What kind of view do you have of God? I think that is a conditional question; the condition being what terms you are on with God at the moment. Here’s what I mean:
When you are living life in a way that honors God, things are great. You’re obedient. You walk in faith. You pray, study his word, you are involved in a local church. It is hard to have awkwardness between you and God when you are living according to his word.
But when we sin, our view of him sometimes changes. God goes from being a loving father, to an angry, thunderbolt-slinging deity that is distant and vengeful. You go from feeling so close to him to feeling miles away. The reason is because of sin. Sin always distorts who God really is because sin is the great separator. It is the thing that puts the distance you feel there.
Consider Adam and Eve. They walked with God in the cool of the evening and enjoyed a close personal, relationship with him. But when they sinned, that awkwardness and distance became their reality. Look at their own response in Genesis 3:8-10.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” Genesis 3:8-10 ESV
Sin in our lives has horrible byproducts, and one of the worst is fear. The enemy wants to separate you from God any way possible, and he knows that sin does more than bring death, it brings an unhealthy fear.
It isn’t really a fear of God, per se, but a fear that he doesn’t love us anymore. It is a fear that he is so mad about our sin that he’ll never forgive us.
The problem is that is a distorted view of God and his love. He, by his own word, promised us that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)
As a child of God, there are things you should realize about your heavenly Father when dealing with your sin. There are many, but I want to share a few that I’ve experienced in my life.
1. God is loving, even when we’re hard to love.
No matter where you go, what you do, or how you do it, there will never be a time, in this life, or the life to come, where he doesn’t love you.
This one is hard to grasp because most of us have preconceived ideas about love. Many people who have had bad relationships with those who are supposed to love them have been severely let down. Love, to them, has been conditional, based on what they can give the person who is supposed to love them. Don’t make the mistake of holding God to the standard of love that you have experienced from people around you. Just remember, perfect love, God’s love, covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)
There isn’t enough sin in the history of the world that will make God stop loving you. He has a problem with your sin, but loves you so much that he gave his own life to be with you.
2. God isn’t far away.
Sin separates, but through his son, Jesus, God closes the gap.
When we sin, we experience that sense of separation from God. Adam and Eve felt it. Just like it did with them, it makes us want to hide from God. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Sin doesn’t just bring death (Rom 6:23), but it convinces us that God is no longer near. Please don’t make the mistake of believing that God isn’t near, even when we sin. Just remember the words of the psalmist: Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol (hell), you are there! Psalm 139:7-8 ESV
No matter how far away you feel from God, he is as close as the mention of his name.
3. God is full of grace and mercy.
God isn’t about death and destruction. He is about forgiveness and restoring relationship.
A deception of sin is that God is angry with you. That’s why we feel he is distant, that he doesn’t love us anymore, and that he wants to strike. But God, by his sacrifice for us, has proven that he is a God full of grace and mercy. Relationship with you is what he wants and he would much rather pour out his grace and mercy to restore us to a right relationship with him. Remember that his grace is sufficient (1 Cor 12:9) and that his mercies are new every morning (Lam 3:23).
Be prepared, though, because his grace and mercy may be given to help you endure discipline. God is full of grace and ready to be merciful, but we can’t expect it when we choose to live a lifestyle of sin. The goodness we experience as a result of his grace and mercy leads us to repentance. This is how God restores us. But don’t forget that repentance is turning away from a sin, and not returning to it. If we don’t, we may have to endure discipline. But don’t worry, God loves whom he disciplines (Heb 12:6).
God clearly doesn’t want us to sin. In the Old Testament, he established laws to help the Israelites stay away from it, but even if they did sin, he made a way to deal with it. He eventually dealt with sin for good through Jesus Christ, his son. We need to deal with sin in our lives. I’ve said before that God loves us but refuses to leave us how he found us. God expects us to repent and turn away from sin in our lives.
But I also want you to hear that even when we do sin, God doesn’t want your destruction. He doesn’t want to get you. He wants to restore you. He wants to change your life. He wants to be near, constantly. He wants to be the first place you run to when you fail. Don’t believe the lie that accompanies sin that says you can’t go to him with your failures.
He is a good and loving God who still believes you were worth dying for. Let him forgive. Let him restore.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:5-9 ESV
Be blessed, forgiven, and restored.
J