God So Loved The World

He then expects us to choose to love him...

This is the sixth and final post from Chapter 2 of Friends With God: “How Do You Love God As His Friend”. In previous posts we examined the wrong interpretation of Jeremiah 17:9, which many preachers use to tell us that we have a “human nature”, which consists of a “wicked heart”. They then go on to denigrate our attempts at righteousness.

In this post we will examine what it means to be righteous, and that God expects us to actually become righteous in our lives and in our minds.

We Need To Be Righteous

We are told in the Book of Revelation that white Robes, and the fine linen they are made from symbolize the righteousness of the saints. (Rev 19:8, 6:11, 7:9-14)

God is interested in our choice to be righteous, and he will reward us openly for our love and delight in his way of life. We are told that:

God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

We are not told that God hates humans because we are flesh and blood, and no matter how hard we try to be righteous we can never please him! Yet that is exactly what we are told by preachers who try to make us feel guilty just for being human! God’s word tells us that God loves us, and was willing to send Christ to the Earth to show us how to live.  

As discussed in a previous post, God made us as flesh and blood mortal beings and declared that this was good. He made us this way so that He could continue with the second stage of creation, namely the spiritual creation where He would make His heart and mind in us.  We were made with hearts and minds which could choose what we would do – choose good or evil.

In the previous posts we have examined the wrong interpretation of some scriptures that preachers use to say that we have a “human nature”, which consists of a “wicked heart”. These concepts are then used to denigrate people’s attempts at righteousness.

Another scripture used by preachers to tell us we are useless in overcoming sin, is Isaiah 64:6-7 And we are all become as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness is as filthy rags; … and there is none that calls upon your name, that stirs up himself to take hold of you.

While this seems really bad, if you read the context of this scripture, you will see that it’s specifically talking about Israel after it had constantly and repeatedly rebelled against God over many years. It was their iniquities that caused them to be hidden from the face of God, not their righteousness. They were not righteous, but anything that could have been considered righteous in their life was of little value when compared to the evil they had done.

Also notice God says that there is none “that stirs up himself to take hold of you.” God expects us to stir up ourselves to take hold of him. That is what righteousness is- choosing God’s way of life.

The entire book of Isaiah is about the nation of Israel on the slide toward total collapse and violence. Isaiah was warning them that their way of living was going to cause them to be removed from the land which God had given them.

We need to read Chapter 64 of Isaiah in relation to the rest of the book, particularly chapter 58, where God tells Israel how to be righteous. He told them how they needed to change, so that God would delight in them and bless them.

They needed to choose to “loose the bonds of injustice, and to untie the cords of the yoke: to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke … to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him with clothing…” (Isa 58:6-7)

If you take the time to read Isaiah 58, you will see that it’s telling us how to choose to show mercy to our neighbour, and how to choose to be righteous and truly delight in the Lord at the same time. This demonstrates how we can be righteous, and that God will delight in our choice to be righteous.

God will respect such righteous choices; he won’t consider them worthless. He will bless those that are righteous. It is the righteous whom God delights in, because they love his way of life.

Love is more than an emotion; it’s a relationship of kindness, gentleness and delighting in the one that is loved. The friends of God in scripture were those whom the creator of all life not only loved, but also delighted in.

Because of this he was kind and gentle toward them, and blessed them. He also tried and tested them, to see how deep their love really was. These trials were not to hurt them, but to help them to grow in understanding, with a deeper and more pure love toward God.

Summary Of Chapter 2 of Friends With God

God has given us the choice between good and evil, and told us to choose to do good. To teach that God created in us “human nature” or “an evil wicked heart”, which, that no matter how hard we try, we can’t change, is to contradict and denigrate God.

Such teaching stifles the potential of our minds, which he designed to become like his mind:

God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
(2Tim 1:7)
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment. He who fears has not been perfected in love. (1John 4:18)

Unfortunately, fear is the foundation of much conventional Christian doctrine, and such doctrine is not from a mentally sound mind. The concept of “our wicked human nature” is a vain teaching of man, and is not in scriptures, yet it is actually at the foundation of much Christian teaching! Such doctrines distort God’s simple and pure way of life explained in scripture, and scramble your mind trying to understand them.

A mind based on love, rather than fear, is a rational mind, based on love toward God and our fellow man. This way of love is the very way that God’s mind works, and how he wants our mind to work also. (1Cor 2:16) We are to be conformed to the image of His Son… (Rom 8:29) Similarly: For let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:5) 

The purpose of our life is to overcome this world by his love, imparted to us by the Holy Spirit, and thereby be transformed into the spiritual image of God:

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, in order to prove (demonstrate) by you what is that good and pleasing and perfect will of God. (Rom 12:2)

The Lord delights in us, if we choose his way of righteousness: such as are upright (righteous) in their way are his delight. (Prov 11:20)

Righteousness leads to eternal life: In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death. (Prov 12:28)

While we first need to be forgiven of our sins, we also need to be encouraged that we can, and indeed must, live a life of righteousness after we have been forgiven. God imparts to us the spiritual gift of faith in order to do this.

