God accepts me just as CHRIST is

The following is an excerpt from a blog that I read regularly. The content just changed me so much that I had to post it here. Really, really insightful.

“What happens to the Gospel when idolatry themes are not grasped? ‘God loves you’ typically becomes a tool to meet a need for self-esteem in people who feel like failures. The particular content of the Gospel of Jesus Christ—‘grace for sinners and deliverance for the sinned-against—is down-played or even twisted into ‘unconditional acceptance for the victims of others’ lack of acceptance.’ Where ‘the Gospel’ is shared, it comes across something like this: ‘God accepts you just as you are. God had unconditional love for you.’ This is not the biblical Gospel, however. . . .

“The Gospel is better than unconditional love. The Gospel says, ‘God accepts you just asChrist is. God has “contraconditional” love for you.’ Christ bears the curse you deserve. Christ is fully pleasing to the Father and gives you His own perfect goodness. Christ reigns in power, making you the Father’s child and coming close to you to begin to change what is unacceptable to God about you. God never accept me ‘as I am.’ He accepts me ‘as I am in Jesus Christ.’ The center of gravity is different. The true Gospel does not allow God’s love to be sucked into the vortex of the soul’s lust for acceptability and worth in and of itself. Rather, it radically decenters people—what the Bible calls ‘fear of the Lord’ and ‘faith’—to look outside ourselves.”

-David Powlison, “Idols of the Heart and ‘Vanity Fair,’” Journal of Biblical Counseling 13 (1995): 49.

I realize this may be a shocking statement to some. In a sense, I suppose it’s true to speak of God’s unconditional love in the sense that his love rests on us irrespective of what we deserve. But the wisdom of Powlison’s quote is to expose that “unconditional acceptance” can possibly mask a refusal to repent, a holding onto who I am and refusing what God offers me in Christ.

Guest Post by Eric Ortlund

He left the light on for me

It is midnight and I just walked in the door from being out at a prayer meeting with some precious girlfriends. It is a dark night and the light from my front porch was a comforting beacon of warmth and acceptance. It was as if I could audibly hear, "you belong here, we won't rest until you are safe within these walls, the light shines to show you in where you ought to be"

It is a big deal that the lights were on because the darkness was most certainly present upon my departure. My husband and I had not had the best evening in this journey of marital bliss and so after the kids were down and kitchen was clean I checked with him if anything else needed to be done and then I left. Cold and dark was my interaction with him. So in response to my earlier behavior upon leaving, I was more or less expecting a dark house when I drove up. But no, there was light.

There is forgiveness - he has forgiven me. There is acceptance - he accepts me for who I am. There is fellowship - I am his friend and he desires for us to spend time together. This is what the light represents to me.

"In HIM was life, and the life was the light of men. and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." John 1:4-5

"This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in HIM is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with HIM, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 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."

1 John 1:5-7

I see these Bible verses in a totally new 'light'. I often just turn my back on God, walk away to go my own way and not face the reality of my wrongs. Eventually, I come back and when I do, I know HE is eager to welcome me in to where I truly belong because, well, He leaves the light on for me.