Insecurity is the enemy of intimacy

 Reflecting on the old hymn, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, and the powerful scripture Romans 5:1-11…

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
By Isaac Watts (1707)

 

When I survey the wondrous Cross
    On which the Prince of Glory died,
    My richest Gain I count but Loss,
    And pour Contempt on all my Pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
    Save in the Death of Christ my God:
    All the vain Things that charm me most,
    I sacrifice them to his Blood.

See from his Head, his Hands, his Feet,
    Sorrow and Love flow mingled down!
    Did e'er such Love and Sorrow meet,
    Or Thorns compose so rich a Crown?

His dying Crimson, like a Robe,
    Spreads o'er his Body on the Tree;
    Then I am dead to all the Globe,
    And all the Globe is dead to me.

Were the whole Realm of Nature mine,
    That were a Present far too small;
    Love so amazing, so divine,
    Demands my Soul, my Life, my All.

 

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.—Romans 5:1-11

 

 

Insecurity is the enemy of intimacy. You’re never going to have a real intimate relationship with someone when you don’t know how they feel about you. 

If you’re not confident in how God feels about you, you’re never going to really draw near to Him. Insecurity is the enemy of intimacy. If you have any hopes of having intimacy with God, you have to be absolutely confident in how He feels about you. He has settled it—how He feels about us. He has shown His love for us, in that while we were weak, and ungodly, and we didn’t care about Him, Christ died for us. And through faith in Jesus, we are declared righteous—always welcome, always accepted, always delighted in—because of the finished work of Jesus. 

So if we want to get really secure—so that we can be confident to approach God without the fear of being turned away, or rejected, or lectured to, or met with crossed arms or pointed fingers, or “Where have you been” or “I told you so”—we’ve got to look long and hard at the display of His love for us at the Wondrous Cross.

 

We can’t look to ourselves, we can’t look at our performance, we can’t look at our record: “Well, I read my Bible three days in a row. God must be really accepting of me.”

 

We’ve got to look to Jesus—see Him dying, see Him suffering in our place, see Him restoring, reconciling us back to God. And the Father just saying, “Come, come.”

 

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This Romans 5:1-11 passage reminds us that our reason to rejoice is not only that our future salvation is assured, that we’ve been delivered from eternal punishment, or that Christ died for us while we were still his enemies. Certainly, that would be reason enough! But we also rejoice because in the present, right here on earth in the midst of where we are—today, tomorrow, and all the days we are alive—we can enjoy a wonderful new relationship with our heavenly Father. This is not a distant relationship but a close, intimate one. We are blessed with this intimacy because the finished work of Christ removed every barrier standing between the Lord and us and restored our relationship so that we could be friends of God. We did nothing to accomplish this; we receive it because of what Christ did. Think of it—friends of the Almighty! If nothing else is going well today, we still have great reason to rejoice.

Heavenly Father, I rejoice in my relationship with you—all because of what Jesus Christ has done for me. Having an intimate relationship with Jesus, the friend of sinners, allows me to have an eternal perspective about everything else that happens to me today. I praise you for the joy such a friendship brings. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

 

Look Up—meditate on Romans 5:1-11. Pray to see what it reveals about the character of God.

 

Look In—as you meditate on Romans 5:1-11. Pray to see how you might apply it to your life. Be propelled to ask galvanizing questions about your discoveries: "Because God is_________, I will_____________."

Look Out—as you meditate on Romans 5:1-11. Pray to see how you might apply it to your relationships with others. Let the nature of God impact on every relationship, for your good, and for His glory.