When we looked earlier in this series at forgiveness, we saw that it operates in respect of offense, or sin. We reminded ourselves that sin has two consequences. First, it puts the offender in a place of debt in relation to the one offended (not necessarily financial debt, but in a place of obligation to make reparation in some way for the sin committed). Second, as long as the offence is not covered over through forgiveness, it injures the relationship between the offender and the one offended.
In this meditation, we want to look at the believer's relationship with God in this world, and see how it may be affected depending on circumstances, one of which will be the sin of the believer.
The first thing that we need to say on this topic is that the the bond between God and the believer is indissoluble. A true child of God cannot sin their way out of being His child, nor do anything else that will change their standing as those redeemed by God with the blood of Christ on the cross. A moment's thought is enough to help us understand this. The idea that God's only Son would have laid down His life to provide the possibility of ransom from sin, but with no certainty that any would actually be saved through His sacrifice, is clearly absurd. Then God would have unleashed His judicial wrath against Jesus on the cross for the sins of people who may actually reject salvation, deciding they would rather keep their sins and receive God's wrath upon themselves. These sins would then be doubly punished, first in Christ on the cross and then in the unbeliever in hell. This cannot justly be the case. Furthermore, If no-one is infallibly saved by the death of Christ, then God is not truly sovereign. He doesn't know who will be saved and who will not, and it is entirely up to sinful man to weigh things up and decide whether or not to do God a favor by allowing Jesus to save them. But at any time, that person could change their minds and decide to return to a life of sin in this world. This empties the Gospel of any power. It makes God a weak deity who is doing his best to save people but it's entirely up to them whether they decide to be saved or not. It makes a mockery of the cross and of the gospel.
If a saved person cannot be unsaved by their own efforts, it is also true that God has so bound Himself to His children that He can't later decide to renounce them, disown them and cast them away from Himself. This is not because of who they are, or any innate skills or standing they might have, but because of Who God is. He has promised that all who turn from sin and believe in Him will be saved. It is unthinkable that He would break any promise that He has given. For sinners, promises are broken because of their frailty. They lack the ability to keep them, the consistency to sustain them indefinitely, even the lifespan to maintain them beyond their years on earth. God has no such limitations. He has the power, the means, the inclination, the changelessness and the eternality of being to keep every promise He has ever made or ever will make. This is Who He is - it is His character and His nature. So with every promise that He makes, He puts His good Name - His character and reputation - on the line. So God simply will not allow His promises to fail - because He never makes "pie crust promises" (those that are made to be broken). Rather, He makes them with infinite purpose, wisdom and integrity, with every intention to uphold them all, and with all the resources needed to do so. In addition, He is jealous for His Name and His reputation and will not allow it to be harmed by making a promise and subsequently letting it fall to the ground.
It is important to establish this at the outset, because the two circumstances we are going to consider in the remainder of this post are those which cause true believers to question if they are God's children at all (even though they are, given the arguments above), or merely self-deceived. In both cases, the believer loses his or her sense of God's presence with them - of His smile upon them. In both cases, they may cry out, with Job, the words in the title of this post. But most importantly, in both cases it is not the authenticity of their relationship with God that changes but rather their perception, or enjoyment of it.
- we sin and God's Spirit is grieved and His influences in us are quenched; and
- for God's own wise and inscrutable purposes He hides Himself from us - often to teach us our need of Him and to draw our hearts out after Him.
The effects of our sin on the enjoyment we have in the Lord
It is very plain in Scripture that the believer who sins willfully against the Lord may lose the sense of His presence with them and His smile upon them. We need to speak of willful sin here because everyone in this world sins unconsciously in thought, word and deed countless times every day. When the Spirit makes us aware of these sins, we quickly and gladly confess them and renounce them, and they are covered and forgiven in Christ. In contrast, willful sins are premeditated and committed in full knowledge that they are wrong and will offend our God and Savior. These sins are the ones most likely to quench and grieve the Spirit Who dwells in us, so that we lose our sense of His presence and our joy in his salvation.
We already reviewed what happened at the fall. Adam and Eve sinned against God and were banished from His presence. Although God took immediate steps to cover their shame through blood sacrifice, their relationship with Him was put on an entirely different footing from that moment on. They were forgiven, yes, but the consequences of their sin endured and countless others were born under the curse that they had brought upon humanity and upon all creation.
Think also of David and the premeditated adultery and murder he committed in the matter of Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah. It's clear from David's Psalm of confession over his sin that he knew his relationship with God had been injured:
Psalm 51:7-12 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.
He felt crushed. He felt the uncomfortable sense that God was holding his sins in full view. He felt dirty in God's presence, and desperately wanted to feel clean again. He wanted to re-discover joy and gladness in the Lord. He had lost the joy he had known in God's salvation. And over all this he felt that God had withdrawn from Him and that it was possible that the Spirit would be taken away from him. What a wretched state his sin had brought him into! How separated from God he felt! Note, though, that he had not and could not lose his salvation. The moment Nathan confronted him about his sin, David acknowledged his sin and repented, and God assured David through Nathan that his sins had been taken away:
2 Samuel 12:13-14 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.”
And yet David still suffered consequences for his sin, as is clear in the passages above, and one aspect of this was to experience this sense of the injury he had done to his joyful experience of the Lord on account of his sin.
