My devotional today hit home. I know that God loves me and that He loves everyone. As a child I used to sing about His love for me… “for the Bible tells me so.” But is He satisfied with me?
I, of course, immediately defaulted to measure myself against my own standard in trying to answer this question. What a fallacious thing to do.
Romans 5:6-11
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Is Jesus satisfied with you? Yes. Because He has redeemed you!
Your servant in Christ,
Pastor Nathan
Is Jesus Satisfied With Me?
Posted by Regi Campbell on December 19, 2013
Growing up Baptist, my mind runs to the B.B. McKinney hymn “I am Satisfied”. Written in 1926, it had a good tune, but bad theology. First verse…
I am satisfied with Jesus,
He has done so much for me:
He has suffered to redeem me,
He has died to set me free.
Good so far. But then the chorus….
But the question comes to me,
As I think of Calvary,
Is my Master satisfied with me?
That’s the traditional question that’s created so many good works but so little peace.
Let me cut to the chase. If you’re a ‘believer’, ‘saved’ by God’s grace, a ‘follower of Jesus’, then God is satisfied with you. When He looks at you, He sees the holiness of His Son who swapped His purity for your sin, meaning you’re now ‘pure’ in the Father’s eyes. What performance could you possibly render to add to that? Beyond placing your faith in Christ, you don’t have to do a single thing for God to be ‘satisfied’ with you. A lot of folks call this ‘cheap grace’…I say it’s anything but. It seems “cheap” because the price was paid by someone else. I think it’s unconscionably expensive, but overwhelmingly generous and loving beyond imagination.
But my question is “Are YOU satisfied with you?” Knowing the incredible price God paid to give us this ‘holy’ status, don’t we want to at least turn away from the stuff His Son died to free us from? To show Him gratitude? Our obedience gives Him glory, just as we get a little ‘glory’ when our kids do what we want. Because the Holy Spirit lives in us, we know right from wrong. We usually know what He’d have us do in a given situation or relationship. It’s mustering the courage to do the right thing and trusting Him to take care of us with the outcome. That’s the challenge.
I stirred something up with my group when I said “You can’t make God mad”. If I understand Scripture, God’s anger toward sin was cut loose on Jesus on the cross. His revenge for sin….my sin, your sin, all sin, past present and future poured out on His own Son. For stuff He didn’t even do.
The birth of Jesus put all this in motion. Imagine the Father’s angst as the day approached when Jesus…the Son who’d been there at His side forever….disappeared from heaven and showed up in a stable. Knowing how hard we try to keep our kids from having to suffer, imagine the knot in God’s stomach when, right off the bat, He sees Herod kill thousands of innocent babies hoping Jesus would be among them. And that was even before He started threatening the political and religious establishment with His message of redemption.
All because God wanted to be satisfied with us.
Thanks to Jesus, He is.
Question: Do you really believe God loves you regardless of your performance? That He’s satisfied with you?
