When Truth is Wrapped Up in Lies
I recently heard on a Christian radio station an interview with a well known Contemporary Christian Singer. She said when we sin, we are way too hard on ourselves. We should look at it the way God does. He is looking over our shoulder whispering, “Beloved,” at our mistakes and mess-ups. If we hear anything other than Jesus saying, “Beloved,” it’s not Jesus speaking.
Beloved, yes, there is no doubt that if you belong to Jesus, He loves you unconditionally. There is nothing you can do to make Him love you more, and nothing you can do to make Him love you less. That is the truth. BUT, what this singer is saying is not only a lie, it is heresy! Let’s pull out the lies and see what makes statements like this so dangerous:
- First, a mess-up or mistake is not the same as sin. A mess-up or mistake is burning dinner or making an error at work that costs your company a lot of money. They are the everyday things we get wrong because we are human. By contrast, a sin is an offense we perpetrate against our Holy and Almighty God. Taking His name in vain, putting someone or something above Him, or denying forgiveness to someone – to name a few. In short, sin is us rebelling against the precepts and commands God has put forth for us in Scripture. Nowhere in the Bible does it say miscalculating your company’s earnings for the month, or forgetting you had an appointment with a friend is an offense against God. When we diminish sin to “mess-ups” and “mistakes,” we diminish what Christ did on the cross!
- While God looks at His people as “beloved,” that does not mean He is blind to our sin. Jesus saved us from the punishment our sin deserves, but God does not just leave us there nodding and smiling at us like some doddering, old father who is blind to His child’s bad behavior. If He were, there would be no need for the Holy Spirit to indwell in us and sanctify us. He loves us enough to want to mature us and transform us to be more like Jesus. As Paul says in Romans 12:1-3, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Once we are saved, this is what the Holy Spirit does for us. He helps us present ourselves as a living sacrifice to God by turning our hearts more towards God, giving us a desire to serve Him. He helps us conform less and less to this world by convicting us of our sin (and the sin in the world) and helping us turn from it. He renews our mind to focus on and line up our desires with the things of God. He helps us grow in our discernment of God’s will by opening up the Scriptures to us. How would He ever accomplish all of this if all He ever said when we sin is, “Beloved?!”
- As bad as the lies in #1 & #2 are, this one may be the worst. This singer has not just misinterpreted Scripture and is offering bad theology, she is speaking for Jesus! Friends, unless we are quoting Scripture, we absolutely, positively should never put words into God’s mouth! Who are we, mere man made from the dirt, that we could ever presume to know the mind of God! As I said, if we are quoting Scripture or interpreting Scripture, there is a place where we can say, this is what God wants or this is what God detests, etc., but what this singer is saying is nothing of the sort. She has the audacity to say that Jesus would only say, “beloved” when confronted with our sin, AND that anything else is not from Jesus! Nowhere in the entire Bible when God was confronted with sin, did He simply say, “Beloved.” He says many other things though! The list of Scriptures would be too long to list, but I invite you to look at a few: Matthew 5: 13 – 7:27, Mark 9:42 – 50, Luke 17:1 – 4, John 3:19 – 20, and probably in one of the most known passages in John 8:1 – 11, Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more.” While Jesus has compassion on the woman and treats her with grace, He does not simply call her beloved. He tells her to go and sin no more!
More and more, Truth is being left behind for “what sounds good to our ears,” or for what “seems nice.” Friends, this watered-down, maudlin, liberal theology is being pedaled by “scholars” and “pastors” at an alarming rate. While it may make us “feel good,” it has no transforming power. Only the real Truth found in Scripture can transform a person and save them!
#LiesPeopleBelieve
#FalseTeaching
#Heresy
