What Pleases God

I was intrigued by a question asked at a Bible study I attended the other day of, What pleases God?  It seems like a simple question but there is some complexity to its inner workings.

We look back on history and we see Jesus; He’s lived in obscurity for 30 years and worked as a carpenter with His earthly father Joseph.  He is the oldest son of 4 brothers and 2 sisters, a large family in our day.

But this is just His natural side, His manhood, for He was more then just a man.  He was a perfect man and more then just a perfect man He is God, manifest in the flesh.

The time was ripe at this point in history to reveal Him self, to begin sharing why He was here on earth, who He was and what He came to do. So He comes to His cousin, John the Baptist to identify with the need of a change in direction for all humanity.  God the Father speaks from Heaven, what God certifies is the greatest truth imaginable.  He reveals what pleases a Holy God, and the one who pleases God is unique, loved Son, in Him, He is perfectly pleased.  Then God says, we are to listen to Jesus, find our all in Christ and live complete in all that He is.

Christ is the only one that pleases God.  When we receive Jesus, God places us in Him.  All that we have and all that we are, is found in our perfect placing in Christ, and Christ’s abiding presence in us.  We have been made pleasing to God because of what Christ has done for and in us, and we are complete in Jesus.

We battle with sin, and we slip and insult God’s love in many traits and actions, but grace abounds above and beyond all sin.  Grace is greater then all our sin, and grace is stronger then sin.

God’s forgiveness, His compassionate mercy, and the truth of the Lord’s perfect remission, is the total removal of all between God and us.

We are justified, viewed as righteous and separated perfectly in Christ.  The law has been answered and we are no longer under any condemnation.

Jesus is our perfect advocate standing before God making intercession for us. We are in God’s grace; His favor of approval is on us.  God assures us, that He is fully pleased in all we are in Christ.

We are loved with a love that is unconditional where there are no conditions on us for love’s display.  We are complete in Christ and all the pleasure God has for His Son He has for you and me in our position of acceptance in Jesus.

God’s love is unchanging, permanent and unalterable and eternal.  We are eternally secured and infinitely blessed in our Savior and sheltered forever in a perfect salvation.

Jerry Bridges writes: “We are constantly tempted to look within ourselves to seek to find some reason why God should love us, something in us that we do or say that pleases Him. Such searching is, of course, usually discouraging.

We usually find within ourselves reasons why we think God should not love us. Such searching is also unbiblical. The Bible is quite clear that God does not look within us for a reason to love us.

He loves us because we are in Christ Jesus. When He looks at us, He does not look at us as “stand alone” Christians, resplendent in our own good works, even good works as Christians. Rather, as He looks at us, He sees us united to His beloved Son, clothed in His righteousness. He loves us, not because we are lovely in ourselves, but because we are in Christ.

Here then is another weapon of truth that we should store up in our hearts to use against our doubts and the temptation to question God’s love for us. God’s love to us cannot fail any more than His love to Christ can fail. We must learn to see our adversities in relation to our union with Christ. God does not deal with us as, so to speak, “free standing” individuals. He does deal with us individually, but as individuals united to Christ.

What grace we have received through Christ’s salvation:  we who had no possibility of pleasing God, now give great and infinite pleasure to God.  May our lives today conform to this reality that He is pleased with us.”