Practical Proverbial, from Hebrews, 18 July 2017

 And, “But my righteous one will live by faith.  And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.”  Hebrews 10, verse 38.

Does God ever get disappointed in us?

Friend believer, when God the Father looks and you or I, all He sees is the perfection of His Son.  He sees you and I as we are, but He sees us through the lenses of Jesus.   Everything that we ever did against Him is irrelevant.   He doesn’t even acknowledge it.  He doesn’t see the time you cheated on your husband, or when you did time for theft.   He doesn’t see yelling at your kids, or guilt over being abused, or how you thought the panhandler was a bum.  All He sees is a creation who was made righteous by the sacrifice of His own blood.   He welcomes us like a Daddy, embracing us and saying to us, “I love you so much!   I’m so glad you’re here!”

And then there’s here.  Here, in real time, like any person watching you, God sees when you cheat on your wife, steal from the store, yell at your kids, put up with abuse, and walk by the panhandler.   It’s only natural to understand that God sees what we do because, well, He can see and we do these things.  You can’t undo what you do, and you can’t expect someone with eyes (especially an omniscient someone) to not see things you do in their plain sight.   God does see what we do.  It’s reasonable to expect that our sins grieve Him, that He’s disappointed when we do them.   Knowing God is the foundation of all reason, it’s also reasonable to expect He holds people accountable for what we do, good and bad.

Does that mean God is disappointed in us because of what we do?  Nope, not ever.   That’s the peace of being a believer, of following Jesus.   I refer you back to paragraph one.    Better yet, I refer you to verse 38, which tells of how God considers us righteous.  Granted, this verse was specifically talking about Christ, about how pleased the Father is with His righteous Son not shrinking back from giving Himself fully for us.   Yet it is imputed to us as well, a fruit of His grace.   God makes us righteous through our embrace of His Son’s atoning sacrifice.   Knowing that, God can’t have us in His presence if He’s disappointed in us.  After all, there’s a difference between disappointment and being disappointed in someone.

Does that mean Christ is a get out of jail free card?  Yes…and no.  The difference is belief.   Believing in Jesus is the only part of salvation that we even remotely ‘do.’   We can perform no action, take no step, live well or be motivated by good in any way that merits our salvation.   Only Jesus can and He’s already done everything necessary.   Yet if you or I reject believing in Him, He (God the Father) can’t see us through the lenses of His Son.   If we reject this free gift He gives to us, it’s reasonable to expect that He sees all the things we do, good and bad.  John 15:5 says “apart from me you can do nothing.”   Apart from Jesus, we can expect nothing from God in reference to even the best things we do because everything we do apart from Christ is sin.   Apart from Jesus, the God who sees all we do will hold us accountable for why we rejected Him.   When we answer that accounting, we reap the consequences.   There will be no shrinking back from that moment.

Moral of the story?   Don’t shrink back now.   Embrace the righteousness.   Hug Daddy.  Cling to your belief, and do what you can to increase it.  Still try hard to do your best in all you do, but do so as a reflection of thanks for what He already did for you instead of just a goal or just a fearful reaction to something some Bible thumper told you.  God isn’t disappointed in you for any of the things you’ve thought, said, or done.   Before you believed, He held them against you.  After you believed, it’s as if they never happened.

For further reading:  Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, 2 Corinthians 5, John 15:5.

My Lord, thank You so much for forgiving me.   Thank You for seeing me through Jesus.   Thank You for not being disappointed in me.