Too good to be true…

“If it’s too good to be true, then it probably is”. That phrase simply says that what’s being offered cannot be as good as it seems to be because “you don’t get something for nothing in this world”. And if someone you have no connection with is offering you a deal that is too good to be true, then it is good advice to be cautious. Sadly we often carry this attitude into our relationship with God.

Even as I write the phrase relationship with God I can see signs of caution. You see it’s actually a friendship, but sometimes we prefer to call it just a relationship because it sounds less presumptuous. A friendship with almighty God – that would be too good to be true wouldn’t it? But didn’t Jesus say in John 15 that He wasn’t going to call us servants but friends? How can we be friends? He is “way up there” and we are “way down at the bottom of the pile surely? Isn’t He perfect and holy, and aren’t we just mere sinful mortals?

Actually no. The description of Him is correct, but how we often see ourselves is wrong. Let’s look quickly at what God says about us, and why….It’s a bit radical though (but then He is, isn’t He?) It’s so radical that we often have a hard time accepting it.

God says that we are:

• Clean not dirty
• Holy not tarnished
• Chosen not unwanted
• Accepted not rejected
• Righteous not compromised by past sins
• Free from any condemning voice – no longer guilty as charged
• Free from the power of Sin – we no longer have to follow its plans
• Absolutely loved and wanted by Father God, always, at all times.

That’s just a start! As you read through the list you might find some things hard to accept. You might struggle a bit with the fact that you are clean, holy, righteous and that God loves, accepts and wants you at all times. The church often has struggled with this, and has come up with a neat but entirely unbiblical way of understanding this.

Many of us at some time or another have been taught that actually we are not that clean or holy or acceptable to God, but in some mystical way Father God has taken Jesus’ clean-ness, His holiness, His righteousness and His acceptability and made it into some sort of cloak that He then threw over us. Then when God looks at us He doesn’t see the real unlovely us underneath, He just sees the Jesus cloak or veneer over us and so He can accept us. Sounds clever, but it’s absolute rubbish really.

It makes out that God pretends to Himself that all is ok, when underneath the mystical cloak things are just the same as they have always been. God is not double-minded – seeing one thing and thinking another. The book of James tells us that a double-minded person is unstable in all they do. So why do people teach that we are “covered by Jesus righteousness” meaning that when God looks at us He sees Jesus instead so that’s the only reason He can accept us?

The answer is that the real truth seems too good to be true – and therefore we’d better find another (man made) explanation to believe instead. The real truth is staggering. It is radical. It is almost unbelievable. But its absolutely TRUE.

The truth is written all over the Epistles (the letters to the churches) in the New Testament. Here for instance….

Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

Colossians 1v22

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved meand gave himself for me. 

Galatians 2v20

The truth is that when you became a Christian, God changed you at the very core of your being. You became a new person, a new man, a new woman. The old you was put to death on the cross 2000 years ago.

It’s not a fresh start in life that you needed, it was a fresh life to start with. And that’s exactly what God gave you. You are now a different person with different desires and motivations – godly ones. The old has gone. The new is here. You don’t need a ‘Jesus covering’ to cover up the old unlovely you. You are not a knackered old settee that needs to be made presentable by putting a nice Throw over it. You are re-born, changed, attractive to Father God. No pretence needed on His side. Nothing to cover up. It’s all gone. Why don’t you go to the mirror and say hello to the new you!

Are you thinking yes….but…? “Yes but I sin – what about that? Maybe He won’t love me when I sin?” Well, surprise surprise, He knew that sometimes we would sin, that sometimes we would mess up. He set us free from the slavery and domination of Sin, but we are still free to choose to sin and sometimes we do. He doesn’t love the sin, but He absolutely loves you and by His Spirit, Holy Spirit, is teaching you to say No to sin and Yes to Him.

God is prepared to put up with some mess on the way. Church often isn’t prepared to put up with mess on the way (this needs to change). Church often goes for performance and perfection, a bit like child rearing without the toilet training. Man has always tended to look on the outside, whereas God looks on the heart. It’s more important to Him that we love Him and want to follow Him, than it is that we get everything right first (or even second or third) time. It’s time to relax and enjoy your friendship.