God is amazing. God is all-knowing. God is all-powerful. God is ever-present. God is everywhere. God is love. God is holy. God was, is, and will always be. These are just some of the attributes of God. It can be difficult comprehending why God would even care about us, much less understanding His desire to hear us and bless us.
The reason why it can be challenging for us to understand God, is because being God, He can do anything. We rationalize that if we were God, the last thing we would do, would be to bother with humans and their needs. When we think that way we think selfishly and not like God. God created us (Genesis 1:26-28). God loves His creation (Genesis 1:31; Psalm 104:31). God loves everyone (John 3:16). The only reason we find it not easy to understand God is because we tend to think that God is like us. While it is true that people are made in the image of God, that doesn’t mean we are like God with all of His traits. It does mean, however, that people have the potential to reflect some of God’s nature and character in their lives.
God is not like us. God is completely other. God is holy, just, and pure. God desires to have a relationship with the creation He loves. Sadly, people often turn away from God and His ways and instead choose to follow their own ways. By choosing not to follow God we damage our relationship with the One who loves us the most.
Due to the fact that we are the ones who caused our relationship with God to be in a bad way, we can do nothing to repair that relationship. Because God loves us and wants us to be in a good relationship with Him, only He is able to fix it. God does this by punishing Jesus for our offenses. Being the only One truly in the image of God, only Jesus can make our relationship with God whole. Romans 3:23-26 says it this way, “23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” The word that we need to really understand in this text is propitiation in verse 25. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross restores our relationship with God because Jesus did absolutely nothing to offend God and is completely innocent. It is Jesus’ innocence that makes it possible for Him to come before the throne of God’s grace on our behalf and mend our broken relationship with God. When our relationship with God is restored by Jesus then we are at peace with God.
Being at peace with God by a restored relationship by Jesus isn’t automatic. As the ones who have offended God, we need to seek out Jesus to help us. When we find Jesus, we need to make the decision to commit to Him and follow His ways. By doing that, we can maintain a good relationship with God. 1 John 1:7 tells us, “7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
We find Jesus by discovering who He is as God’s one and only Son. We then choose to trust in that truth and that only Jesus can fix our relationship with God. In desiring a restored relationship with God, we commit our lives to Jesus by being immersed in the waters of baptism. Our burial in water symbolizes our death to self and sin, being buried like Christ, and then risen like Christ to live like Him. Romans 6:3-4 reads, “3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
As we come up out of the baptismal waters, we are spiritually cleansed of our sins because of Jesus’ sacrifice (1 Peter 3:21-22). Our relationship with God is restored to where it should be. We then keep following Jesus until He returns or we die and go to be with Him. When we choose to follow Jesus our relationship with God is made good both now, in this life, and in the promised life to come.
