Acceptance with God

WHY DOWN? We need to pause here and consider just why the growing Christian is taken down into defeat and despair in order to be brought up into maturity and fruitfulness. The hard fact is that the growing believer's formative years are predominantly backward and downward, rather than forward and upward. There is far more of Romans Seven (defeat) than there is of Romans Eight (victory).

It must be understood why your head, heart, and hope extend far in advance of your Christian course, while your actual experience struggles along, years in arrears. Now is the time for you to discover why it is that there is so much more fear, failure, and frustration that love, joy, and peace during your early spiritual development.

The main reason for this is that your Father has allowed your old sinful nature to remain within, co-existent with your new righteous nature. It is by this means that God gives you the constant choice: to abide in your old nature and be Adam-like, or to abide in your new nature and become Christ-like.

THE WAY UP IS DOWN! - Your Father first teaches you about your old sinful self, before you are taught about your new righteous self. The greater part of your early training consists of learning to recognize your sinful Adamic nature for what it is, totally self-centered and at enmity with God!

Mercifully, the need fostered by this prolonged discovery provides the motivation and heart-hunger for knowing your new Source of life, the Lord Jesus. Your new nature is the direct opposite of the old; it loves God and His will.

The sin and bondage spawned by your old nature motivate you to depend upon the Lord Jesus, to love Him, and to know Him. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." "That I may know him" (John 17:3; Philippians 3:10).

FOUNDATIONAL FACTS - In order for you to come through the extended disclosure of your sin nature strong and sure, rather than baffled and beaten, you must know the solidity of your spiritual foundation.

When you become acutely aware of the sin within, and its evil manifestations in your daily walk and relationships, you may be tempted to wonder whether or not you are a Christian, after all. Hence you need to know the strength of the foundation upon which you are to live and grow.

ACCEPTANCE BY GRACE - The first aspect that we are to consider is that of acceptance--your acceptance with God in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Like everything else in your Christian life, your acceptance by God is of grace. "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, through which he hath made us accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:5, 6).

Could anything be more complete and eternal? To the extent that the Father accepts His beloved Son, He accepts you in Him. You can forever thank Him that your acceptance does not depend upon what you are in yourself!

POSITION VS. CONDITION - If you judge God's attitude toward you according to your day-to-day condition, you are never going to be absolutely sure that He fully accepts you, if at all. When everything is going well and you are happy in the Lord you are likely to conclude, "I am pleasing to God, therefore He loves me and accepts me."

But when He has to take you down into failure, or through trial, or into the desert--as an important part of your spiritual development--then you are apt to feel, "I must be displeasing to God; He doesn't seem to love me or accept me any longer."

With God, position is everything when it comes to your acceptance in His Son, and He wants that to be everything in your estimation. Of course, God is concerned about your present state, and He expects you to be, also. But your acceptance is not based upon your condition.

SATAN SACKED - Your acceptance by God will often be denied by Satan. He will accuse you concerning sin in your life. He will insist that God cannot possibly accept anyone in your condition. It is then that you can especially rest in the Lord Jesus, who is your full acceptance before God and your shield against the devil's dart of doubt. "For your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3).

God has positioned you in Christ. As the Holy Spirit develops Christ's life within you, you will be increasingly conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus, Satan and all his wiles notwithstanding. "But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18).

TRI-ACCEPTANCE - God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are working on your behalf in the oneness of the Godhead for their eternal purpose: "Let us make (this) man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26).

In the light of these fortifying truths, you need never heed Satan's lies! "If (since) God be for us, who can be against us?.... Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect?" (Romans 8:31, 33). Certainly not Satan!

"Not a hair of the child of God can fall without God's permission. Satan is but the unintentional instrument to accomplish God's will; he can do no more than he is allowed to do. If trials come as a host against us, we know that the Almighty is between us and them. They will but work out for us our Father's own purposes of love."

Assurance of Salvation

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER - The second aspect of your spiritual foundation is the assurance of salvation. This is the "know-so" conviction that you are a Christian. "For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day" (2 Timothy 1:12).

To the extent that your assurance of salvation wavers, your Christian experience will be crippled. It is much the same in the realm of the human family. A child may hear a rumor that he was adopted, and may begin to doubt that his parents are his real father and mother.

He thereby loses his "assurance"; he is no longer sure of his position in the family. This can have a devastating effect upon a child. How strengthening and assuring it is when one is sure of his parentage!

It is similar in the Christian life. Your unshakable assurance as to spiritual parentage comes from the Word of God. Your new position is as sure and unchangeable as the eternal Scriptures upon which it is founded. Your actual condition fluctuates from time to time--there is both retrogression and progression. Hence your position is the only ground for assurance of your salvation.

FAMILY POSITION - Ever keep in mind the difference between position and condition. Let's say there is a certain boy whose dad's name is Carloni, and whose mom's maiden name was Valentino. When we know his parentage, we know that this boy is Italian by family position and nature.

Because of his position by birth, we know that when this boy grows up he is going to be Italian in his condition, in his characteristics. His condition will reflect his position. He is born into an unchangeable position, and his is growing in his changeable condition--but both are Italian.

Spiritual birth has to do with family position, and not with experiences. Your new birth may have a great effect upon your condition. You may be filled with love, joy, peace--that is the result of your position. These and other aspects of your condition will ebb and flow.

There will be growth all during your life, but your family position will never change one iota. And it is upon your position in Christ that your assurance of salvation is established.

"And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life" (1 John 5:20).

