many churches, and they really think that God is okay with them affirming what He clearly calls an abomination, something He simply hates. The Bible is called old fashioned; Paul is called a woman hater, God is a god of slavery and war, and on and on with the slamming. It does not take long to hear that these folks often hate God but love their neighbor. That is an impossibility. They think God is cool with the murder of babies in the womb because we are loving those women and helping them choose for their health. They really think God is okay if we murder millions of babies each year because we did it in love for our neighbor. The truth is that these actions are done in hate for God, and we use ‘love for our neighbor’ as a tool to hate God.

Notice in Deuteronomy 6:6-7 that part of loving God is to know and keep His words AND to teach them to our kids. The word ‘words’ refers to the Torah, God’s written law to the Jews. Loving God with all your heart is tied to obedience to the clearly written statutes in the law. While we are not under the Law, so to speak, we are still under the underlying principles – learn the Ten Commandments, and then learn the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus leaves us in John 14:15 with this simple command,

“If you love Me, keep My commandments.

This is the plain and simple truth. I pray that you and I will not be deceived and think that loving God can be done while we live in rebellion, affirming to be good what God has clearly called evil. Dear Lord Jesus, come quickly and rescue us from this place.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

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