Life Assurance
I once posed this question to a friend: “If you had the power to snap your fingers and make someone instantly fall ‘head over heels’ in love with you…would you use that power?” His response was slow, requiring a significant pause for deliberation, and fraught with suspicious pondering. No doubt, his mind was racing, conjuring up images of “childhood sweethearts” and unrequited love. But in the end, and with a confident and gentle smile – as if abandoning all fantasy and embracing a beautiful reality – he simply said, “No, not a chance, Brother!”
You see, my friend understood one of the greatest principles of God’s Kingdom, which is to set His children free to love one another, and to choose to love God with everything we’ve got. This speaks of the Lord’s nature, and I am confident that it was reflected in my friend’s response to my hypothetical question: “If I used that power to manipulate the affection of another person, every time I looked at her thereafter, I would wonder if her love was true or simply imposed upon her.”
When we choose Jesus, and we enter into that “love bond” with Him, and with our Heavenly Father (and His Holy Spirit), there are many wonderful things that happen. First, we become “new creatures” in Christ. Second, according to 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, we’re given a job:
“Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation…and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.”
In considering these things, it occurred to me that the principles of free will and choice, and the power of such mutual commitments, inform us of God’s nature on other levels, such as the matter of “predestination.” I am privileged to know Godly people who alternately come down on either side of that equation, and it seems likely we’ll only know for sure after Christ returns.
The Easter story that we celebrate this April metaphorically symbolizes God’s immeasurable ‘love in action’ through Christ’s suffering, His death on the cross, and His resurrection from the tomb. The outcome of Jesus’ self-sacrifice was that all who thereafter “choose” to accept Christ’s salvation would willingly decide to follow Him.
I recall that Jesus Himself faced a ‘life and death’ choice in accepting the bitter cup of humankind’s sin in the Garden of Gethsemane. He willingly offered up His life so that we could be saved. God did not force Himself nor His will upon Jesus…. In fact, Jesus deferred His own will to that of His Heavenly Father’s in a glorious act of surrender (“not My will but Yours…”).
God’s business and individual acts of reconciliation first and foremost are directed at those who have chosen to voluntarily ‘pick up their cross and follow Him.’ The mystery of such supernatural acts, however, also includes Scriptural references to God’s foreknowledge of us and His predestination of events in our lives, which are yet to come. Romans 8:29-30 reads:
“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.”
“Called…justified…glorified….” These may be the stepping stones of the process of our reconciliation with God. They emerge through His foreknowledge of all things. Such is limitless, as He is “the Alpha and the Omega” (meaning “the beginning and the end”). And since the Lord is omniscient, He’s already waiting at the end of our time – knowing all that has already happened and is yet to take place in eternity. That should not, however, be confused with the potentially robotic relationship that would be at play were our God to predetermine the outcome of everyone’s life, including how our love for Him would be qualified and expressed, not unlike my aforementioned friend.
Still the mystery of exactly how God’s sovereignty interacts with, and intervenes in, our lives on a daily basis requires prayerful consideration. While examining these Scriptural premises, I’ve come to realize that God’s love for us speaks of His compelling nature in drawing us to the cross of Jesus – the only place where the process of our reconciliation back to God can begin…and end.
I wonder, therefore, if at the point in time when our salvation is confirmed by faith, and according to our surrender to Jesus, God (by way of His foreknowledge of all that is to come) enters into a covenant with us to guarantee everything that we will need for our journey to eternal life in heaven. Additionally, for our salvation to be fully reconciling to God, His assurance (let’s call it “Life Assurance”) to us is that His Son Jesus, in taking our sin upon Himself, has fully quenched God’s wrath even for that sin which is yet to be committed before we enter into heaven.
In closing, and with the blessing of Easter upon our hearts and households, let us always remember that Jesus’ last words upon the cross were not, I am Finished, but rather, “It is Finished,” referring to His eternal victory over death as He rose triumphantly from the grave.
- Doug