We are not inherently wicked, or we could not also be expected by God to love him and be righteous.

While we are made in God’s image, he is not finished with us just because we have repented of our sins. It’s just the start. He then continues to create his righteousness in us, over our entire lives, as we develop a deeper and more meaningful relationship with him and other people.

Being called by God, being forgiven of our sins, and being given his Spirit to understand his truth, is not the end of our spiritual life, it’s the profound and essential beginning. From this point we then need to continue to choose to listen to God’s teaching and be wise.

I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life… (Deut 30:19)

We don’t have an inherently wicked heart. We are made in his image, and the entire creation is made for us, so that we can use it to develop in us the mind and the delightful character of our loving creator.

Yet God has given us the choice to conform to his way of life and be granted the gift of living forever, or to not conform to his way of life and to die forever. These are the only options.

We should respect God’s love for us, in giving us life, and choose to obey him in love, so that we can become like him. God is looking for you to decide to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

Fear Is Not The Way Of God

Unfortunately, the traditional rendering of Jeremiah 17:9 undermines this supreme goal, and actually promotes a pathological desire to show man only in his worst possible state: totally lacking in self-control, such that we are unable to love God, and are also not worthy of his love.

This very poor translation of Jeremiah 17:9 is incorrectly used to create doctrines that tell us that, even with God’s help, we are unable to change from being wicked!

Because of such doctrines, the Way of Life, as shown in God’s Word, is regarded by non-Christians as being based on paranoia and fear. And this fear is used by false church leaders to manipulate gullible believers.

These attitudes and doctrines about our supposedly evil permanent and intractable spiritual state, are based on poor translations taken out of context of verses such as Jeremiah 17:9.

Due to such teachings, the way of God’s love and mercy and truth is spoken of as if it were evil. (2 Peter 2:1-3)  

God expects us, however, to use our mind to confront our sins and weaknesses, which we can overcome with his help, through his Spirit. We will then develop, over our lifetime, the very heart of God in us, which has as its foundation the wisdom of God:

Then you shall understand righteousness and judgment and equity and every good path. When wisdom enters into your heart, and knowledge is a delight unto your soul; discretion shall preserve you, reason shall guard you, to deliver you from the way of the evil man, from the man who speaks wicked things; (Prov 2:6-12)

God won’t reject those who love him, he is like any friend in this regard. God will deliver those who love him from evil, and also grant us eternal life, so that we may live with him forever.

God wants us to learn to use our minds to control our thoughts, not to suppress our minds under authoritarian church governments, which teach as doctrines the foolish commandments of men. (Matt 15:9, Mark 7:7)

If we do have an evil heart, then that is something we have chosen to have, although we may not realize that there is any other way to live, unless God opens our eyes to his understanding.

God so loved the world that he is willing to help us to change. His love provides for us the example and teachings of Christ to follow, and his Spirit to help us to overcome the habits of our past ways of living.

We also have the written examples of those in scripture to demonstrate that we can live a righteous life, and it will be a life that God will delight in.

When we choose his way, God will then want to be our friend, and he will grant us eternal life, so that we can grow in our friendship with him, and others who also love him, for all eternity.

The example of Christ includes his entire physical life, in which he divested himself of his eternal power and Godhead and became a physical human, born of a woman, like all of us. (Gal 4:4)

He then lived a full life from birth to death, and did not sin, thus demonstrating that there is nothing inherently wrong with our bodies that actually causes us to sin. (Rom 8:3)

We therefore need to follow his example, and overcome the difficulties of this life and, with the power of God’s Spirit, develop in us the very mind and heart of God, as demonstrated by Jesus.

The final part of life is death, and Jesus also showed us how to do this, in a most dramatic and extreme example- by allowing himself to be publicly murdered due to no wrongdoing of his own. Unfortunately, if we choose to follow his way, we are warned that such suffering may be our lot too! (Matt 5:11-12, James 5:10, 1Peter 4:13)

In the next post we will start chapter three of Friends With God: The Joy That Was Set Before Him. Here we will examine why Jesus died, and how his resurrection has provided, within our hearts, the abundant joy that will also enable us to overcome the trials and difficulties of this life, so that we too may be resurrected by God and may follow Christ into eternal life, as the children and friends of God.