I picked up The Divine Imperative, by Emil Brunner, at a used bookstore in downtown Kansas City a few days ago. I’d never even heard of the book or the author, but while I was paging through the book while standing in the aisle I came accross this line which made me buy the book to take home.

Love in the sense in which the New Testament uses the word, is not a human possibility at all, but it is exclusively possible to God. Love is an “ultimate” eschatological possiblity; for it will be the last thing when everything else, even faith, has vanished. Hence the state of “living in love” is not something which man can achieve by his own efforts and in his own strength, but it is something which happens to man in faith, from God. The decisive element in this life in love is therfore always to allow ourselves to be loved by God.

He goes on to write some more profound statements about God and about Love:

Therefore God only demands one thing: that we should live in His love…Or, still more plainly: to “Remain in love.” It is the summons to remain within the giving of God, to return to Him again and again as the origin of all power to be good or to do good. There are no “other virtues” alongside of the life of love.

Emil makes an awesome point about ‘doing good’:

True good can never flow from this feverish intensity of effort or from all this painstaking endeavour to attain the Good, but simply and solely from the Central Source of goodness as a state of existence (i.e. to Remain in Love). The “Good” which issues from effort is, for that very reason, not really good; the Good must descend from above, not be striven for from below, otherwise it lacks genuineness and depth.

This is such a clear understanding as to why humanitarianism will ultimately become satanic. Just because someone is feeding the poor and taking care of the needy does not mean that it is a Kingdom building activity. Yes, Jesus wants us to take care of the poor and needy. James tells us that pure, undefiled religion is to visit orphans and widows in their trouble. But these acts must be consecrated to God and done out of a living, remaining, relationship with God and with His love.

There will be an antichrist ruller calling us all into a one-world religion on the basis of compromising for the greater good of humanity. We have to stand strong and un-compromising in our belief of Jesus as the only way of salvation.