Wednesday, September 11, 2013

The Happy God

The Happy God

  There is a tragic view of God that most religions depict.  This is not exclusive to Christianity, Islam and many other religions throughout the world depict an angry, vengeful God who will quickly smite you if you do not obey even the smallest commandment.  Westboro Church is famous for peddling this kind of hatred.  Even Mark Driscoll depicts a God who has more in common with a wife beating husband than he does a God of grace.


   The very Bible they profess to believe in denies this attitude of God.

1 Timothy 1:11 in accord with the evangel of the glory of the happy God, with which I was entrusted.

  Paul who calls himself the worst of sinners 1 Timothy 1:13-16 also declares that he was overwhelmed by the grace of God.  This does not sound like an angry God.  When your wife overwhelms you with her love and grace what image do you have in mind?  Certainly it's not one like those fellows from Westboro holding up picket signs.

   Too much of religion teaches to be afraid of God and to fear his judgment.  To be sure Proverbs 9:10 tell us the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; but that is not the end of it.

1 John 4:18 Fear is not in love, but perfect love is casting out fear, for fear has chastening. Now he who is fearing is not perfected in love.

   But what about sin?  Some people will say, doesn't God hate sin?  Yes, God does, that's why he sent his son to the cross.  Now is the era of grace, purchased by the blood of Christ in fact Paul writes;

Romans 5:20 20 Yet law came in by the way, that the offense should be increasing. Yet where sin increases, grace superexceeds,

  Where there is sin, grace is GREATER than the sin that was commited.  That is how large the grace of Christ is.  You can never outsin God's grace!!

   What about judgment?  Hell?  

  Well first off, Hell doesn't exist.  In fact, God's grace is so large that he is not even at odds with humanity anymore;

 2 Corinthians 5:18-20
18 Yet all is of God, Who conciliates us to Himself through Christ, and is giving us the dispensation of the conciliation,
19 how that God was in Christ, conciliating the world to Himself, not reckoning their offenses to them, and placing in us the word of the conciliation.
20 For Christ, then, are we ambassadors, as of God entreating through us. We are beseeching for Christ's sake, "Be conciliated to God!"
21 For the One not knowing sin, He makes to be a sin offering for our sakes that we may be becoming God's righteousness in Him.

  God is at peace towards you, in other words.  We now have the ministry asking of the world - be at peace with God!  To make it even clearer, the only person who's angry and at war is humanity.  God has made the peace offering through his son, and is not at odds with us.

  There will come a day of judgment where God will correct all men's hearts, but hell is not the destiny for anyone of mankind.

1 Cor 15:26 The last enemy is being abolished: death.

Death will end, and if death itself is done with.  What remains?  Life, which by implication means everyone will be alive.  To which the ultimate goal of all creation, the consumation that God will be All in All (1 Corinthians 15:27-28)

  There is no other faith that teaches this.  God is at peace with you.  God wants you to be who you are.   God loves you regardless of all that you have done or will do in this life.



  Don't listen to those who are professing a hateful angry God.  That is the lie.

2 Thess 2:11-12 And therefore God will be sending them an operation of deception, for them to believe the falsehood,
12 that all may be judged who do not believe the truth, but delight in injustice.

hmm... Sounds alot like some people holding signs declaring God's hatred.

Travis

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