
This subject confuses Christians. God clarifies this through Scripture, and yet Christians are confused. The purpose of this post is to try to set things straight. Love is tied to reason in that sin makes us callous to God. Love fulfills the Law. Sin is breaking the Law. When we’re callous toward God, discernment decreases. Without discernment, it’s impossible to tell the difference between reality and make-believe. Submission to the Holy Spirit will result in increasing discernment from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord. It results in a mind that is made new, as Romans 12:1-2 mentions.
There are two main distortions of God’s love among Christians. One tries to self-generate love. This is equivalent to trying to self-generate God. It is also equivalent to trying to self-generate righteousness. Self-righteousness frustrates the grace of God. God gives His grace, His free gift of righteousness. When we jump in and try to help, we defile His righteousness with our fleshly efforts. We start with extra-biblical forms, rituals, doctrines, laws, rules, and that sort of thing. We go on to try to do great works for God. We speak visions out of our own hearts (innermost minds). We show contempt for anyone who won’t go along with our foolishness. I say, “we,” because I’m just as guilty. May the Holy Spirit deliver us both.
The second distortion is the target of this meme. There is the notion that “God is love, so God doesn’t care what we do.” It’s the notion that “a loving God doesn’t mind sexual sin, covetousness, stealing, or any other sin that people think will make them happy.” Sometimes, sex outside of marriage is given the false label of “love.” God created sex holy for a specific relationship in a specific order that’s fully defined in Scripture. Distorting sex in any way is not love. It’s the lack of love. When a man and woman violate this by sexual thoughts, speech, or action outside of a life-long commitment of marriage between one man and one woman, it’s not love. It’s the absence of love. It’s spiritual wickedness that enslaves them to Satan. It destroys the order of the home as God designed it. The order of the home is the basic unit of the Church, so it hurts the Church. It’s very destructive. It even destroys countries and societies. The sins people think will make them happy only make them addicted to those sins. They become increasingly ensnared and enslaved. They lose the ability to know the difference between right and wrong. They can’t tell the difference between reality and make-believe. They can’t reason or sense the Holy Spirit’s leading any more. Sin brings death and judgment. Salvation is salvation from sin and to righteousness.
“Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.” 1 John 3:7
Notice that He warns us not to allow anyone to deceive us. The reason that God warns us in this way is because someone is going to try to deceive us. Imputed righteousness is real righteousness. It’s God thinking His thoughts, speaking His Utterances, and doing His Works through you by His Grace, which is accessed through real Faith, which comes to us as we hear His Voice and yield ourselves to Him. That’s what righteousness is.
Righteousness is walking on the Path or the Way. Christ is the Way. He speaks the Truth to us, which He is. When we walk in the Way, we are walking in the Life of the coming Age, a Life which He is. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Truth is reality. It’s what’s really real.
We walk in this way by hearing and acknowledging the leading of Christ. We can’t self-generate righteousness, but we can will to do His Will rather than our own wills or the wills of other people or the wills of demons. There are many who would like to lead us, including our own minds. Christ may speak through other Christians to lead us. God speaks of that in 1 Corinthians 12. He says that God isn’t like an idol that’s incapable of articulate speech. He’s not dumb, unable to talk. Then, He says that no person can call Jesus accursed by the Holy Spirit and no one can say that Jesus is Lord without the Holy Spirit. Then, He goes on to name the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit that make Christ visible in His Body of believers. In other Scripture, He explains how those gifts are imparted by the laying on of hands and prophecy of the presbytery.
Sin is stepping or slipping off of this way. Sin is listening to our own leading, turning our will inward toward our own fleshly minds or generating visions out of our own hearts. Sin is listening to those who aren’t speaking by the Spirit of God, ungodly counselors or Christians who are following their own intellects. Sin is listening to the leading of demonic powers by exposing ourselves to that which is filthy, violent, or sensual. This may be conversations where we try to fit in with the ungodly. This may be various forms of media, magazines at the checkout counter, Internet images, TV shows that are increasingly violent and increasingly promote perversions of sex. It includes every misrepresentation of the Good News about what Jesus Christ is doing in and through His Church.




