Eternal Approach

“For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God.” (I John 3:20,21)

In recent posts, I’ve spoken of the necessity of going to the word of God versus trusting in our experience.

This is not to downplay experience. It is just to put things in the proper order to help us to defend against self deception.

Which is a danger we all face.

I say this because I watch a bucket-load of YouTubes. And I listen to sermons and podcasts of people that are very sincere that profess all kinds of “Christian” ideas that cannot save them.

Many of these people are very famous leaders, pastors, evangelists, etc. Who are trusting in things that cannot save.

No Way. No How.

But for those who are truly born-again believers, the battle we face moment-by-moment is for the assurance that God approves of us or that we are doing what we should be doing at any given time.

This battle involves dealing with fear and guilt over our failures or our bad habits or whatever it is that robs us of our peace and “fellowship” with the Lord.

In other words, we are saved men and women dealing with the flesh while still in this body.

I say this as one who has wasted a great deal of my Christian life bounced around by the tyranny of my feelings. 

Which means I’ve been controlled by whether I felt like I was doing the Lord’s will or not. Desperately looking for peace in my soul. Looking for any hard evidence I could find proving the progress I was hopefully making in my “sanctification”. 

In other words, living in a fear of the Judgment Seat of Christ. Not in fear of being lost, but the fear that I was not approved by Him. 

And I know I’m not the only one who has struggled with this!

Where Do We Find Our Hope and Approval?

What I’m learning is that God’s approval of us, as born-again people, is based on the same principle as the approval we have for our Salvation. It is based upon faith in His word. Faith in His specific written words.

Not on the approval of a pastor, a church, a denomination, a priest, a prophet, an “apostle” of some New Apostolic Reformation, nor on a Christian college or seminary or university. 

Our basis of approval before the Lord is based upon His promises and His declarations in His word. By believing that what He has said is true. 

But that is Not what we are taught today. The preaching and teaching in our churches is everything but this. 

Condemned by the “Law of Love”

Teaching today might be a list of things that the pastor says we should be doing. Or that some famous Christian writer and speaker says we should be doing. 

Or Not doing. 

Their thinking may be based on some form of Christian “law” (either a strict law or a “lite” law) or it could be based on some “law of love” which is what the typical Evangelical church is so obsessed with. And which it teaches over and over again in a thousand variations every Sunday. 

Even while they neglect the weightier matters of faith. And of the word of God. 

Making everything about love. Whatever that might mean. However they popularly define it. 

But what is commonly overlooked about the “law of love” is that we are totally unable to keep it.

Even as we place our hope in it as a kind of replacement for all the rules and doctrines held by those “cold, intolerant Fundamentalists”. 

Even while our churches like to camp out on the Sermon on the Mount and the parables that deal with love and social involvement.

Even while our Bible church leaders are unwilling to see that the “law of love” condemns us just as does the law of Moses.

The Reality God Declares is So

The bottom line is that we fail in all areas to live up to God’s standards. Even as believers. 

Because our struggle for approval is mistakenly based upon our focus on a thing. We focus on our determination and our resolve and our dedication and our will-power toward some good thing. 

In Jesus’ name.

However, our approval before the Lord, even for our Sanctification and Holiness, is based upon Imputation.

Which means that God declares us TO BE something. And it is His declaration of what is Real and True which makes it real. Which makes it true. 

Even as He declared Light to appear out of darkness. Even as He fashioned all the worlds and set them upon nothing. 

Or, to paraphrase an old preacher, “He reached out where there was nowhere to reach. And He grabbed ahold of something when there was nothing to grab ahold of. And He set the world upon nothing. And He told it to stay there!“

So, we choose to believe what He has said or we don’t. We choose to wrestle against our Christian flesh OR we rest in what He has already declared us TO BE In Christ. 

Our choice. 

“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us.”                       (I John 4:16-19)

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