Being Right With God

What must you do to be right with God?

“Well, I try to follow the Ten Commandments.”

“I go to church every Sunday.”

“I said that prayer when I was little. I walked up to the altar and accepted Christ as my Savior… I said the prayer!”

“I don’t know. Just try to be a good person and God will appreciate that.”
”It’s between me and God.”

These answers make sense. You are doing a favor to God by worshiping him on Sundays, trying your best to live a good moral life, and saying a prayer to him whenever you remember to do so. However, they miss a vital point to knowing who God is. What these answers have in common is based on the notion that God is there and we are here. The God up in heaven is going to accept our good deeds so we are cleared from any wrong doing. Question is, “How much do I have to do to be right with him by Sunday morning?” Can you answer that one?

I hope I don’t make anyone think there’s no hope if none of these answers are correct. Instead I like to bring to light the fact that being right with God doesn’t depend on mere church attendance records or good deeds. Isaiah 64:6 says, “We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags…” So what we need to rely on is what God has done for us already through Jesus’ death and resurrection.

I want to explore the whole idea of God’s love and where we stand in it. Although we can try our best to be good to redeem ourselves, we are ultimately setting ourselves up to fail. This is why the idea of God's grace is relevant. I’ll write one part today and the other tomorrow because this is going to be a long discussion.

Heartless Robots

In 1998, a teen horror film called The Faculty came out, which was about a high school that was being taken over by an alien life form. Students were invaded by a parasite and quickly their bodies were taken over by an alien. They were then subjected to the Queen of the aliens and whatever she wanted them to do. No choice to follow her rule. No choice to love her to want to stay loyal to her. Just control of the souls that were invaded and had no choice, but to serve her. 

I don’t know about you, but the idea that God gives us that choice to follow or ignore him is love. We aren’t forced into loving him because then we would be like robots. Catering to his every whim; no freedom to make that choice.  From 2 John 6, to love God is to obey him. Adam and Ever weren’t zapped when they touched the apple from the tree, nor were they yelled at when they started eating from it. God knew and saw all that had happen, but he saw what he knew he allowed. He wanted Adam and Eve, who were made in his image, to love him back just as he loved them enough to give them breath. Instead, they disobeyed, thus dishonoring God’s wishes for them. Being a just God, he expelled them from the Garden because they were no longer pure from sin. Do you think that was fair?

Think about this. When the Bible says God is just, to what extent does that mean? He gave humans existence. Not just life, but I mean existence (sorry if that violates grammar rules). He made the earth. The trees, rivers, mountains, sky, stars, snow, flowers, animals we love to snuggle with—he gave us everything. So when we abuse all that he has given us with war, strife, hate, gossip, murder, rage, adultery, and so on, don’t you think we deserve to be someway disciplined? A smack in the face for some, a warning for others, or maybe even death? Think about this, Adam and Eve were the first to sin against God. They had children, one who would later be the first murderer in history. Time has shown people are capable of murder, hate, assaults, and so forth that there has never been a period of time without wars, fighting, or any conflict of some sorts. Don’t you think God knew all this would happen? I believe so.

So didn’t God have the right to take everything away from Adam and Eve when they abused the gift of life? To get rid of them right then and there when he knew what was to come? I would say yes, but others may say sending them out of the Garden was good enough. I've heard people say our world is what hell is, but when you think about, it hasn’t even reached how bad it could be. Think about if we didn’t have the love of friends and family. A clean cup of water readily available on a daily basis. Or couldn’t even attempt to help our fellowman in distress. The smallest blessings are huge to some.

That said, we have been given a second chance. Yes we are not in a perfect world like the Garden of Eden or heaven, but we are free to know the God who made us. From the moment Adam and Eve sinned, God had a plan in mind a plan of redemption for humanity, and that's through Jesus Christ (I'll discuss more tomorrow). We are free to know who he is, even for those who are persecuted for their faith in him. The hope of this world is not of this world. It’s in heaven where God is. How do we have that hope? By believing in Jesus Christ. How do we know Christ? By believing in God’s love. How do we believe in God’s love? It’s by obeying him by knowing who he is through his Word.