Let Us Live More Closely To God
We ought to live close to God. In the darkest hour and in the peace afternoon, living close to God is crucial to godliness in every season.
God is our Creator. We didn’t evolve from primates nor did we come from a Big Bang. He created all things ex nihilo (“out of nothing”). On the 6th Day of the history of all creation, God Almighty made us. He formed us from the dust and brought us about through natural generation stemming all the way from our first parents Adam and Eve.
God is the reason we exist. He formed us, fashioned us, and feeds us. Every breath we breathe comes from the God who breathed life into our lungs. We are not beings who automatically exist nor self-sufficiently continue to exist. We are utterly dependent on God. Every heartbeat, functioning brain, and breathing lungs are given to us by God.
God is our Creator. Therefore, let us live like it.
God is our Redeemer. He made us for His glory but we traded it for idolizing creation. By infinite grace and unimaginable condescension, He took on flesh to live the life we failed to live and He died the death that we deserve. The Lord Jesus Christ lived in utter dependence upon the Father as a Man and also lived as the only Sovereign who is God. Stamping everything with infinite worth, He did all things as our substitute for the purpose of us apprehending Him by saving faith.
Culminating at the Cross, the Lord Jesus became an utter mockery. Rejected by Creator and by creation, He was suspended between Heaven and Earth as the curse-bearer. He was ripped apart in body and soul so that the bridge from God to His elect might be secured. Though determined by His eternal will, the payment was made at Calvary two thousand years ago. At that moment in the Middle East when the passover lambs were being slaughtered, the True Passover Lamb was being slaughtered for our sins.
He despised the shame of the cross; and it was an extreme shame. It was a shame never felt before nor since. The utter agony of His soul made Him cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It would be easier to stand under all the waters of the Earth being poured out upon you than it would be to take the wrath of God and live to tell the tale. But, this is no made-up tale. This is utter truth. This is the moment all creation stopped. While the Pharisaic pagans turned their backs to be absorbed with their earthly business, Heaven closed all its stores and emptied every home in order to watch such a wondrous mystery. Christ the Lord upon the cursed tree? In the stead of ruined sinners hung the Lamb in victory? How could such a thought be anything but blasphemous if we came up with such a thing?
But, there He was; hardly looking like a man. There was the immutably impassible God who so determined to end our suffering from sin that He took on flesh to suffer for our sin. Beaten beyond recognition, stripped naked, simultaneously upholding all creation as the only Sovereign and yet having the Father “turn His face away”, legally and intimately representing all the sinners who would ever believe upon Him—this Jesus was deformed in order for us to be reformed into His image.
Why did He stay on that Cross? Why did He devote Himself to this cause? Because He wanted to live close to you.
We ought to live close to God because He wants to live close to us. We ought to repent of complaining that God demands too much of our schedule and start grumbling that our hearts don’t desire God more. This is legalism when you treat this as if God won’t love you, save you, or keep you saved unless you do so. It is antinomianism when you immediately reject such a statement as being too extreme. It is healthy Christianity when you see the majesty of God, the grace of the gospel, and the utter worthiness of the Lord Jesus Christ as a worthy call to closer devotion.
The Christian who is growing in understanding the infinite glory of our infinitely glorious God will have a sort of “holy grumbling” that they will never desire God in full accordance with what He deserves. That “holy grumbling” doesn’t and mustn’t drive us to despair. Rather, it ought to stimulate our hearts to be amazed at God’s glory and His desire to have us finite creatures be His friends.
Dear Christian, based on God’s glory and His grace, should we be more or less devoted to God?