Jesus-Based Acceptance

Hey guys, I just decided to post a portion from a book that I am currently reading. The book is called Lifetime Guarantee by Bill Gillham. I strongly recommend this book for you to read if you are on a journey to understand God's grace.

One of the best-kept secrets in Christianity is that God accepts us. True, He can't stand our sinful acts, but He loves us. He doesn't have us on performance-based acceptance; He has us on Jesus-based acceptance. If you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, the Father has accepted  you completely. Performance has nothing whatever to do with it. Performance is important to God, yes, but it has to do with winning His approval, not His acceptance. It has to do with hearing Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant" one day at the Judgement Seat of Christ, but it has nothing to do with hearing Him say, "I accept you as My beloved child" (John 1:12)

You can be the greatest performer on the block at keeping God's standards, and you'll still be totally rejected by God if you are unsaved. One of the major purposes of those standards (the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, etc.) is to frustrate you to the point where you'll see that there's no way you're ever going to earn His acceptance. You've got to change methods. You've got to come to the Father through Christ's perfection, just as He said.

To demonstrate how deeply entrenched Satan has made the performance-based acceptance syndrome, consider this biblically based illustration. On a one-to-ten scale, where ten is the best, put a number on how well you accept yourself, your spouse, and your kids, assuming all are born again. Let's suppose you selected a five for yourself. You're saying that you still have five additional points to climb before you can accept yourself perfectly.

But God accepts you perfectly in Christ already. God doesn't grade on a one-to-ten scale; He grades pass-fail. His acceptance of you and me is not contingent on our performance, but on what we have done with Jesus Christ's performance for us. If you have surrendered to Jesus as Lord and Savior, then God has already accepted you completely. He couldn't love or accept you more if you had never sinned. And He'll never love or accept you less no matter how often you do sin.

Actually, any Christian who accepts himself or any other believer at less than ten has higher standards that God! He sees himself and his loved ones falling short of the standard for acceptance. THis person is using performance as the criterion for acceptance. God, however, uses Christ's finished work for us as the criterion for acceptance. Thus, any Christian who is striving for acceptance is fighting a battle that's already been won.

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Acceptance/Rejection

We live in a world system where our acceptance comes off of our performance. Be it in schools, workplace or even in christian families, our acceptance of ourselves as well as others' acceptance of us comes from our actions. This has been so ingrained in our understanding that sometimes it takes a while to recognize the problem.

Parents for example can be so strongly reprimanding the child for his or her wrong action, but end up destroying the child's identity and confidence. Instead of addressing the wrong action, parents associate what the child does to who he or she is by nature. The child soon picks up on this and later in life struggle with many issues (i don't really want to expound on these issues)

Culture plays an important role as well. In my Indian culture becoming a highly educated and earning big money is the dream and goal of every parent for their child. In and of itself, it is a good desire. The problem is when the child's identity and family honor depends on the child amounting to be something in terms of the career or profession. Some succeed in living up to the culture's pressure while others' fail. Those that succeed have confidence in their abilities and their own strength while those who don't succeed feel miserable and many times a failure deep down on the inside. Sure many wont verbalize it. We then bring this into our relationship with God where we think God's acceptance of us is based on our obedience or lack of it.

God doesn't see us the way we see ourselves. God never makes a mistake. He creates value. In fact he created man in his own image. That is how much he wanted man to be in communion with man. Sadly, mankind forgot their own value and fell prey to the lie that they weren't all that and they need more - they wanted to be like God. The enemy has not stopped using this age old lie.

We have people trying to live upto the Jones-es because somehow they still feel inadequate. We have children who turn to gangs just in order to be accepted. You have Christians who acknowledge that God is loving with their mouths, but yet their lives and actions cry out - " I don't really believe it - i don't really believe that He accepts me, that He can love me despite my repeated mistakes, my incomplete love for him and my inconsistent discipleship." And so in choosing to believe the lie- that God rejects me, I choose to reject myself. Its far more easier to go with "God rejects me" rather than "God accepts me". The latter even though is the truth, is something that one has to accept it by faith because of Who he is rather than our actions.

So what does God think of us? God is the definition of value. If he created man in his own image, he created something of value. To reject oneself  and have a poor negative self-image is to reject God and believe the age old lie of Satan - that man is not like God. God sees us as valuable. God loves us because He is pure love. To come to the realization of one's worth in Christ based on what God did - not only in creating this value (i.e., you), but also sending His only son to show us how valuable and dear we are to Him and that He wants to have this deep and intimate relationship with us defeats the lie of the enemy.

God wants us to now derive our sense of worth and identity from Him. Since we are so in union with God, we take our identity from Him. Those who are born-again are now in Christ. And since we are in Christ God accepts us in the Beloved (Jesus). God's opinion of Christ becomes His opinion of you. And since He says of Christ - "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased..", He says of you - 'You are my beloved Child, and I am so pleased with you and I accept you. You don't have to measure up to receive you sense of worth and identity. You are as Christ. Be free to live your life in my unconditional love and acceptance for you."

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