DISCUSSION
If we are in a relationship with someone we love and enjoy, we can hardly get enough of that person. Right? My bride and I still enjoy shopping together after 41 years. I would rather listen to Jan read a good book out loud than go to a movie. We look at each other and are amazed that God has allowed us to live and love and enjoy each other for four decades.
God told us through Paul that we are saved “not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy . . . through the washing of rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” Titus 3:5 (NIV) When that regeneration happens, it is because God is still desirous of an intimate friendship with us. Abraham was called a "friend of God."
Sin separated mankind from that original relationship of intimate friendship with God in The Garden and must be resolved as a prerequisite for a restored friendship. Christ became sin for us that we might become righteous in Him, therefore acceptable to God, His father. The concept of forgiveness appears as the method God employs in our being drawn into an intimate friendship with Him. Unless, as Martin Luther phrased it, we are "clothed in the alien righteousness of Jesus Christ," we cannot approach God. Our good news is that Jesus did accomplish everything needed to present us to His Father!
If we cherish the fact that we’re invited into the very Presence of the Holy God of the universe, and that we have done nothing to deserve it, but it is based on God’s own demonstration of His love in forgiving us . . . how can we not enjoy that?
APPLICATION
I want to spend more and more time with Jan, just being in her presence. How much more then do I want to be in love with Jesus, intimate with Him in His word and through prayer! He first loved us! He demonstrated this by His living for us; dying for us; being buried for us; conquering death and hell for us; and, by ascending to the right hand of His heavenly Father where He intercedes for us to this moment in time. Oswald Chambers noted, “Paul was devoted to a Person, not to a cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ's. He saw nothing else and he lived for nothing else.” How about you? Are you thoroughly devoted to your Lord and Savior enjoying the intimacy He made possible?
2005
