A perfect relationship with God – Thursday, 12 April
| What would give you a perfect relationship with God? When I was growing up I would have (wrongly) answered that you could never have a perfect relationship with God because we’re always going to sin and mess up, which grieves God because a holy God cannot fellowship with sinful people. I would have (wrongly) answered that the more you sacrifice and the more holy you live the more God will accept you and the better your relationship with Him will be. Believing all of this led to a lot of pressure on me in my relationship with God – I never felt like I was doing enough and never felt good enough for God. I even felt like I was a continual disappointment to God. I was burning out on the never-ending treadmill of performance-based Christianity. Then I heard the true gospel – the good news of God’s unconditional love and grace, and Jesus’ perfect finished work for me – and it set me free! “Our faith in Jesus transfers God’s righteousness to us and He now declares us flawless in His eyes. This means we can now enjoy true and lasting peace with God, all because of what our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, has done for us. 2 Our faith guarantees us permanent access into this marvelous kindness that has given us a perfect relationship with God. What incredible joy bursts forth within us as we keep on celebrating our hope of experiencing God’s glory!” Romans 5:1-2 The Passion Translation (TPT) We are made righteous (flawless before God) the moment we put our faith in Jesus and this results in us enjoying true and lasting peace with God. There is no peace in performance – when you think that you’re doing well you’re getting into pride believing that you’ve arrived (and yet by the standards of the law you’re still failing) and when you think you’re not performing well you end up in condemnation, guilt and shame which doesn’t produce anything positive in your life. We have peace with God and can rest in a relationship with Him all because of what our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, has done for us. We relate to God by faith in Jesus and what He has done for us. God relates to us by grace (treating us better than we deserve). In God’s eyes, Jesus’ sacrifice completely and perfectly settled all debt of sin (past, present and future – Hebrews 10:10). God is not relating to us by our performance and efforts but by grace (what Jesus has done for us), and we experience that grace through our faith in Jesus. Because it’s by grace through faith and not by works (Ephesians 2:8-9) we are guaranteed permanent access to God and the riches of His grace. We can enter the holiest of holies at any time – when we’re performing well and when we’re performing terribly – because we aren’t granted access to God’s presence and relationship with Him through our performance (or even obedience) but by Christ’s performance (and obedience) on our behalf (Hebrews 10:19). In fact, this side of the cross you’re always in the presence of God (Hebrews 13:5) and you’re always full of His glory (2 Corinthians 4:7). You have a perfect relationship with God: God is always reaching out towards you and freely welcoming you into a deeper relationship with Him. You have the perfect set up! Whenever we feel our relationship with Him isn’t doing so well it would only be because we aren’t focused on His love and grace for us. When we focus on Jesus and what He has done for us it will always result in deeper intimacy because we will naturally want to embrace Him. We have the perfect set up, and we experience a perfect relationship with God as we focus on what He has done for us, not what we can do for Him! |
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