A common misconception about God is that He has this long list of things that people do that give Him the right to cut us off.
Painting God as a god who is looking for reasons to throw us all away.
It’s like an artist looking at his work and disliking it so he finds any excuse to toss it in the waste paper basket.
However, artists seldom need a good reason to dispose of the work that they are not proud of…
It’s their property so they simply discard what they believe is rubbish.
So, the God of all creation, the Artist of all existence, most definitely does not need to explain why He is discarding something, nor does He need a good reason.
Yet, this belief persists that God made a list of things that we will all fail in, just so He could say that we all belong in the eternal waste paper basket.
I do not hold this belief and I want to tell you why that is; not based on my own opinion, but based solely on the theological evidence left for us in the Bible.
Let’s begin in the Old Testament!
Go to Numbers 9:1-14.
“Now the Lord spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying: “Let the children of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time. On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight, you shall keep it at its appointed time. According to all its rites and ceremonies you shall keep it.” So Moses told the children of Israel that they should keep the Passover. And they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month, at twilight, in the Wilderness of Sinai; according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so the children of Israel did. Now there were certain men who were defiled by a human corpse, so that they could not keep the Passover on that day; and they came before Moses and Aaron that day. And those men said to him, “We became defiled by a human corpse. Why are we kept from presenting the offering of the Lord at its appointed time among the children of Israel?” And Moses said to them, “Stand still, that I may hear what the Lord will command concerning you.” Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, saying: ‘If anyone of you or your posterity is unclean because of a corpse, or is far away on a journey, he may still keep the Lord’s Passover. On the fourteenth day of the second month, at twilight, they may keep it. They shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They shall leave none of it until morning, nor break one of its bones. According to all the ordinances of the Passover they shall keep it. But the man who is clean and is not on a journey, and ceases to keep the Passover, that same person shall be cut off from among his people, because he did not bring the offering of the Lord at its appointed time; that man shall bear his sin. ‘And if a stranger dwells among you, and would keep the Lord’s Passover, he must do so according to the rite of the Passover and according to its ceremony; you shall have one ordinance, both for the stranger and the native of the land.’ ””
Numbers 9:1-14 NKJV.
Moses asked God a question regarding reasons not to keep the Lord’s Passover, and God answered in a way I didn’t expect.
In effect, the LORD said…
“You can always participate in Passover! If you are fully able to participate, yet don’t want to, you’re not included.”
This passage concludes that…
God doesn’t cut people off;
People cut themselves off from God!
The LORD doesn’t desire to cut people off.
We see this in His word:
“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”
II Peter 3:9 NKJV.“For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,” says the Lord God. “Therefore turn and live!””
Ezekiel 18:32 NKJV.
“For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
I Timothy 2:3-4 NKJV.
“Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’”
Ezekiel 33:11 NKJV.
God is consistent in that He doesn’t want anyone to turn away from Him.
We also see in these scriptures that it is us who choose to turn away from God.
He gives us a choice and we choose our own way, over and over again.
God, on the other hand, never abandons us.
“Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.””
Deuteronomy 31:6 NKJV.
“If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.”
II Timothy 2:13 NKJV.
We leave God all the time and choose to trust in whatever temporary thing appears secure.
The LORD is faithful to us, even when we abandoned Him.
Even when we turn away from Him, He still keeps His promise to us!
The evidence is in Jesus Christ!
Jesus giving His life to fulfill our side of the covenant, so we wouldn’t have to face the consequences of cutting ourselves off from our Creator…
That is a picture of a faithful God running after the one who broke His heart and abandoned Him!
The one who cut Him off, He loved so much that He gave everything to provide a way back to Him!
“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”
Romans 5:6-11 NKJV.
God gave us a choice.
We chose to live a life that leads to death.
He didn’t want to be separated from us and He didn’t want us to face eternal death.
So, He rescued us from jumping right off the edge into death.
He gave His only Son.
God incarnate, traded places with us.
He got us away from the ledge while He leaped off.
We chose unwisely, yet the LORD still provided a way to bring us back into the loving embrace of our Father!
He paid the penalty we earned, so we could live and never be separated from Him!
Does that sound like a god who wants to cut us off and cast us far away from Him?
On the contrary!
Remember, if God is the Creator of all existence and can do anything with what He creates…
If He wanted to scrap His work and start over, He could’ve!
God can throw us away but He doesn’t!
The LORD can cut us off easier than blinking an eye…
Yet He loves us so much, even when we scribble ourselves out and crumple ourselves up, He looks at us as His craftsmanship and says “you are mine!”
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
Ephesians 2:10 NKJV.
“I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!”
Psalms 139:14-17 NKJV.
So,
What Truly Keeps us Cut Off from God?
Only we could do that…
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:31-39 NKJV.
Photo by Taryn Elliott
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
