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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Man’s Aversion to Grace

Dr. Charlie Bing, GraceLife Ministries 

Man’s Aversion to Grace
To those who have been profoundly changed by a clear understanding of God’s grace it is often puzzling why more people, unsaved or saved, do not accept that message. After all, if grace gives us salvation and all its benefits absolutely free, why do so many unbelievers reject it and why do so many believers try to compromise it with conditions? It will help to see the biblical and historical pattern of this aversion to grace and then offer an explanation. 

A Pattern of Rejecting Grace
The biblical history of God’s chosen nation, the Jews, shows that they consistently rejected His provision for their spiritual needs. In Acts Stephen told how the Jews rejected Moses and the Promised Land and wanted to return to captivity in Egypt and worship a golden calf instead. About the calf idol Stephen said they “rejoiced in the works of their own hands” (Acts 7:39-41). Later, the Apostle Paul explained why the Jews rejected the gospel of grace: “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God” (Rom. 10:3). The common denominator in Stephen and Paul’s assessments is that the Jews rejected God’s grace in favor of their own merits.

The New Testament amplifies the same pattern of rejecting grace. Jesus was bitterly opposed and persecuted by the self-righteous Pharisees who insisted on stringent law-keeping for righteousness. Paul was opposed by legalists wherever he preached the grace message. Sometimes the Christians strayed shortly after Paul departed from them, as in Galatia (Gal. 1:6). Paul warned that enemies of the gospel would corrupt the believers from without and within (Acts 20:29-31), that is why he commended them “to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). Countering legalism (defined here as the keeping of laws and rules to exalt self) was a common theme in Paul’s epistles to the churches.

Church history since the New Testament shows that the free grace of God was corrupted before the church got out of its first century. Many early church fathers taught the necessity of baptism and a holy life in order to be or stay saved. For many centuries after the early fathers the dominate Orthodox and Catholic religions both taught the necessity of baptism, penance, and other sacraments for salvation. It was not until the Reformation in the early 1500’s that Christianity reclaimed the free grace of God—though those Christians who did so were violently persecuted.

Even Calvin, a leader of the Reformation who taught that grace was free and faith in God’s promise assures us of salvation, was shortly afterward reinterpreted to make works indispensible to one’s assurance and salvation. By the time of the Westminster Confession (1647) works were solidly embedded into faith and the gospel, not on the front end (in order to be saved), but on the back side (to prove you were saved). Today a resurgence of this brand of Calvinism has swept through the Christian world with the same intrusion of works and merit into assurance and salvation.

A Natural Response to Grace
Why hasn’t the wonderfully liberating grace message swept the world? We can only suggest why so
many people reject or pervert the free grace of God.

Conditioning. We live in a world of un-grace that has always taught us we must earn our own way. We are promised rewards for potty training, good grades for studying hard, and a paycheck for working. Apart from biblical Christianity, every world religion offers salvation only through performance. Grace, which promises us salvation free and secure, sounds too good to be true. When Jesus told some curious Jews that eternal life was a gift, their natural response was “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God.” Jesus did not concede to their inclination to work for salvation, but in a play of words responded “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent” (John 6:27-29). Ask an average person today how one can have eternal life and the prevailing answer will include something that must be done. Salvation that is truly free is difficult to comprehend or accept.

Pride
Doing something to contribute to or prove our salvation appeals to the natural impulse of our pride. The gospel of free grace separates works entirely from the offer of salvation. We are saved by grace through faith “not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). Pride appeals to our sinful flesh. The flesh likes to exalt self and boast of what has been done, but the gospel of grace points only to the cross as the means of obtaining and keeping salvation. Paul said, “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal. 5:14). Grace humbles our pride.

Insecurity.
Doubtless there are some who are not comfortable with the freedom grace brings. The controversy in Acts 15 was caused by Jews who demanded observable performance-based criteria from the Gentiles who had been saved by grace. This reflects a desire to depend on a system of black and white laws or behavioral measurements that would make these legalists feel secure in their spirituality and reserves them the right to declare certain others unsaved. The insecurity of uncertainty about others can lead to a fear of ambiguity, which in turn can breed a desire to control. Control leads to the assertion of laws or measurements that make some feel comfortable. On the other hand, grace looks to faith in the Word of God, submission to the control of the Holy Spirit, and the compulsion to love God and others as that which determines one’s spirituality. Grace is risky because freedom is always risky.



Conclusion
Man has a natural aversion to grace. A persistent turning away from grace is demonstrated biblically and historically. Even so, God has always preserved a remnant that fully embraces grace. The unconditional free grace of God that brings us to the cross of Christ for all and any merit before God keeps us humble, which allows us to experience more grace: “But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: ‘God resists the proud, butgives grace to the humble’” (James 4:6). The slave woman of legalism and her son will always persecute the free woman of grace and her son (Gal. 4:29). The two cannot co-exist or mix. Paul’s advice is to throw out the slave woman and her son (Gal. 4:30). Watch carefully for the natural drift away from grace. Don’t try to compromise with legalism or anything that threatens the absolute free nature of grace. Rather, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1).

This GraceNotes may be copied and distributed freely. For a full set of GraceNotes or for more resources about growing in grace contact GraceLife at GraceLife.org or write to P.O. Box 302, Burleson, TX 76097.

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Back from a long writing break..!

Hello Folks,
Its bee a while since I posted. For all I know, its probably me just reading my own blog..lol.. But if you're out there ...even if your from the outer space, another galaxy, or whatever..holla back so I know ur reading it. Here's the updates of what's going on in my life in my walk in grace - I have been so intrugued about the way we perceive God. Where does this negative views of a loving God come from? Also another thing that has made me think is about the concept of trinity! Is it just a mere head knowledge or does it have any impact in the way i relate to God on adaily basis.. stay tuned.. i'll post updates on what i learn as soon as i can.

In the mean time, here's video my friend Alex sent me. Its a real good one and i think you'll enjoy it!


Good Friday from ROCKHARBOR on Vimeo.

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