Our view of God must be that He is for us, not angry with us.

Our view of God obviously determines our perspective toward ministry. If we believe that God has placed us on earth to do a job for Him, and He is grading us on how well we do that job, we will respond to Him as if He were a detached boss. We will have little fellowship and no intimacy, asking when to do this job or that job and fearing penalty of failure. If we see Him as angry at us because we messed up His perfect world, and we continue to fail, we will find ourselves avoiding Him and acting out our anger at others because of our misguided perception.

The truth is: God has anger, and His is certainly justified because of what man has done to His benevolent purpose and plan, but He expelled that anger on Jesus, who was our substitute, and freed us from the fear of wrath (Romans 5:9). Those who trust Jesus as their propitiation have no wrath in their future or present. Those who don’t have nothing but wrath in their future. God now deals with us only in love. His love may be expressed in discipline and can be painful, but it is always unconditional love.

He never punishes for our sins, but rather uses the occasion of our failure to perfect us for His glory and our good. We were once enemies, with hostility between us and God, but He has reconciled us and accepted us as His sons, even giving us the spirit of adoption so that objectively and subjectively we could experience unconditional acceptance. We do not have to perform to gain His favor, nor do we need fear failure. It has been taken care of by Jesus through His life, death and resurrection.

To some, this is only positional or objective truth. That is, it is legally true in heaven but is not experienced while we are on earth. We believe that God has not only changed our legal standing before Him (justified), but that through Jesus’ redemption, we are actually changed people. We continue in the process of discovering who He has made us to be and then living as that person (sanctification).

Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and truth shall make you free." As we actually believe we are new creatures, we find new freedom to relate to ourselves as well as to others.

Romans 5:6-11                              Ephesians 1:3-6

Romans 8:31-39                            Ephesians 2:4-10