Riff's Christian Journal

We have all heard it before. It may have been in an evangelistic meeting, a bible study or even in a personal evangelistic encounter. The one thing that we hear the most at the beginning is that “God loves you just the way you are.”  But, does God really love the sinful person?

Think about this. If you are a non-Christian and you hear someone say that “God loves you”, would you not be happy to hear that? Of course you would. So, if you then are told that you need to come to Jesus and be saved your first thought might be … Saved? … Saved from what? … And why?

This is why a Christian should never tell a non-Christian that God loves Him. The fact is that God does “not” love the non-Christian. In Psalm 5: 4, 5 we read:

4.         For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with you.

5.         The boastful shall not stand in Your sight; You “hate all” workers of iniquity.

Basically the word iniquity means “sinful”. Who is it among us that are without sin? The answer is no one is without sin. We are all sinful people. Not only is God not pleased with they who are not disciples of Jesus, He hates them as well; not just their sin but “them” the non-Christian.

There are other verses in the bible that explain this, and many more that say specifically who it is that God does love, and we may look at them in a later post.

Because we stand in a sinful state before God He demands from us that we pay the penalty for the sins we have committed; having been found guilty for not being obedient to His holy Law that He has given to us to follow.

You see, God is a holy God; perfect in every way. He expects from us to be perfect as well, but we are not perfect. We are workers of iniquity, doing what we want and not what God wants. We always seek to do our will and we do not want the things of God. We are actually hostile, or enemies, to God. In short, we have offended this holy God and in His justice He demands retribution because of it. This is what angers Him and why it is that He hates they who do offend Him.

However, even in our sinfulness, being enemies of God, we are given an opportunity to make amends to God for our sins. For God knows that we are acting in ignorance to what we are doing. That is why God tells us in Acts 17: 30 the following:

30.      Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent,

So, even though God does not love us in our sinful state, He does give us a chance to turn from our sinful activities and come back to Him so that we can know His love. But, before we can do that, we need to know what the consequences are for our sinfulness, and what needs to be done in order not to be found guilty for our sins on the coming judgement day.

Sinful man does not know that God has a hatred for him, and that he already stands condemned before Him. The unsaved person needs to be told about this and be given the chance to repent for his sins, and be told in Whom it is that he must believe in order to receive forgiveness. 

In our next message we will look at what the two choices are for the sinful person, and why we must, by faith, believe in Jesus in order to receive forgiveness for our sinful life and be brought into the family of God where we can know and truly experience the love of God.