Perhaps you know the feeling — the feeling that God is against you. Perhaps as you look back over your life, you conclude that all that has gone wrong proves that God is against you. Perhaps you are consumed with questions about how you can change God’s mind and get Him on your side.
Countless people are gripped by the fear that unless they perform all their religion’s slavish acts, God will always be against them. No matter how burdensome the tasks, such people rottenly perform their good deeds. If their deeds cannot atone for past sins, then at least they may help them escape some harsher penalty, they believe.
Some religions teach that God is against humanity. God is the direct cause of all that befalls one in life — the good and the bad — such religions teach. The only way to satisfy His wrath is to give oneself to that faith’s rules. If one keeps the rules, then He will love him or her. If one does not keep the rules, then He will condemn him or her, for He loves only those who demonstrate their faith by keeping the rules.
Sometimes individual Christians may feel that God is against them. Unfortunately some so-called Christian sects have occasionally subverted the Christian faith with such thinking. But the core of the Christian faith is that God is for us, and He proved that on the first Easter.
Perhaps the clearest Old Testament imagery is seen in the Passover. Israel was a slave nation longing to be free of Egyptian persecution. After Pharaoh refused to obey God’s commands as presented through Moses, He promised the death angel would claim the firstborn of every family in the land. The only way of escape was the sacrifice of a spotless lamb whose blood would then be spread on the crosspiece of the doorframe of each household.
Exodus 12 describes how God took the initiative to do what the Israelites could not do for themselves. The means of salvation for the Israelites was a sacrifice, but it was God’s plan and power that brought deliverance. One finds that process repeated over and over again in Scripture.
Scholars have long pointed out that the Old Testament assumes that God acts to save His chosen people. Often the stories are about saving His people in the midst of political turmoil. But always the stories are about God’s efforts to save His people from their sins. One can follow that thread of redemption from the fall in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:15) through the pleading of prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah all the way to Malachi’s closing verses with the promise of the terrible Day of the Lord.
Even when Israel disobeyed, even when the people turned a deaf ear to God’s love, He still acted to redeem them. His deeds demonstrated what the writer of 1 John would later declare when he wrote, “God is love” (1 John 4:8).
In his first letter, the apostle Peter used the image of redemption to challenge new Christians to righteous living. In 1 Peter 1:18, he wrote, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed.” Obviously these early believers had been captive to something that necessitated God’s intervention to overcome. It was a reference to their need for sins to be forgiven. “But with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect,” he continued, referencing the very words describing the lamb sacrificed that first Passover.
This sacrifice was not a random act. Rather it was part of a process “chosen before the creation of the world” (1 Pet. 1:20). Sacrifice and redemption have always been tied together in God’s economy. Hebrews 9:22 declares, “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.”
In his letter to Titus, the apostle Paul instructed the pastor in Crete to “wait for the blessed hope — the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness” (Titus 2:13). There is the process again — God acting to do what mankind cannot do for itself.
God’s ultimate act of redemption was in Jesus doing for us what we could not do for ourselves — “to redeem us from all wickedness (sin).” In Romans 5:6, Paul explained it this way: “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”
The result of God’s redeeming act was to create “a people that are His very own” (Titus 2:14). Think about it. God made this mighty offering (Jesus’ death on Calvary) that He might bind to Himself all the redeemed. Believers in God’s great sacrifice of redemption become members of His family — adopted sons and daughters for eternity. That is not the act of a God who is against us. That is the favor of a God who loves us.
The thread of redemption running throughout the Bible is unbreakably anchored to God’s love. In Romans 5:8, Paul wrote, “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In 2 Corinthians 5:19, Paul wrote, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” God always takes the initiative. God always acts to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
The sacrifice that made redemption possible was not “mean old God” punishing “sweet Jesus” until God’s anger cooled. No. The sacrifice that made redemption possible was God’s love at work. The sacrifice was planned before time began and revealed “at just the right time” for our sake. The sacrifice proves God’s love for all who will see. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16).
The God of the Christian faith is not against us. He is for us (Rom. 8:31). All the time and in all situations, He is for us. Those who accept God’s redeeming sacrifice of Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and Lord echo the words of Paul when he said nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39).
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