by Jacob Ninan
In this series called 'Ideas that mess with salvation', I am trying to point out common misinterpretations of truths because of which people can miss experiencing salvation fully in the way God wants. Sometimes this misinterpretation could be made directly through preaching, where the preacher is trying to win the hearers without paying too much attention to whether what he is saying is exactly true or not. It could also happen because we are too lazy to spend time seeking to learn things more clearly. But our salvation has eternal implications, and we cannot afford to compromise on God's truths.
We have looked earlier at Part 1, 'Nothing we need to do', Part 2, 'We must have enough faith', Part 3, 'The battle belongs to the Lord' and Part 4. Three wrong but common ideas. Here we look at another idea, 'God sees me through Jesus'.
Let us look first at the marvellous truth represented in this statement. To see how marvellous it really is, we need to understand the huge chasm that exists between God and us which Jesus came to bridge. Here is God who is absolutely holy and without any blemish. The apostle John describes it as God being light without any spot of darkness in Him (1Jn.1:5). Compare this to our condition where all of us have sinned in various ways, all of which have increased our separation from God. The darkness in us cannot mix with the light of God, and this prevents us from having fellowship with Him. God describes us as being dead in sin and eternally separated from Him (Eph.1:1-3).
Look at this situation as a dilemma that God faced. He created us in His own image, in order that we might have a living relationship and fellowship with Him. But He cannot have that relationship with us because of the darkness in us. His wisdom found the way to resolve this issue, at the cost of His own pain. Jesus, His Son, took our punishment on Himself, and bridged that chasm between us. Now God is able to forgive our sins in a righteous way, without having to ignore His justice. If anyone goes to Him on this basis, acknowledging his sins and what he deserves as punishment, God will give him forgiveness of sins (Jn.3:16).
God describes this process of justifying us before Him in different ways. Our faith in Jesus as our Saviour who redeemed us through His death is counted to us as righteousness (Rom.4:5). God was in a position to accept us only if we were perfectly righteous in our life. Since that was not possible, He instead accepts our faith in the Saviour to take us into His presence. This is such an amazing display of grace, unmerited favour that God shows towards us, that we break out in songs such as 'Amazing grace' to worship God. This right to stand in God's presence was something none of us could have ever earned, knowing our huge debt of past sins and our present nature corrupted by sin.
Another way of describing this transaction is by point out how we would appear to God if we attempted to stand there clothed in whatever righteousness we had. Whatever high thoughts we might have about ourselves, God's view would be as if we were really dressed in filthy rags. This will be totally unacceptable to God. So He clothes us now with the righteousness of Jesus, the Man without any sin (Isa.61:10). This dress is what makes us acceptable before God. Any time we begin to imagine that we can stand before God because of our own goodness, or that God accepts us because of our righteousness, we get confused about the basis for our acceptance. That is what Jesus illustrated through the parable of the wedding feast of a king's son where one man appeared without a wedding dress (Matt.22:11-13). This represents someone who imagines that his own righteousness is enough to find acceptance from God.
One more way we can look at this is to think of ourselves being in a huge debt which we will never be able to pay back. What God does is to transfer our debt to Jesus, and then credit Jesus' righteousness into our account. Theologians refer to this as imputed righteousness.
Still another way we can learn of God's acceptance is by looking at the way the people of Israel escaped getting killed by the Lord when He came to kill all the first-born of the Egyptians. The people of Israel had to kill a lamb and smear its blood on their doorposts and lintel. When the Lord came by to kill the Egyptians, He would pass over the houses of Israel which had the lamb's blood. For us, this is a picture of the blood of the spotless Lamb of God that was shed for the atonement of our sins. When we acknowledge our sins and take refuge in the blood of the Lamb, that is when we are spared from the destruction that all the people in this world deserve.
When we Christians consider these teachings about how the holy God can accept us sinful people through faith in Jesus, those who don't understand the context and the spiritual principles involved sometimes latch on to the idea that God looks at us through Jesus. The implication is that when God looks at us after we have come to Him through faith in Jesus, He does not see us any more, but He sees Jesus instead, or as us in Christ. Some other people think of how we are 'under the blood' and therefore covered from God's eyes. We can understand how it is possible to think like this. But it is not correct, and it can lead to many errors and mess with our experience of salvation.
If we assume for the moment that God does not see us any more when He looks at us, then it would be safe to assume that He does not notice how we actually live, whether we are sinning or not. That is how those who believe this are given a false assurance, and they begin to take sin less seriously. After all, if God does not see us but only looks at Jesus, what difference would it make how we actually live? I hope you are able to see that we must make a difference between imputed righteousness which God uses for the purpose of accepting us, and the actual, practical righteousness we need to grow into in our personal life.
This kind of misunderstanding is due to a lack of clarity about the way of salvation and what salvation really involves. Salvation is deliverance from sin, not only the guilt and punishment of sin, but also the power of sin that causes us to fall into it. It is not only taking us from hell to heaven, but also changing our way of life so that we stop sinning more and more and become like Jesus more and more in our character. Forgiveness is instantaneous when we go to God through faith in Jesus, but freedom from sin is a progressive process that goes on and on. As long as we have this sinful flesh, we have corruption on the inside, and sin will happen through us in various ways. There are sins that we can recognise immediately as sins. But if we have come to Jesus some time ago, we can see that now there are things we call sin, which we did not know earlier were sins! Following the same way, we must realise that right now there are things we are doing thinking that they are all right, which we are likely to find out afterwards that they were wrong. If we are faithful to Jesus and we want to become more and more pleasing to God, we keep receiving an increasing awareness of sin. Then we have an opportunity to overcome sins which we used to commit in ignorance earlier. This particular mistake which we are discussing now has come from not differentiating between how God accepts us and how He wants us to grow.
"But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, That shines brighter and brighter until the full day" (Prov.4:18). This is a path where we get increasingly delivered from the power of sin and become more and more 'holy' – set apart from sin and closer to God. You can recognise this as the process called sanctification, which is the second phase of salvation. (The final phase of salvation will happen when we are with God in eternity when we would be given a sin-free, glorified body and can have unhindered fellowship with God.)
So, there is a process by which God accepts us, having washed us with the blood of Jesus and crediting the righteousness of Jesus to us. But then He starts another phase where we are to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus in an increasing manner. God's eyes are very much over us as we go through that path (Prov.15:3). He is very much interested in what we do now, in words, deeds, thoughts, intentions, motives, plans, etc. One day we are going to be rewarded according to how faithful we have been towards Him in all the different situations of our life, doing what He wanted us do (Matt.16:27).
It should be clear by now that it is God's plan that after He receives us through His grace and our faith, He expects us to consciously and deliberately walk in this way. "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age" (Tit.2:11,12).
What would happen if we imagined that God is satisfied by looking at Jesus and does not actually see us any more? If we don't choose this path of sanctification deliberately, assuming that God has already accepted us, we are going to miss this part of salvation. "For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Rom.8:13). In other words, we will be continuing to do sinful things and missing fellowship with God, even though we may be assuming that the blood of Jesus covers us!
Jesus said that it was by knowing the truth that we were going to be set free. If we get misled by wrong ideas, see how they can even take us further away from God!