What David did may be called "grieving the Spirit", or "resisting the Spirit" (see Isaiah 63:10, Psalm 78:40, Acts 7:51). See also this warning from Paul to the Ephesians:
Ephesians 4:29-32 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
The job of the Spirit in the life of a believer is to make them more holy - more separate from sin and more like the Lord Jesus. When we set ourselves on a path of deliberate sin, we grieve God's Spirit and our perception of His influences, together with our assurance of and joy in salvation, will decrease.
Note, too, the Scriptures that tell us that if we cherish sin in our hearts, God will not hear our prayers:
Psalm 66:18 If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.
Isaiah 59:1-2 Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; 2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.
It seems clear from this that deliberate sin will rob us of our joy in believing, and of our assurance of salvation. It will cause us to feel that God is more distant from us than He used to be, and it will result in God no longer hearing our prayers.
Sin is serious, and sin is vile. We should take these passages of Scriptures into account when we are tempted to gratify the cravings of our sinful nature by indulging willfully in sin.
Note, though, that God's becoming less perceptible to us in reaction to our sin is a loving thing. See how it affected David's heart and what longing it produced in him to be restored to close communion with the Lord! In the case of church discipline, don't we follow a similar path? When a church member sins and remains unrepentant over it, they are to be put out of the church - distanced from all the privileges and blessings that belong to God's children. This is to be done in love, with the earnest desire to see the offender restored. While they are out of the church, they are to be treated as unbelievers and we are to seek to win them for Christ.
This is what happened in the church at Corinth, which excommunicated a member in response to Paul's direction, and then saw that member restored:
2 Corinthians 7:8–13 For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. 9 As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. 10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. 11 For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. 12 So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God. 13 Therefore we are comforted. And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all.
If God's dealings with David are illustrative of how He deals with His children when they fall into sin (and our sin will certainly cause us to feel more distanced from God than we did before), if He behaves towards us in Christ as our heavenly Father and models perfect fatherhood for us, and if He teaches the members of His household on earth (the church) by word and by example to put some distance between themselves and an unrepentant sinner who was in their number, we may ask ourselves whether something similar shouldn't be appropriate where there is willful and unrepentant sin within an earthly family unit? Sin there will damage relationships, too. We need to be careful that we do not minimize sin in the way that we deal with it, or the offender may not come to learn how serious sin is, and what it does to relationships with God. At the same time, we need to operate (as God does) out of love and with much patience and grace, being careful not to crush the spirits of our children but to encourage them to seek God to be their own Father.
God's leaving us for a time in order to teach us about ourselves and our need of Him
Finally, we need to note that there may be other reasons than willful and unrepentant sin that may cause us to feel more distant from God for a season. The Scriptures are full of cries from God's people who felt that God was far off and had unaccountably forgotten them:
Job 13:24 Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy?
Job 23:3 Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his seat!
Psalm 10:1 Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
Psalm 13:1–2 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Psalm 44:20–24 If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god, 21 would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart. 22 Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. 23 Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever! 24 Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
Psalm 89:46–48 How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? 47 Remember how short my time is! For what vanity you have created all the children of man! 48 What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah
In Job's case, we are permitted to see behind the scenes. Job is outwardly blameless and has a solid faith in God. However, he does have an imperfect understanding of God and of his own righteousness before Him. Also, we see that Job is caught up in the spiritual struggle between God and Satan, and that through Job's refusal to curse God, He wins a victory over the Evil One. But Job is never made aware of all this and when at last God speaks to Job and grants him the hearing he longed for, God doesn't explain Himself. He has no need to. Job then realizes how vast God is, and how His ways are beyond finding out. So God demonstrates His power to Satan, and does a work to enhance Job's understanding of Who God is.
At such times, when we are sure we are not hanging on to any sin and putting our fleshly desires ahead of the desires of the Spirit within us, and yet God seems distant and we have no sense our prayers are being heard, what can we do? This is where faith operates. This is where we hold on to the promises of God. This is where we remind ourselves that God works all things together for good to those who love Him, who are called according to His purposes. His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts but for those in Christ, all His thoughts and purposes are to do us good. This is where we rest, and continue to seek His face until He chooses again to draw near and to reveal Himself to us.
So there are times when God will seem distant. This may be because we have driven Him away through persisting in a path of known sin (of which we will surely be aware), or it may be because for His own good purposes He seems less near to us than He was before. In the first case, we need to heed this sense we have that He is missing from us. We need to repent and seek Him earnestly, and He will be found again by us. In the second case, we need to seek Him also, and cry out to Him to restore to us our sense of His smile upon us, and we will be blessed as we do so.
