On Whom His Favor Rests

"If you were to die tonight, are you 100% sure you would be with God?" goes the question we Christians can't stop using as our ultimate faith-in-Jesus-alone secret decoder ring.  Despite my cynicism about the question, I would usually answer it in the affirmative.  But if the question changed to, "Right this very moment, are you 100% certain that God's favor rests on you...that you deserve His blessings today, that He is 100% delighted and satisfied in you right now, etc." I would have to answer with far less certainty. 

Now, if it was a day when I'd spent time reading the Bible, had faithfully prayed for other people and confessed my "sins", however generic the confession might be, then yes, I should expect His favor upon the course of my day and the relational interactions that followed.  But on the other hand, if it was a day when I was honest about my sense of distance from God, about my rude remarks to my husband or actual impatient yelling at my children and total lack of prayer or reading the Bible, my certainty would be much more that I was in a position quite out of favor with God.  However, being well educated in Christian duty, with a little recognition of my error and willingness to repent, a renewed determination to do more and try harder to live according to God's full law of love and obedience...wallah - back in better standing with God.

So, my security as God's Beloved is great if by "great" you mean I die tonight and get to be with Him.  But if it involves living through another day and that being a day in which I will interact with anyone beside my own self or have to make important decisions with any remote impact on my life or the lives of others, or act in any way at all for that matter, my security of resting in His favor is extremely insecure.  In this whole version of Christian living, my security as His Beloved rests in death on Jesus alone but in life on me alone.  His favor is earned by my "righteous" actions, words, thoughts and attitudes and His favor is lost by my sinful actions, words, thoughts and attitudes.   In this way I live like one tossed by the waves, more often filled with fear and condemnation than hope and comfort and peace.

If I keep this thinking running its course, the assumption in my heart is that my self-perceived righteous acts earn my blessing, making it so that God kind of of "owes" me His favor.  If I assume that I have acted in pure righteousness and then do not get that particularly desired merited blessing, it must either be because God is not good and faithful or because I have some hidden sin which I forgot to confess.

But where is the person and work of Jesus in all of this thinking and living of mine?  Did He merely pass off His baton to me with high hopes that I would make Him proud?  Is He concerned that I might thwart the lead He gave me in the race or, even more telling of my heart, is there the thought that I might even add to the start He made?  What does the entire story of Redemption tell me about God's favor? 
 
Over and over from Genesis through Revelation it tells me that my best efforts at pleasing Him by own efforts and self-reliant "holiness" are received as filthy rags when I have been clothed in the lavish works of the person and work of Jesus.  I continue to try to impress God with my fig leaf ensembles and He graciously and gently draws me out from behind the tree and offers me perfection as if I had earned it myself...and trades it for the shame and discomfort and punishment earned by my self-procured righteousness, my loveless law following and my decimation of the image of the God caused by my trying to do it all by myself.
 
Over and over I am told that God made Him who had no sin to be sin that I might be the very righteousness of God, that I no longer live but that He lives in me, that righteousness comes by faith in the person and completed work of Jesus alone, to whose work I can add nothing, help nothing but about which I can take full credit!
 
I don't look like Jesus a lot of the day, or any of it on some days, but that is where He tells me I have been hidden.  Might I begin to believe the story of Redemption that His favor rests on me not for any of my Bible reading, extensive prayer times, exhibition of the Spirit's fruit or any of my other attempted "good works bribery" but because God tells me that I am clothed in His righteousness alone, not just in death but this very day as I go to the grocery store, ask my children for the fifth time to get in the bath tub and wrap a few final gifts. May my confidence in His pleasure quit riding on my "works" and begin to rest solely in the person and work of Jesus?  Oh, help me Lord to walk by faith (in this very Good News) and not by sight (of my obvious unworthiness) even as I hear those words of the angel's proclamation read this Christmas:  "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests!"