FOUNDATIONAL SHIFT - It is usually in this area of assurance that you make your first major mistake in your Christian life. After you enter your spiritual position by faith, there is a great change in your condition--at least there should be! Many of the old sins and habits drop away, and you may become a joyous and outgoing Christian. Your life is flooded with that first love and enthusiasm.

As a babe in Christ you are keenly aware of this transformation. It is so perceptible and wonderful that you are very likely to shift your assurance from your position to your condition. You feel so saved, and you act so saved, that you may say to yourself, "I know that I am a Christian; look at me, listen to me!"

You are now assured of your salvation because you feel saved. But see what this leads to. One morning, comes the dawn. On this particular day upon awakening you realize that you don't look very saved, you don't sound very saved, and you no longer feel very saved. All day long everything goes wrong, and by nightfall you find yourself at the end of your assurance.

Your conclusion may well be that since your condition is so bad, you just may not be a Christian. At any rate, you make up your mind to regain your assurance. The next day you strive to look and to sound and to feel saved. In short, you begin to struggle in order to maintain your assurance.

But because you are now centering your faith upon yourself and your condition, there is nothing but failure compounded. Your positional relationship with God has not changed in the least, and never will--but your assurance of it has. It may be by this, or a similar experience, that God will teach you that your new Christian life, and your assurance of that life, have their source and foundation in your position. It is all of grace!

"Who (God) hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 1:9).

THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT - Another factor concerning your assurance of salvation is "the witness of the Spirit." "The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God" (Romans 8:16).

So many have the tendency to hanker for assurance in the realm of feelings. "Some anxious soul says, 'If I had the witness of the Spirit I should be happy and at rest; but, alas! I have not that witness.' My friend, you are looking in the wrong place for the Spirit's witness. You must not look within.

"The witness of the Spirit of Truth is not an inward feeling of consciousness of pardon; it is a witness recorded in the imperishable words of Holy Scripture. The witness of the Spirit is not a vague uncertainty or inward consciousness; it is a written testimony that lies plain and clear on the pages of Scripture.

"What is the witness? It is this: 'Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more' (Hebrews 8:12). Every believer is entitled to know that the question of his sins is divinely and eternally settled."--C.A. Coates

When the Holy Spirit, the Author of the Bible, speaks to your heart, He does it by means of that Word. As you study the Scriptures concerning your position in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit of Christ gives you a deep assurance within your spirit, beyond the realm of feelings, which cannot be altered or gainsaid.

"He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself.... And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.... These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life" (1 John 5:10-13).

Eternal Security

UNCONDITIONAL - The third and final aspect of your spiritual foundation to be considered here is eternal security. Just as your acceptance with God is by grace, so your eternal security is by grace.

You will inevitably encounter those who vehemently oppose the truth of eternal security. Those opponents insist upon some form of works in order to remain saved. But the God of all grace, the One who saves and secures, says, "To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness" (Romans 4:5).

Standing upon your acceptance by God, and thereby resting in your assurance of salvation, there is very little that need be said about the obvious conclusion: you are unconditionally, eternally secure in the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

"Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever" (Jude 24,25). It isn't that you don't fall in some measure daily in your condition, but that you cannot fall from your eternal position. One may fall on the deck, but never off the ship!

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD - The master key to your eternal security is the fact that your Father is the sovereign God of the universe. He has chosen you! He has made you His child! "According as he hath chosen us in him (Christ) before the foundation of the world...having predestinated us unto the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will" (Ephesians 1:4,5).

You have already seen that your sovereign Father accepts you in His Son, and that He is working out His eternal purpose and will concerning you. "To the praise of the glory of his grace, through which he hath made us accepted in the Beloved.... In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will" (Ephesians 1:6,11).

THE JUSTICE OF GOD - In a day of flagrant injustice, it will hearten you to know that your security is based squarely upon the justice of God. "To declare...his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus." "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" (Romans 3:26; 1 Peter 3:18).

Payment God cannot twice demand; First at my bleeding Surety's hand, And then at mine.

THE LOVE OF GOD - Another factor in your eternal security is God's love for you. Your Father loves you as He loves His Son, because in Him you are also His son. Nothing can separate the Lord Jesus from His Father, and in Him nothing can separate you from your Father.

"What shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...for I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord" (Romans 8:35,38,39).

THE POWER OF GOD - further, you are an heir of God. Your inheritance is kept for you while you are kept by the power of God.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:3-5).

THE PROMISES OF GOD - As if this overwhelming evidence concerning your eternal security were not enough, God has given many promises that He will keep you. Let us look at just two of them in closing.

The Lord Jesus gives you a dual promise: "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:37). You have come to him as your Savior, and he has not rejected you but rather received you in eternal love. Having come to Him and been saved by His marvelous grace, He has promised never to cast you out!

When Satan approaches you in the midst of your weakness and immaturity and charges that God has forsaken you, because of your sinful condition, it is then that your Father's promise shines upon you: "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5). "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it!"

Finally, consider this encouraging word by the late Dr. L.S. Chafer, founder of Dallas Theological Seminary: "Could it be possible that God would so love an individual as to give His Son to die for him, and still love him to the extent of following him with the pleadings and drawings of His grace until He has won that soul into His own family and created him anew by the impartation of His own divine nature, and then be careless as to what becomes of the one He has thus given His all to procure?" (Salvation, p. 119)

It is upon this sure foundation of acceptance, assurance, and eternal security--amid the exigencies and ecstasies of the Christian life--that you will "grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18).

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MJStanford

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(Materials by Miles J. Stanford are republished here under exclusive permission from the author.)