Tag: unconditional love

Watch out for Perversions of 1 Corinthians 13

On By Jeff CrippenIn false teaching14 Comments

1Co 13:7  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

I suspect that most of you have had this verse quoted by people who are at work to keep you in an abusive relationship. We must love our abuser, you know. After all – love endures all things. And we must believe our abuser when he claims repentance because love believes all things. Yada, yada, yada.

Nonsense. Don’t fall for it.  First of all think about the Lord Jesus. He is obviously the essence of love in a man. Now did Jesus believe all things? Did He believe the Pharisees? As He, by His Spirit, inspired the Apostles to write Scripture, did He guide them into writing that we are to literally believe all things? Of course not. Much of the New Testament consists of warnings against false doctrine and false teachers.

Continue reading “Watch out for Perversions of 1 Corinthians 13” →

“God Can Save Anyone” – A Common Line Used to Keep Abuse Victims in Bondage

On By Jeff CrippenIn Biblical Teaching26 Comments

Heb 3:18-19 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? (19) So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

You hear this all the time from pastors and professing Christians – God can save anyone. There is no one who cannot be saved.” This is an absolutely false and unbiblical statement that continues to do great harm to many. It enables evildoers. Let’s think this through.

Now, it is true that God desires all to be saved:

1Ti 2:3-4 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, (4) who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

I mean, don’t you desire all people to be saved? Of course. It should not surprise us therefore that God desires the same. But all people are not going to be saved. Many are going to hell. So why, if “God can save anyone” does hell even exist?

Continue reading ““God Can Save Anyone” – A Common Line Used to Keep Abuse Victims in Bondage” →

Is Your Abuser a “Child of God”?

On By Jeff CrippenIn false teaching3 Comments

John 8:39-44 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, (40) but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. (41) You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father–even God.”

(42) Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. (43) Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. (44) You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Quite often we hear from Christians, pastors, authors, and counselors something like, “you must love your abuser because he is a child of God like all human beings. God loves all His children, and so must we.”

Totally bogus. I will prove it to you.

Look at the passage quoted above. Does that sound like the Pharisees are children of God? Nope. Who is their father according to Jesus? The devil. They even share the devil’s spiritual DNA.  “If God were your father…”.  But he isn’t. The devil is.

This business of all human beings being children of God is simply the same old theological liberalism that infected the church long ago and which was opposed by faithful saints like J. Gresham Machen.

Think a bit further on this. If God loves the wicked because they are his children, then necessarily his love for them is motivated by something in them. That is to say, in some way, God finds them “loveable.” But is that what the Bible says about man outside of Christ? No way. Did God elect us to salvation because of some merit he saw in us? No way. If he did, then grace is no longer grace.

So don’t ever fall for the line “we must love everyone because everyone is a child of God.” The fact is that the wicked, such as the domestic abuser hiding behind a facade of “saintliness,” is an object of God’s own hatred. And thus the Psalmist can say in perfect holiness:

Psalm 26:5 I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked.

Psalm 139:21-22 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? (22) I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.