Deeper Intimacy

In the challenge from my pastor to deepen my intimacy with God, I’ve been pondering what intimacy means and almost decided it is easier to know when it is there or not there than to describe what it is.

One person says it is like long and continuing eye-contact, which creates a bonding —again without a good description. Others say intimacy is like friendship — you can be yourself and the other person loves you anyway, or you can be together without any hindrance to knowing and understanding each other.

How then is intimacy with God? Eye-contact seems impossible, yet God says, “Seek my face” to the psalmist (see Psalm 27:8). I find it interesting that Hosea connects this seeking with acknowledging guilt (see Hosea 5:15).

Certainly, with God I can be myself and know I am still loved. His love is based not on who I am or what I do, but on who He is. However, knowing that He loves me comes from having a relationship with Him . . .

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

I had no idea that God loved me until the Gospel informed me of the extent He went to demonstrate it. Jesus came. Jesus displayed God’s glory. Jesus died for my sin. Those are His love actions and when Jesus came into my heart, they declared the reality of intimacy with God.

Yet to me, the greatest intimacy-builder is tied up in the statement of being together ‘without any hindrance.’ How can that happen? God is so far above me, so holy, so indescribable. That distance of ‘being’ and my smallness compared to His greatness is hindrance in itself. How can anyone be in the presence of such a God without hindrance — never mind have intimacy with Him?

The Bible says sin separated me from Christ, so I was alienated from His realm, without hope and without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:12) The hindrances are always about sin.

I think of the things that separate me from intimacy with others. Every issue that springs to mind also involves sin, either mine, or theirs, and usually both. Our fears of being ‘discovered’ or known fully do it. We fear rejection, create walls to protect ourselves and in the process intimacy is pushed aside.

I cannot do that with God. He already knows everything about me, even to the hairs on my head and to the words I speak before I open my mouth. What do I do with that? It forces me to examine my own lack of knowledge of God. Being totally known like that is like being stripped naked. I cannot hide. I must face the fact that my sin prevents me from intimacy with this all-knowing God.

This is not to despair. The Gospel is God’s answer. My sin is forgiven. Not just the past sin, but today’s sin and tomorrow’s sin. it isn’t about my efforts or contrition, but about the One who bore my sin and shame so God would be justified in forgiving me. Even so, my part is confessing sin, saying the same thing that God says about it. David, Old Testament king of Israel knew that. He said:

“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah” (Psalm 32:1–5)

And I know the importance of confession too. Plunked between two verses about intimacy destroying attitudes is my favorite Bible verse, the one I long ago decided was key to spiritual growth:

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8–10)

Confessing sin is key to intimacy. The more I open up, the more time I spend, no matter what else I do, no actions will erase the distance between my heart and the heart of God created by sin that I will not acknowledge or ‘fess up to. It must be acknowledged before I can look Him in the eye. It must come out in the open before I will hear Him say, ‘Child, in Christ you have redemption secured by His blood, forgiveness of your trespasses — all according to the riches of His grace (Ephesians 1:7), and because of Jesus, You can snuggle up close to me and be loved and accepted.’

Timothy Keller, in his book “Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God” says, “To lose our grip on the costliness of forgiveness will result in a superficial, perfunctory confession that does not lead to any real change of heart.” And it is in the changing of my heart that I draw into a deeper relationship with the One who does the changing.

^^^^^^^

Jesus, words often fail me. How can I respond to all of this? I hear You invite me to come and talk to You, draw near, be open, allowing You to show me who I am so I can better see who You are — deepening the bond, deepening the intimacy. Oh, such a wonder!

Confession or manipulation . . .

I consider 1 John 1:9 as a major verse for Christian living. It says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is about recognizing sin and keeping short accounts with God.

A Christian teacher explained it this way: Our lives are like an empty glass. If we are walking aright with the Lord, it means we are filled with His Spirit. As soon as we sin, we tip over and like a glass of water, the contents spill out. As soon as we realize our condition and confess it to God, we again become upright and He fills us with Himself.

Of course we go through life upright/tipped/upright/tipped/upright. The best we can do is more quickly confess so as to remain longer in that filled with the Spirit, upright condition.

Today’s passage is about the precious gift to us of the nature of God. When I am upright and filled with Him, it is only because He has granted this wondrous gift of Himself . . .

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1:3–4)

It bothers me that Chambers says as partakers of the Divine nature we have to ‘manipulate’ the Divine nature in our human nature by habits. While he may not mean it the way it sounds, this runs across the grain of my understanding. I cannot form even the slightest habit without His power and grace. I cannot be filled with His Spirit by any other habit than keeping short accounts and admitting to Him that I am needy and asking His fullness.

Chambers goes on to discuss the sin of self-pity and how much that pushes God off the throne of our lives. I agree, yet that sin is also cleansed by confession and the power of God. Even as He tells me to put of the old life and put on the new, that is done the same way. Paul says we live as we were saved, through confession of sin and the saving power of God . . .  

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him . . .  (Colossians 2:6)

While I might be able to ‘control’ myself in some areas — and it is not me or my habits that make that control possible, but the Holy Spirit. Indeed, my struggles with sin always end up bringing me to my knees saying, “Jesus, You are my Savior, please save me. I cannot do this.

