God must be Dizzy!

Christians across the board will say that God loves us. However, many of those same Christians will talk out the other side of their mouth and basically nullify that which they claim to believe. We speak of God's grace, His forgiveness and His lack of condemnation. But, when it comes to our sins there will always be someone who will say something that makes you think God is still holding our sins against us. For instance, take the following statement which was the byproduct of a conversation about whether or not God's grace is a license to sin:

"I believe that God withdraws from us when we continue to go against His will. His grace and mercy is for those who put forth every effort to stay true to His word, however for those who only talk and there is no action, then He turns His back on them. God knows that we are human and that we sin daily, but it those sins that we knowingly continue to do that causes us to be out of His grace and mercy."

I have one question. Since when is God's forgiveness and faithfulness conditional on what we are doing? If God turns His back on us when we fail to perform, He must never be facing us for long. He would be spinning around nonstop making Himself dizzy as He turned His back to us and then turned back around after we performed the appropriate sacrifice.

Fact is, God's forgiveness and faithfulness is not conditional on how we act. Did any of us ask God to become a man, live a sinless life, die for our sins and be raised from the grave for our salvation? Of course not. Roman 5:8 says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." God sent Christ out of His love for us not out of an obligation to respond to a request which we did not make.

We have to defer to passages, like Romans 8:1, which state, "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Or verses, like 1 Corinthians 1:9, that say, "God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful." Hebrews 13:5 says, "...Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." A Christian's right standing before God is not conditional on what we do, but on what He has done. If He withdraws from us and turns His back on us then there is condemnation, He is not faithful and He does forsake us. God's love says that our "sins and lawless acts I will remember no more (Hebrews 10:17)." Why would He turn His back on us or withdraw from us for sins He no longer remembers?

To say that we have to put forth effort in order to keep God from withdrawing from us means we have to create a system of laws in which to follow in order to prevent that from happening. We all know that we are not under law, but that is exactly what we put ourselves under when we add our behavior to the equation. But, the apostle Paul told Titus that God "saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy (Titus 3:5)." We must remember that our sins deserve death! Christians who take sin lightly are the ones that believe that all we have to do is live up to certain standards and perform certain religious duties. But, God's standard is perfection (Matthew 5:48). If we could live up to God's requirements Jesus would never have had to come in the first place. "I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing (Galatians 2:21)!" Whether it is the Mosaic Law or our own religious and personal laws, we can not be made righteous through our attempted obedience.

God turns His back on our sins, not on His children. It is imperative to know that God desired a relationship with us as much as we desired one with Him. After all, it was He that created mankind and breathed His life into us, Adam, in the beginning. It was God who created the Garden of Eden for our enjoyment. Even after the Fall, it was God who gave the law to the Jews in order that through their, and later our, constant disobedience and failure would be drawn back to Him. "So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith (Galatians 3:24)." God did not give the law to lead us to Christ only to have us put ourselves right back under it. He gave us the law to show us that we are dead in sin and incapable of restoring ourselves to Him. Therefore, He first took our sins away for eternity in Christ and then, through the resurrection, offered His life to us as a free gift. For those who accept Christ by faith we have a relationship with God. Sustaining that relationship is not dependent on our ability to perform for God, but our ability to rest in Christ's finished work for us and resurrected life in us.