The destructive claim, "God loves you"

The destructive claim, "God loves you"<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
One of my recent phone calls was answered by a recording that closed with, "God loves you."  This got me thinking.  After some consideration I came to believe that this comment, as it is most often used, is destructive and is NOT the message of Christianity.  In fact, this phrase is actually heretical if not qualified and made clear by the message of the Gospel. Worse yet, "God loves you," is the message of the false prophets from Genesis to Revelation.
Now, if we search the New Testament, nowhere so we find the apostles preaching "God loves you" to the crowds. It simply isn't there. Peter preaches the Jewish church's first sermon and says, "Be saved from this perverse generation." Later he also preaches the first sermon to the Gentiles and states, "He ordered us to preach to the people and to solemnly testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead." Paul speaks the same message in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Athens, "God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent because he has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." The message preached was that God was coming to judge a world full of wicked sinners. If these sinners continued in their sin, they would be destroyed, utterly swallowed up by the wrath of God – but God did provide a way of escape.
God's love and mercy are manifested to the entire world in that the Creator sends rain upon their crops and gives food to all sinners. Even while humanity refuses to obey His commands and follow His wishes, God steadfastly feeds them and provides for their needs: the worst sinners don't starve and the nicest people don't become rich. This is not because God finds wicked sinners "loveable;" it is because from the very beginning God has provided a way for sinners to escape their rebellion and the impending punishment. God even provided an escape from death itself and those sinners who embrace it will live forever. God's expression of love is only fully understood in considering the escape path that He made for a doomed world. Anybody who finds comfort and love ONLY in God tolerating and feeding "sinners doing their best" has actually missed the love of God.  These people end in death and destruction.  God's "toleration" exists for a limited time, until we die or until He returns; ultimately toleration no escape from the coming judgment.  All who fail to repent and embrace the salvation offered in the blood of Jesus Christ will find God, but only in His wrath.
False prophets provide false assurance to wicked sinners. They always have. Instead of clarifying the sinner's need to escape from the wrath of God that is certainly coming in the death and resurrection of Jesus, they offer sinners comfort saying, "God loves you." They point to health, prosperity, wealth, and happiness as evidence of God's love and approval, and they proclaim a message of fictional peace. Those who believe their message "feel" God's love for them – satisfied and content with God's approval. These sinners agree with the false prophets, "Yes, God does indeed love me." Then they die and are damned to torment for all eternity by a just God who pours out His wrath upon sinners.
The point is this: simply saying, "God loves you," and not completing the statement is preaching the message of false prophets.  Instead we should state, "God loves you therefore:
-          He sent His Son into the world so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
-          escape the coming judgment and repent and believe in Jesus, who died for you and now lives to prove His sacrifice is true.
-          do not continue on in unbelief but repent and embrace the love of God that is manifest in the death of His Son on your behalf.
Listen carefully to those who shout their message that "God loves you" in posters, commercials, cards and sermons. If they fail to present the problem of sin and the path of escape that God provided then they are just another false prophet like those that have plagued the world since Genesis. They offer false assurance to a rebellious world doomed to wrath and punishment. Repent and escape the coming judgment and find eternal life in God who became a man and died on your behalf and who now lives to offer you eternal life.
 
 

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