This is a short series on a few of the stumbling blocks that keep many from meeting God and entering His kingdom!
Part 1 of this series explored the stumbling blocks of pride and intellect.
Part 2 of this series discussed convenient confusion. And laid out 3 common arguments many believe (covered in Parts 3-5).
Part 3 was a post I spent a lot of time on because of it’s importance and I can’t stress how valuable it is.
And that leads me to today’s topic, as presented in Part 2:
Argument #2: Self-Sufficiency
Here are some examples:
- “What has God ever done for me?”
- “I don’t need God.”
- “God is just a crutch for the weak and it’s good for them if they need that but I don’t.”
- “What do I need God for?
The Real Question
At the root of these statements there is a simple question that needs to be answered: Does any of us really need God?
Here comes the rabbit hole…
Well I guess that depends on what we believe. Importantly, whether we believe the biblical narrative?! Or better yet, whether the biblical narrative is true?! If the bible is true than I would say, we most certainly need God!
Here, an individual isn’t specifically claiming that the bible isn’t true, although they may believe that, but rather they are implying that even if it is true they still don’t need God. So rather than focus on whether the bible is true (a separate discussion), I’m going to focus here on whether it’s fair to say we don’t need the God of the bible; assuming we aren’t disputing His existence.
Why we DO need God
Upon meeting and believing in Christ in college, I immediately wanted to tell everyone I knew, just like so many others who encountered Him in the bible (woman at well in John 4:28-29,42; Gerasene man in Lk 8:38-39; deaf and mute man Mk 7:36-37). I was introduced to a set of scriptures useful in understanding some of the why behind the gospel and the need for Jesus: The Romans Road
- There is no one righteous, not even one; (Romans 3:10)
- For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (Romans 3:23)
- For the wages of sin is death… (Romans 6:23a)
- …but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23b)
- But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
- If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. (Romans 10:9-10)
- For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ (Romans 10:13)
- Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. (Romans 5:1-2)
- Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, (Romans 8:1)
The Difficult Truth: Broken Beyond Repair
In these verses, which are far from being comprehensive, we see 2 major reasons why we ALL need Jesus. The first is our fallen state without Him. We have all sinned and are both spiritually dead and destined for death…apart from Christ. The spiritual death was described in the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis. This death separated us from God and all the goodness and benefits that come from abiding with Him. Furthermore, as rebels who died a spiritual death, we also must realize that the wages of sin also include the wrath of God. As any form of rebellion in a kingdom carries a commensurate punishment such as exile, so too, rebellion in the Kingdom of God carries the punishment of both wrath and separation from God and all His glory. Which brings me to the second reason why we ALL need Jesus.
The Amazing Reality: A New Creation
We’ve all heard God is good. But when you hear of His wrath some tremble, others accuse and still some question such a God. The reality is God always had an amazing plan for us to walk with Him in paradise. To share deep fellowship and intimacy with Him and share in the enjoyment of His glory and His goodness and His love. However, in His infinite wisdom, He knew that our rebellion was a possibility. So He put into place the ultimate plan of redemption to rescue us from a hopeless consequence of our rebellion. With our sin came death. A death we couldn’t dig out of and no matter of being a “good person” could offset. Caught in an impossible position of making ourselves enemies of God and slaves of His fallen angel Lucifer, we ultimately would share in the same punishment designated for the rebellious angels; hell and eternal torment. But God… I love those words! BUT GOD sent His only begotten Son to live like one of us, experience the temptations we do, live a perfect life that we didn’t so He could be a perfect sacrifice on our behalf. And then He would choose the opposite of Adam and Eve and choose to obey His Father and pay our price in His own blood. There’s so much I want to say here but for the sake of time I’ll just say His offer is simple, amazing and beautiful. He calls us to return to our heavenly state. But to do so, we can’t be repaired, we must be remade; a completely new creation, a child of God. How is this possible? We must be born again! And in this offer, we can once more return to “The Promised Land” the Land of His promises and all the goodness that flows from the throne of heaven towards the children of God.
His offer is simple, amazing and beautiful. He calls us to return to our heavenly state. But to do so, we can’t be repaired, we must be remade; a completely new creation, a child of God. How is this possible? We must be born again!
A scripture that summarizes the aforementioned is Ephesians 2:1-5:
As for you, you were dead in transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.
God Complex
The scriptures clearly layout our absolute and irreplaceable need for Jesus; the only One who saves (see Acts 4:12). And there will aways be those who reject Him. However, some, armed with the knowledge I’ve laid out, thumb their noses at God and stubbornly insist He’s not needed. In some of these cases the existence of God is not what is being denied but rather His Lordship. And this is yet another rabbit hole I’m going to tiptoe around. But suffice it to say that I have met many people who are struggling with a God complex where they’re mad at God for whatever reason and have decided to try and go it without Him. Given the scriptures we’ve looked at, it’s obvious this is futile. However, we all are capable of stubbornly refusing help even when we need it massively. Often pride keeps us from asking for help, but sometimes it’s hurt. Maybe you experienced a tragedy or went to a place of sin where you felt irredeemable because of what you had done. Regardless of the reason, the wounds or guilt often lead to a God complex. I remember a close friend once telling me after I came to faith that he used to be born again but when his “friends” called him out because he wasn’t doing the same things he used to, he felt guilty for abandoning them and turned back to the world. I’ve since seen this manifest as anger towards christians. I believe the reality is my friend feels the hurt and shame of turning his back on God and it comes out as a sensitivity.
I have a special love for many of those with a God complex because the reality is they’re often just one lie exposed away from salvation, or one healing, or one prophetic word or word of knowledge. God has so many ways to change a seemingly hard heart and underneath the facade of anger or bitterness or whatever it is, there’s often a beautiful sweet heart that’s sensitive toward God but just needs to get over the whole prodigal thing and come back home to Abba who never stopped watching the horizon for you hoping that today would be the day that you would finally give up the stubborn self-sufficiency fallacy, no matter what depths it brought you to and return to the banquet of His love.
If you’re reading this and it’s resonating with you and your tired of running or maybe this is the first you’re hearing of the impossible predicament we all face apart from Christ and you want to turn to Him and live, feel free to contact us. We love you and we’re here to help you journey with Him!