Turn your back?

I was listening to a song yesterday that said something to the effect of, "I turned my back on You, Jesus." While I understand what the singer was saying, I'm not so sure I can go along with that statement as truth! We all do things that most certainly do not reflect the image of Christ in us. We may do things in which that fact is blatantly obvious. In doing so, we've come up with terms such as "I've fallen away," "I turned my back," "I walked away," etc. Again, I "get" those terms, but I'm not so sure they're valid terms!

Rather, what I think happens is that we've fallen away from, turned our backs on, and walked away from our perception of God, and from our perception of what our relationship with Him is all about and from our perception of how this relationship is maintained.

God is love, and God is grace. I'm talking about the essence of who God is. His very nature. We cannot out-sin the love of God and the grace of God. If we look fully into what God's love and grace really is, then how can we truly ever say that we've turned our backs on Him? How do you turn your back on love and grace? You can't! You are in Christ Jesus by grace alone. You are in His love. You cannot be separated from it. Sin cannot separate you from God's love, and God is love. And if sin could separate you from grace, then what a totally lousy and weak thing grace is!

Oh, yeah, I suppose I'll have to qualify some of this. :) I'm not talking about using grace as a license to sin or to walk in the desires of the flesh. OF COURSE that's not why God showers us with Love and Grace! But if we understand God as love, and if we understand that we are walking in grace that has no end or limits, then we will understand that we are always with God and He with us. When we sin and we think that through the sin we've strayed from God, it's the same as thinking we've strayed from love and grace, which is IMPOSSIBLE!

What if, instead of seeing God as One who rules with an iron fist or who's "up there" with a lightning bolt, ready to strike us when we've done wrong, we see Him as who He is - Love and Grace. The cross of Jesus is the proof of this. Whatever sin was ever on our account was fully taken care of on the cross. If it wasn't already taken care of, once and for all, then Jesus would have to keep coming back and dying on the cross to take care of our sins over and over and over again. We remain in Him by grace alone, because of His love for us. Again, what possible way is there for us to turn our backs on love and grace?

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While writing this, I remembered that I had written something similar earlier this year, entitled "Jesus will never take you back."