I recoil from mentioning the following because I am acutely aware of people who let this truth displace the truth of God’s love. It is just as dangerous, however, to let awareness of God’s love blind us to aspects of God’s nature. As challenging as it is, we must do all we can to embrace the full truth about God.

It is astonishingly easy for us to consider ourselves Bible believers and yet be lulled into the delusion of thinking that significant parts of the Bible do not apply to us because we have some sort of cozy arrangement with God. It is possible to study the Bible and be so blinded by lust, greed or arrogance as to miss what it is really saying. We are even more likely to miss critical spiritual truths, however, when seldom bothering to read big slabs of the Bible and instead relying on others supplying essentials second hand. Chances are that they, too, are cherry picking, because of the pressure to surrender to the demands of our generation. As Scripture warned:

2 Timothy 4:3 For the time will come when they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but having itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers after their own lusts

We have fallen into deception whenever we imagine we are getting away with taking God for granted or with abusing his grace. Feeling ‘at peace’ about something questionable means nothing:

1 Corinthians 4:4 For I know nothing against myself. Yet I am not justified by this, but he who judges me is the Lord.

Proverbs 16:2 All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; . . . but the Lord weighs the motives.

Proverbs 16:25 There is a way which seems right to a man, . . . but in the end it leads to death.

Proverbs 30:12  . . . pure in their own eyes, . . . yet are not washed from their filthiness.

Jeremiah 17: 9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?

Seeming to get away with something is simply being granted a limited opportunity to come to our senses. Carefully ponder the implications of these Scriptures:

Romans 2:4 Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?

Romans 11:20-22  . . . Don’t be conceited, but fear; for if God didn’t spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. See then the goodness and severity of God. Toward those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in his goodness; otherwise you also will be cut off.

2 Peter 3:9-11 The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some count slowness; but he is patient with us, not wishing that anyone should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night . . . Therefore since all these things will be destroyed like this, what kind of people ought you to be in holy living and godliness . . . ?

(Emphasis mine.)

We must take this seriously because, as much as we want to bury our heads in the sand, the truth is that the God of the New Testament can disown and eternally banish believers who seem to be good Christians. For example:

Matthew 7:22-23 Many will tell me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works?’ Then I will tell them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.’

Matthew 25:41-46 Then he will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food . . .’
“Then they will also answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry . . . and didn’t help you?’
“Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Most certainly I tell you, because you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment . . .

He strikes Christians dead for what we would call trivial offenses. For example:

Ananias and Sapphira sold their own property and generously gave not just a tithe of this considerable sum, nor even several times the value of a tithe, but such a huge percentage that they fully expected everyone to presume that it was the total amount. They were struck dead (Acts 5:1-11).

Corinthian believers who partook of communion “in a way unworthy of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:27) ended up “weak and sickly, and not a few sleep" (1 Corinthians 11:30). Disturbingly, in every other instance in the epistle, sleep indisputably means literally dead – 1 Corinthians 15:6, 18, 20, 51; 1 Corinthians 7:39, [same word in the Greek]). Virtually every Bible scholar agrees that it means they died.

The New Testament insists that the Old Testament was written to warn us of what we could expect if we take God’s grace for granted. 1 Corinthians stresses that those leaving Egypt for the Promised Land commenced with profound spiritual experiences, which he likens very much to our own. They “were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:1-4, emphasis mine). Nevertheless, Paul continues, vast numbers perished in the wilderness because few remained faithful (1 Corinthians 10:5-10). These tragedies, the apostle insisted, occurred and were recorded “for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come (verse 11, emphasis mine – Romans 15:4 is similar). “Therefore,” concluded Paul, “let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn’t fall” (verse 12).

Other divinely preserved Old Testament events reveal the same thing. God’s chosen priests, Nadab and Abihu, for example, made an offering to God in a manner similar, but not exactly identical, to how the Lord had prescribed. They were not turning away from the Lord. They were not even ignoring him. They were worshipping him. And yet God struck them dead for making that offering (Leviticus 10:1-2).

Uzzah, seeing the Ark of God in danger of falling and being damaged, reached out in an instinctive, unpremeditated act to protect the Ark. God struck him dead for daring to touch the Holy Ark (2 Samuel 6:6-7).

God blessed King Uzziah, but it backfired because he fell into complacency:

2 Chronicles 26:3-5, 8, 16 Uzziah was sixteen years old when he began to reign . . . He did that which was right in the Lord’s eyes . . . He set himself to seek God  . . . God made him prosper. . . . His name spread abroad even to the entrance of Egypt; for he grew exceedingly strong. . . . But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up, so that he did corruptly, and he trespassed against the Lord his God . . .

He ended up leprous for the rest of his life, never again able to worship God in the temple (2 Chronicles 26:19-21).

Countless thousands of spiritual honeymooners are not in love with God, but with themselves. They have no idea what they are hurtling toward if they do not come to their senses.