Do you believe God is pleased with you?
For many years, I didn't. I knew God loved me – He died on a cross and all – but I didn't think He liked me very much. I was sure He tolerated me, like a distant parent tolerates the annoying habits of her child. When you distill it down, my assumption was that God loved me because He had to; because “God is love”.
God is love… and love is a conscious choice. God chose to love me. He chose to love you.
The truth of God's conscious, intentional, seeking, reaching love cannot be felt until it is believed. And it cannot be believed when untruths are permitted to reign supreme. Only when I lined my beliefs to Scripture and found them lacking was I able to move into the acceptance of God's love for me – a love abundant, faithful, powerful, and pleased.
The grace of God, manifested in part through His love, is also called His “favor”. Favor is approval, support, an act of kindness beyond what is due (that last part being the chief crossover with grace). God's favor toward us is assured in Scripture:
- Psalm 5:12: “For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.”
- Psalm 90:17: “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us. Establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands.”
- Psalm 84:11: "For the Lord God is a sun and shield; he bestows favor and honor. No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly.”
- Psalm 30:5: "For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning.
Noah, Joseph, Samuel, Esther and Jesus are all named in the Bible as recipients of God's favor, always in response to their faith in God. This is consistent with what Ephesians 2 teaches us:
“For it is by [favor] you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” Eph. 2:8-9
The favor of God is the birthright of those who put their faith in His unfailing love. We talk much about grace, but I fear many of us no longer understand what it means, and certainly have not allowed it to permeate our hearts. What if, for a moment, you changed the term? What if you allowed the favor of God to be your reality? What would change?
One of my favorite Christmas hymns is by Charles Wesley. The famous poem-turned-song, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing turns our eyes to an unchanging message from heaven to human: Peace on earth, goodwill to men. The coming of Jesus was the intentional love-choice to offer goodwill to a broken creation. The Incarnation was not the reluctant concession of God to those He hated. Christ took on human flesh “for the joy set before Him” (Heb. 12:2): the redemption of His people. It was joy, not duty, that kept Jesus on the cross: the joy of reconciliation with those He died to save.
This is why Charles Wesley could write:
late in time behold him come,
offspring of the Virgin's womb:
veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
hail th'incarnate Deity,
pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus, our Immanuel.
Jesus was not a reluctant sacrifice. He was pleased to take on flesh, pleased to dwell with us, pleased to die for us, and stands at the right hand of God pleased with us. Even His wrath against sin proceeds from His deep pleasure and love for His people. Any truly good Father hates a threat to His child! The wrath of Christ is the wrath of love, said one scholar. God's wrath is an essential part of His character – of Christ's character – because love protects (1 Cor. 13). What we forget is that this wrath, so necessary, so good, so holy, is not directed at US but at SIN. Those who have surrendered their lives to the authority of Christ are under God's favor, not His condemnation.
