"The Scriptures teach in 2 Thessalonians 2:10, that many will perish because they 'received not the love of the truth.' To walk in truth, one must really have a love for it, because it is a hard road to walk! Further, in order for one to actually love truth, that love has to be worked in them by God. This is because the natural man is repulsed by, and rebels against, the truth.
Let me hasten to say that I only have a love for the truth because God has worked it in me to love it. I am no better than anyone else. My natural tendency was the same as any individual until God worked in me a desire to know the truth at any cost. And it certainly will cost one to come to a knowledge of the truth. First, because the truth will point out the reality of who we, as natural men, really are- enemies of that truth and of God Himself.
Then, too, the truth is costly in that when one comes to embrace the truth, he finds that he lives in a world where the vast majority do not want the truth and turn on those who do. He becomes an enemy of many in his own family and of many who were at one time considered to be his friends!
This should not surprise us, in light of what Jesus taught when He walked among His own people. In Matthew 10, He told the disciples, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."
The truth sets free the one who receives it, but it also alienates that individual from those who do not want to embrace the truth. This has ever been so and ever will be so."
-Pastor J.M. Grapp
from his booklet: Decisional Regeneration
Monday, February 18, 2008
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