Jeremiah 5:31, commentary and pictures

The verse lays bare a wonderful and horrible thing committed in the land, a grievous sin and crime and an alarming condition among God's professed people, where iniquities have turned away good things and sins have withheld good from them. The prophets prophesy falsely by speaking smooth things, lies, and peace and safety, and the priests bear rule by their means by exercising control and authority through them. Unlike God's true prophets who faithfully reprove sin, these false ones make the people vain and heal their hurt only slightly. The people willingly accept such misleading leadership.

To love to have it so means the great mass willfully close eyes and ears and bar hearts with prejudice, lest they see a better way and be roused from pleasant dreams of carnal security. They are unwilling to exchange error for truth, satisfied with their present condition, with no desire to be converted and healed. This chosen deception is willful on the people's part.

Those who act thus are co-laborers with Satan who degrade those God is seeking to uplift, wicked men among His people who lie in wait as setters of snares and catch men. Their course belongs with overpassing the deeds of the wicked, refusing to judge the cause of the fatherless and the needy, selfishness, hardness of heart, and failure to obey God's Word and to deal justly and mercifully with fellow men. Leaders in this course cause the people to err, and those led by them are destroyed.

This was fulfilled in ancient Israel and the Jewish church, which though once highly favored became an astonishment and a reproach through neglect to improve granted blessings, with pride and unbelief leading to ruin. The verse is even more applicable now than when first spoken, portraying the character and condition of many nominally Christian and professed churches. Though possessing far greater blessings than were granted to the Jews, they follow in the same steps, so that the greater the light and privileges bestowed the greater the guilt of those who let them pass unimproved.

In its present form this loved falsehood appears in so-called orthodox ministers who by threats keep hearers from listening to Christ's ambassadors and speak against the truth with assumptions wholly without Scripture proof. Hearers fear to study the Word for themselves lest they be convinced, and greedily accept and repeat the minister's word as conclusive evidence while only echoing others' opinions. It pleases unconsecrated professors, as seen in the love of peace and safety in the delusion of Spiritualism.

It is loved because it makes religion easy by compromising with the powers of darkness, cherishing and excusing sin, blunting the cutting power of God's Word on the soul, and silencing the straight testimony. Few deny self and follow Jesus through evil as well as good report. Whereas the true Christian life is warfare against principalities and powers and striving against sin, requiring putting away all sins, cutting off every darling indulgence as a right eye or right hand, renouncing human wisdom and self-righteousness, giving up chosen worldly associates, and sacrificing the approbation of men.

The closing question, what will ye do in the end thereof, is a solemn warning to which few give heed. It points to the time when the work of both those who prophesy falsely and those who accept their message, with all its results, shall be brought in review before God and face His decision. That end is dreadful, for God will hold them to account for rejecting the light and refusing to hear Him.

God declares He will visit for these things and avenge Himself on such a nation, punishing the least act of injustice and false dealing and overlooking no failure. He will surely fulfill His word against those who will not hear, will not see, and refuse the light He sends. Therefore all, high and low, are called to seek the Lord, cut away every root of selfishness, put away hardness of heart, and pray for hearts of flesh.