In all my experience in the church, I have found one thing to be common.

Some say, "If God is all-loving, He would tolerate people for who they are."

Well, first off, that is a very misleading statement because it misunderstands God. God is not "all-loving"; He is love. If God loved everything, He would not be God. If God loved everything, He would love both sin and righteousness, light and darkness, the reprobate and the holy.

This does not stand. First, it depends on what someone means by God. So many people tend to, in direct defiance of the first two of the Ten Commandments, create a false god for themselves. They imagine a god that is soft and cuddly, a god that tolerates their sin and will never judge them.

Also, what is meant by "for who they are"? Have we, as a society, really fallen so far as to equate one's sinful lusts, serial desires, and shameful actions with their very identity? Are we really going to make the most immature traits of man into the very idea by which men are described?

They say, "Come as you are," yet they leave as they came. God is not all-loving. He clearly says He hates. He hates sin, evil, and darkness. Because of this, He cannot simply tolerate these sins, nor can He tolerate the false gods people fabricate.

God is intolerant. But He is merciful. One cannot think of God as a being that will change and conform to their life, but rather the opposite. God does not change for us. We must change for God.

Continuing, some say, "Well, my God would never damn someone to Hell." When someone says that, I actually agree. Your God would never damn someone to Hell because He doesn't exist.

The book of Romans is clear: "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Also, "The wages of sin is death."

Every man has sinned and, by that, earned death. No man will escape it, and no hope of a "tolerant" God will help you. Only the mercy of the Father.

However, with the intolerance of God comes true love. Many will equate love with tolerance. I submit to you that love is, instead, the opposite. Perhaps those who do not tolerate evil love good the most.

Perhaps it is those who do not tolerate evil that most care for others. It might be that those who sit back and tolerate everything are either cowards or those who do not care enough to help their neighbor.

Sin must be atoned for. Allowing evil to persist denies justice. God, in His goodness, fully punishes evil. If good were to tolerate evil, it would cease to be good. Therefore, rejecting sin is essential to truly loving others. A mother might seem tolerant by letting her children play in a busy street or run with scissors, but this is not loving at all.

The modern church has strayed far from this. It has become so wrapped up in using the world to attract the world.

Have people not considered that, first, if we act like the world to attract the world, we will inevitably become no different from the world? Second, God called for Israel to be set apart from the world, and He does the same for His church. We are to be a peculiar people (1 Peter 2:9).

Overall, God is good, and because He is good, He must be intolerant of sin and must punish it.

God did not tolerate Adam's sin, He did not tolerate Sodom's sin, He did not tolerate Nebuchadnezzar's sin, He did not tolerate David's sin, and He will not tolerate your sin.