I represent
the many people who struggle to believe God could accept us when we are not well
behaved. I also represent the work of God that brings us to know that God loved
us at our worst, and he demonstrated his love for us through the death of Jesus
Christ on the cross while we were sinners.[1]
There is in
humanity an inherent desire to be good due to the fact we were originally
created in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ.[2]
There is also a desire for close, personal fellowship with God, since this is
included in being like Jesus.[3]
However, this
desire for deep and personal fellowship with God, based on a standard of goodness
that is identical to Jesus’ righteousness, is IMPOSSIBLE! By this, I mean it is
impossible for the human soul to be so good, and to do such good, that we can
attain fellowship with God based on our own righteousness.
Last night, I
had a dream about a frustrated little boy who was peeved with his big brother
because his big brother was so good, and the little guy simply could not be the
same. The little brother looked up to his older sibling and wanted to be just
like him, but try as he might, he could never do the things his big brother
could accomplish.
I think it
was the look on the big brother’s face that brought me home. The little boy was
frustrated to the point of anger at himself for not being good enough. He so
wanted to be like his big brother, but with a sense that he had personally
accomplished all that the older brother could do.
While the boy
was beating himself up for his inadequacies, the big brother smiled on him with
such love and affection that included accepting the little brother even in his
state of frustration and anger at not being able to do what was “good enough."
He was accepted as someone who was not good enough, and as someone who was
wasting time in a world of frustration because his self-dependent efforts to be
good enough were not working.
In Biblical
terms, the little boy in my dream was what the Bible calls, “blessed… in the Beloved.”[4] He
was frustrated because he wanted to have the same inherent goodness as his older
brother, he knew he couldn’t do it, and was angry it wasn’t working for him. The
whole while, his big brother was loving him beyond what he could ever deserve.
Which brought
me to my time with God this morning, and the verse that is central to my meditation,
“Rejoice in the Lord
always; again I will say, rejoice.”[5]
With the fresh-in-my-mind imagery
of a frustrated child wanting to prove he is good enough for his big brother, I
couldn’t help seeing the contrast between rejoicing “in the Lord,” and rejoicing in ourselves. When we want to feel joy
in our relationship with God because we have attained a level of good works and
achievement that are sure to impress him, we will not know joy at all, let
alone know what it is like to be joyful in the Lord.
On
the other hand, when we receive all that is in Jesus, all the salvation, all
the forgiveness of our sins, all the justification by faith, all the heart-changing
power of God that transforms us into the image of Jesus Christ “from one degree of glory to another,”[6]and all the hope of that eternal life where we will be fully like Jesus
forever,[7]we discover that we can rejoice in Jesus in a way we could never
rejoice in ourselves.
While
I do not give any authority to dreams, I found myself feeling quite thankful
that I could see the struggle of so many people in an illustration that helped
to make a lot of sense of what Scripture teaches about our identity in Christ. God
the Father predestined those he foreknew “to
be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn
among many brothers.”[8] Jesus is “not ashamed to call
them brothers.”[9]We enter this by grace through faith, “And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of
works, so that no one may boast.”[10]
All
of this tells us that God’s work to make us like Jesus includes showing us that
Jesus has done all the work. We can boldly come into the presence of God in the
most holy place because Jesus has made us righteous enough to be there.[11] The Father accepts us in his Son. It is a waste of time to feel
frustrated that we cannot make ourselves good enough for God when God has
already received us as righteous through justification, and will complete our
perfect conformity to Jesus’ righteousness in our glorification.
What
God wants for his sons now is that we can rejoice in our big brother as the
perfect satisfaction of God’s justice, and the perfect provision of our peace
with God. He has already done the work. It is finished. Let’s rejoice in him,
and in our fellowship with him.
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
Romans 5:6-8
[2]
Genesis 1:26-27
[3]
John 5:1-47 records Jesus’ explanation of why he healed a man on the Sabbath. It
revolved around the nature of his relationship to the Father. John 5:19 captures
the essence of Jesus’ relationship to his Father, and gives us insight into
what we can expect in our relationship to God.
[4]
Ephesians 1:6 (see context of Ephesians 1:3-14)
[5]
Philippians 4:4
[6]
II Corinthians 3:18
[7]
I John 3:2; Romans 8:28-30
[8]
Romans 8:29
[9]
Hebrews 2:11
[10]
Ephesians 2:8-9
[11]
Hebrews 4:16
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