Please keep reminding me!

I continually forget how radical God’s grace is. It’s like the thick haze of my own regrets makes it difficult to see clearly as I squint amidst the clutter of my own bad attitudes and blunders. God’s grace just doesn’t compute in such circumstances. That’s why I need regular reminders of how amazing it is!

So consider this… When writing to the believers in Thessalonica, the Apostle Paul prayed that Jesus would establish their hearts as “blameless in holiness before our God and Father” (1 Thessalonians 3:13). Literally “blameless in holiness”! Remember, Paul is writing about the human species here – about people much like you and I, who fail daily, or even hourly, or even… I actually have no idea how prevalent some of my most stubborn sinful thought-patterns are! The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). But Paul wrote that when we come before God, he wants us to be assured that because of what the Lord Jesus has done for us on the cross, an infinitely Pure and Holy God will see us as blameless rather than as sinful – and as holy (meaning, set apart for Him) rather than as tainted by this world!

And because I’ve accepted by faith what Jesus did for me on the cross, when God now looks at me, He isn’t staring at my sin, because He literally took away my sin, and the righteousness of Jesus is now credited to me (check out Romans 4:22-25)! He’s not frowning at my flaws, but is smiling at my sinlessness after having nailed to the cross that “certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us” (Colossians 2:14). Paul takes his terminology even further in his letter to the Colossians as he explains how Jesus presents us before God as “holy and blameless and beyond reproach” (Colossians 1:22). Imagine that... Whatever we’re struggling with in our walk with God, we should consider ourselves totally out of reach from the clutching claws of reproach (which includes self-reproach!).

Thank you, Lord Jesus! That is what I continually need reminding of, and is why we have reason to be confident and joyful every time we approach God’s Glorious Throne of Grace (Hebrews 4:16)!

© 2019 by Ken Peters