Habits are valuable. For me, the habit of being in the Word of God every morning has been life-changing. However, the desire comes from Jesus and it is always Jesus who makes the changes. I cannot ever say that I ‘manipulated’ His divine nature by anything I’ve done. I can only say, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” 

The Remedy for Idolatry (and all other sin)

Psychologist Carl Jung is not what anyone would call a biblical counselor; however, he comes close with his thoughts about sin. He says . . .

As soon as man was capable of conceiving the idea of sin he had recourse to psychic concealment, or to put it in analytical language, repressions arose . . . We conceal it even from ourselves. It then splits off from consciousness as an independent complex to lead a separate existence in the unconscious where it can neither be corrected nor interfered with by the conscious mind. It is only with the help of confession that I am able to throw myself into the arms of humanity, freed at last from the burden of moral exile. The goal of treatment by catharsis is full confession — no mere intellectual acknowledgment of the facts, but their confirmation by the heart and the actual release of the suppressed emotions.

Jung is right; the only remedy for sin and guilt is confession, but he left God out of it. The Bible would add repentance or turning from sin to God because sin is rebellion against Him. Confession alone brings forgiveness and cleansing, putting us into the arms of God and freeing us from sin’s burden . . .  

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:5–10)

If the sin involves others, such as stealing, insulting people, or hurting them in some way, then the confession must also be made to those involved. When I offend others, I need to be reconciled to them even before I seek God’s forgiveness.

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:21–24)

There is a right way and a wrong way to do this. The right way is a specific confession that has no other motivation than to make things right with God. He says, “Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the Lord your God and scattered your favors among foreigners under every green tree, and that you have not obeyed my voice,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 3:13)

King Saul offers an example of the wrong way. He disobeyed God and when the prophet Samuel caught him, he was stripped of his position as king. Saul was sorry, not so much that he sinned against God but that he lost his position of king and the privilege of leadership. He came to Samuel with his excuses, “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may bow before the Lord.” (1 Samuel 15:24–25)

The human heart is an idol-making factory (John Calvin) and in the process of making idols, I will certainly break the first commandment to love God, and even the second, to love others. God knows that the heart can churn out these idols easily and rapidly. The remedy has to be greater than the sin, and for those who believe in Jesus Christ it is greater, but also simple and powerful. Because Jesus died for my sin and secured my pardon, then each time an idol rolls off the assembly line and my heart is filled with horror at what my mind has produced, I can come to Him in contrite confession, knowing that if I confess my sins, He is faithful and just to forgive me my sins and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. There is no other remedy.

Guilt can make me sick

According to at least one doctor, “Most of the people I see in my office are bearing in their bodies the involuntary confessions of their guilt. The illness is the soul’s way of saying; ‘If you won’t deal with the discomfort in your soul then deal with it in your body.’”

Not everyone gets sick over unconfessed sin and not every sickness is caused by unconfessed sin. But this doctor saw enough of it that he could say there is a connection between illness and feeling guilty over doing something sinful.

Today’s devotional isn’t about the idolatry of relying on some sort of penance rather than the cure offered by Jesus Christ, but it is about one way people deal with their transgressions — by simply trying to ignore them.

The most ‘alive’ and healthy people that I know have a biblical view of sin and of what to do when it happens. Instead of making excuses, rationalizing, blaming others, or trying to make up for it, they confess their sin to God because they know . . .

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

At times, I’ve said this is the most important verse in the Bible for Christians. Indeed, John is writing to believers. He also says if we say we don’t sin, we are lying. The psalmist goes farther. He says if I say that I have no sin, I am not only lying, but that lie could put me in the hospital.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah (Psalm 32:1–4)

In another place, the same writer said this in a prayer to God about his sinful condition . . .

O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath! For your arrows have sunk into me, and your hand has come down on me. There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness, I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all the day I go about mourning. For my sides are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart. (Psalm 38:1–8)

Perhaps my low toleration for pain and discomfort has something to do with it, but I’m usually not slow to deal with sin and guilt. I don’t like the feeling of it, and I don’t want to be sick.

I’ve also noticed that failure to confess sin isn’t necessarily about being dishonest, or about embarrassment. It is more like, “If I confess that sin, then I must to stop doing it and I don’t want to stop.”

Even that is a confession of sorts and God will answer it, not by cleansing the sin (yet) but by making me hate it. He has ways of turning a so-called ‘delightful’ sin into a heavy and loathsome burden, one that I want to get rid of. I know the only way to do that is to take it to the Lord.

When that is done, then God lifts the burden. Instead of seeming to be a hard wall that blocks joy and well-being, He becomes the source of joy and well-being . . .

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah (Psalm 32:5–7)

The psalmist’s most well-known confession reveals that my experience with sin and confession is much the same as his. I see it is sin and feel guilty. I realize my sin is against God even if it was against others. I know that He is right in calling it sin. I also know sin is deeply entrenched in the human heart, but I am fully convinced that Jesus Christ makes possible full forgiveness and cleansing.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. (Psalm 51:3–8)

Like the psalmist says, truth and honesty with God results in a clean heart and in joy and gladness. As any doctor will tell you, medicine might be helpful, but a glad heart is far better toward healing sickness than any medicine.