"Love's Deception"

  We have so much spoken today about the love of God. It is all around us. "God loves us!" "God loves us despite who we are!" The statements are numerous and are said in different ways. It is true that God loves with a love that is unfathomable to grasp. God wants people saved and went to a great extreme to show that through His Son.

  Here's the deceptive part of teaching like this. People have come to believe God's love for them that they miss that His love demands change! God's love does not coddle people in their sins. God's love does not simply over-look sin in lives and allows people to just do as they please and they will end up in heaven. God's love is built around His holiness and His righteousness. His love calls for repentance to everyone. That means there must be changes in the heart and life of every man and woman. Too many have believed that God loves everyone that no matter what lifestyle they live or sinful things they involve themselves in, God's love will reach beyond that and save them anyway. Those with such a mind-set aren't responding to His love but abusing His love and grace. They have believed a lie that they can continue their own way and still be saved in the end. This is seen clearly in Acts 17:30-31 where Paul states that God has fixed a day where the world will be judged in righteousness through a man by raising Him from the dead. God's love sent Jesus on a death mission. God's love raised Him from the dead on our behalf. God's love will judge the world in righteousness and man must respond to His love from their heart by changing their lives and mind-set.

  The Thessalonians were reminded that those who did not receive the love of the truth to be saved, they are sent a deluding influence to believe what is false (II Thes. 2:10-12). God's love isn't blind. God speaks His love through His Son and in that love, truth must be loved and sought if they are going to be saved. If it isn't, that person is given the delusion that they will be saved no matter what and off they will go chasing their own ideas thinking they will end up in heaven. That is a complete message of self-deception and it's not cause by God but man twisting the teachings of God!