So how do you receive God’s Word - as He says or by how you feel?
A theologian named Schleiermacher erroneously taught we are free to accept or reject what God says based on how we feel, especially when culture demands that we change how we once felt in the past.
Those who champion his ideas, therefore, teach, albeit falsely, that we are free to reinterpret God’s Word endlessly even though God warns us not to add or subtract from His unchanging Word.
Do you, then, follow those who want us to religiously change the meaning of God’s Word based on how we feel even though St. Paul warns us about our fallen nature: “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” (Rom. 8:7)
This, of course, answers why many "feel" we have the right to deny what God’s Word says, particularly when He condemns our sinful choices. But when we reject what God says about our sin, we undermine the Gospel’s "good news" that Jesus came to save us from it.
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So, when men "feel" free to pick and choose when God’s Word has authority over them, they in essence are demanding that God accept what they feel is "good" as long as we feel "love." In effect, they believe our human feelings are the same as God’s when they are not.
Take for example, the man who recently claimed God in His Word never condemns LGBTQ love as sinful but rather embraces it. And then argued that since the Holy Spirit has enlightened man and speaks of making things new, God wants us to continually find new expressions of love, even in such lifestyle choices as he quotes this verse, “whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
So let’s examine his words. First, he said, God never condemns his lifestyle even though God plainly does in (Rom. 1:24-32). Second, he misconstrues the meaning of the new life we have in Christ as one of turning away from sin to be that Christ accepts any life choice as long as it is lived in "love." In this he denies the Gospel that God’s love toward man was to send His Son Jesus to die on His cross to redeem us from our sin, and not on account of our love.
As new creations in Christ, therefore, true love toward God and man is to keep God’s Word regardless of the culture and how we feel by refraining from all sinful behaviors that His Word condemns. In his feelings of love, however, he rejects God’s grace that promises that when we fall into a sin like homosexuality or, for that matter, any sin, we are to turn in repentance to receive the forgiveness Jesus purchased on His cross.
And finally, to be loving and "feel" culturally in tune, he redefines God’s revealed masculine nature as expressed in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to be feminine using the pronoun "her."
So ask, is it wise to place our feelings above God’s Word for the purpose of justifying our sinful behaviors under the guise of love or to redefine God? Should we let our ever changing feelings and culture redefine Jesus Gospel of grace?
The Apostle Paul wrote to warn us of this danger, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but, after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itchy ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned to fables." (2 Tim. 4:3-4)
For this reason, I am concerned about anyone falling into the trap that says God’s Word has no authority over us as long as our actions are predicated upon feelings of love. Why, because “if all we need is love,” human love as the Beatles meant, what need of we of Jesus' love from His Cross that redeemed us from our sin.
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So my encouragement is, humbly receive God’s Word with all of its authority, both His Law that condemns all our sinful behaviors and His Gospel that teaches us to repent of our sins that we might receive Christ’s true love. His love from the cross that makes sinners like us acceptable in God’s eyes through the forgiveness of our sins and not on account of how we feel about them.
Leslie Uhrinak is pastor at Mission of the Cross Lutheran Church in Crosslake.
