How Do We Commune With God?
What Now?
During this final week of September, I want to focus on one of the biggest aspects of anthropology which is our relationship with God now. After looking at our origin, our genetical makeup, and our fallen nature, I think it is vital that we ask, ‘How do we relate to God now?’. After all that has happened since the beginning, what now? Can we still have a relationship with the Lord as He intended? We can, but how? The answer to this question is actually the most common and basic answer there is in the Christian world, and yet it’s no less powerful or important. That answer, of course, is Jesus. Once Jesus saved us, everything in our relationship with God changed. As John Piper says, “Once your spirit was dead. You had no communion with God at all. You didn’t have eyes for things of the Spirit. You didn’t have a love for God, a delight in God, a love for the Bible. Everything was dead, boring, blank. And then something happened. You were touched by the Spirit and you are alive.” What happens when the Spirit leads us to the atoning work of Christ? Are we just saved from hell, or is our whole relationship with God changed as we know it? This is what we are going to look into as we search the scriptures to see how God related to man before the cross, and how we now can relate to Him after the cross.
Back In My Day
First off, let’s look at the Old Testament and see how man was supposed to relate to our Lord before the sacrifice of Christ. We see a perfect description of this relationship in Galatians 3:19 “19 Why the Law then? It was added on account of the violations, having been ordered through angels at the hand of a mediator, until the Seed would come to whom the promise had been made.” It is clear that the Law of God was made from the very beginning with the purpose of righting the wrongs of God’s people. Why does this matter? Because a perfect God can’t dwell amongst imperfect people, otherwise He Himself would be imperfect. There had to be a way for perfection to commune with imperfection if God wanted to relate to His people. The answer to this was the Law. If mankind could follow the Law that God set forth, they would meet the requirements and be able to commune with Him. What is this Law? Go back through the first five books of the Bible and just count how many rules God puts into play for His people.
Let me help you, the number is 613. That’s right, 613 rules that mankind needed to follow in order to be considered holy enough to dwell with God. No wonder the law didn’t work! It’s rare enough to find someone today who follows all 10 commandments let alone the original 613 rules that God set before for His people. This is also why Paul says in Romans 7:5 “5 For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were brought to light by the Law, were at work in the parts of our body to bear fruit for death.” On the one hand, the Law was good cause it revealed to us how we are to be in communion with our God, but on the other, it was bad news for us because it continually showed us the sins that we were constantly committing against God as well. This is when something needs to change. A new law needed to be established or a mediator needed to come to make our standing right before God on our behalf since we could not do it ourselves. Thankfully, we see on this side of the cross, exactly how God did that.
Living Dead People
When we look at how people in our day and age commune with the Lord it has to happen by the saving work of Jesus Christ. In fact, John Piper notes that there are two kinds of people on the earth today, ‘dead living people’ and ‘living living people’. Obviously, everyone from a physical standpoint is alive, but are they alive by the Spirit? Have they been born again? Piper goes further to say, “Everybody in the world must be born again or they will not enter the kingdom of heaven. We are all born dead, just flesh.” If you want to commune with the God of the universe in this day and age, you must be a follower of Christ. You must be born again. You must be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This is seen nowhere clearer than in John 14:6 “6 Jesus *said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” We cannot come to God and commune with Him if it is not through the Son. Anyone who tells you they aren’t a Christian but still have their own personal relationship with God is simply lying to you or believing a lie. No other person who has ever walked the face of this earth has ever fulfilled the law besides Jesus Himself. This is why the writer of Hebrews opens up with a powerful statement in Hebrews 1:1-2 when they say, “1 God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the world.”
God used to function towards His people in the Old Testament in a different manner because they were under a different covenant. But now, with Christ’s work finished on the cross, we are under a new covenant and come into a relationship with God solely because of His work. As John MacArthur so beautifully says, “Based on Christ’s atoning work and the establishment of the new covenant at the cross, those who are united to Jesus receive salvation and are being conformed to the image of Christ who is the perfect image of God.” This is how we are to commune with our Lord in this day and age, it must be through Christ. If you are someone who is currently working through this and trying to figure out your own walk with the Lord, I humbly want to encourage you to study His word and see what God has to say to you Himself about this matter. Furthermore, for those of you who know someone who is walking through life as a ‘dead living person’, I want to encourage you to leave a comment on this post so that we can pray for these people and see our Lord lead His sheep back to His heart. Prayer is a powerful tool that God has made available to the believer in our communion with Him. As a matter of fact, the importance of prayer is how we are closing out this month in talking about our walk with the Lord. I hope you join us as we conclude our study this Thursday of anthropology.
Sources
[1] “Access Your Bible from Anywhere.” BibleGateway.Com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 150 Versions and 50 Languages., www.biblegateway.com/. Accessed 2023.
[2] MacArthur, John & Mayhue, Richard. A Systemic Summary of Bible Truth: Biblical Doctrine. Wheaton, Crossway, 2017
[3] Piper, J. (2023, September 20). You cannot obey God without God. Desiring God. https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/you-cannot-obey-god-without-god
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