Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
There's a Bible text that has blessed us for centuries: 2 Corinthians 5:14, "The love of Christ constraineth us." In other words, this powerful motivating "love" has its origin in Christ, a gift from Him.
But there's a modern version that makes the verse say that our love for Christ constrains or motivates us! Thus in a subtle way "the truth of the gospel" is perverted into self-righteousness--it's now "our love," from us, that is so powerful. This is subtle, lethal error.
Lukewarmness is a spiritual disease that afflicts God's professed people worldwide. Like arsenic, a very small dose can paralyze spiritually. "The gospel" that Paul was "not ashamed of" was not mixed with any error from "Babylon" (Rom. 1:16). Being unmitigated, undiluted "truth," it "turned the world upside down" (Acts 17:6). We long to see that again!
In these last days, God's urgent call is, "Come out of her, My people" (Rev. 18:1-4). We may physically remove ourselves from a community where error is taught instead of truth and think we've "come out of Babylon." But we may still have "Babylon" ("confusion") entrenched in our thinking and promulgated in our teaching of "the [supposed] gospel" due to a prevailing corporate pride ("thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing," 3:17). We become blind and numb.
This tiny example of confusion is multiplied many times over among millions of sincere people who don't realize that what they naively assume is "righteousness by faith" is often borrowed from a popular Christianity deeply rooted in apostasy from the truth. This infiltration of soul-defiling confusion can be the most subtle and clever that has plagued God's people in all time.
Good News: we are promised that our heavenly Father will empty heaven of every angel to help even one honest soul who is alert enough to "hunger and thirst after righteousness" (cf. Matt. 5:6). Let that one be you.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: August 14, 2004.
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