God Loves You As You Are

If we understand the depth of God’s grace and love, it changes our lives. In the last few episodes, we saw that grace was introduced to us in the New Testament.

John 1:17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

We learned that we are called to live in the grace of Christ.

Galatians 1:6-9 
6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!

We have an any-time mercy (ATM) access to God’s grace!

Hebrews 4:16  “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

We also learned about God’s grace to us is God’s Riches At Jesus’ expense. We also learned about the righteousness we received through Christ.

Romans 3:22-24 
22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

All religions chain us and trap us in bondage. But the grace that Christ gives us frees us from this. People live to please religion rather than God. The Israelites received the law through Moses. Other religions also have rules or steps they can follow to receive blessings or to please their gods. A superlative of this is what the Israelites received in the Old Testament.

The law is impersonal and blind. The law doesn’t look at people or favour anyone. It is also blind. We have all seen the symbolic statue of the legal system which is a blinded woman. Law has no eyes.

But grace is personal and it is kind. It is available to help us and pick us up when we fall. Grace is merciful. It’s Jesus’ grace that freed us from law.

In Galatians 6, Paul tells the Galatians not to forsake this grace and go back to the law. In Romans 7, Paul speaks about dying to Law and being freed from it that we live in grace. This doesn’t mean that we are now free to do anything, but we are shifted to a new era of grace as we read in Romans 8. God has given us a new commandment which is to love God and love your neighbours. We can do this with the help of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the fuel that brings the fruit of love, joy , peace,

The grace that we have received in Christ is so great!

In the age of grace, many things have changed:

1. The covenant changed. We are living in a new covenant now. 

2. God’s approach towards us changed; we see mercy and forgiveness towards us after Christ took up our sins and reconciled us with God. In the Old Testament, His wrath was upon the people because of their sin. It is not that God’s nature has changed but His mercy is upon us because Christ freed us from sin. 

2 Corinthians 2.18 says “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation”   

1 Timothy 2:5- Christ became a mediator between us and God. We are not God’s enemies any longer. Christ took away the gap that we had with God by taking away our sin.                
Isaiah 59.1 Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. 2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.

God loves us as we are; God does not love us because of what we do, i.e. we pray a lot  or serve Him more . But God is not like this, He is love!
 
1 John 4.19 says  “We love because he first loved us.”

We tend to think that if we sin God moves away from us or dislikes us or gets angry with us. This is the human way of thinking. Man has mood swings. God does not have mood swings- He loves all of us at all times. Regardless of whether you go to church, God loves you.

Regardless of whether you read the Bible, God loves you. However when we sin, we are the ones that lose out. It does not affect God, but it takes us away from eternal life. When we get closer to God, we receive and experience more of His glory. If we give to the Lord’s ministry, the gain is for us, not for God.  

To conclude; whatever we do for God changes us, not God. When we worship God; we enjoy and experience His presence .