“I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” – Jesus Christ
Most people will agree that God is Faithful, but we seem to have a misconception of exactly how faithful he is. When I was coming up in the institutional church, I was taught that God was so Holy, that he couldn’t look upon sin, and if we sinned as believers, we were suddenly out of fellowship with God. In short, this teaching implies that Sin is more powerful than God’s faithfulness and love towards us. It’s as if sin is somehow God’s Kryptonite.
Many of us forget, that when the World was in its sinful, unrepentant, unborn-again state, the Father sent his son, to bring men back into fellowship. Further, when Jesus was on the Earth, He was accused of being a friend of publicans and sinners. He did not avoid sinners, rather he was in fellowship with them, and rebuked the religious people instead (Matthew 9:10).
Even on the Cross, when Jesus was made sin on our behalf, (2 Corinthians 5:21) we learn that the Father was, in Christ, while he became sin, restoring men to fellowship with himself (2 Corinthians 5:19.)
Paul even writes about the fornication in the Corinthian church. Paul asks why would a person take the body of Christ and join it to a harlot. There is a lot to be said about this passage, but let’s not miss even in the very act of sin, we are still His Body, and Christ is going through it with us.
This post is not about sin, this post is about God’s faithfulness and His Love towards us. Yet all too often we put more power in the works of darkness than we do in the Finished Work of Christ. When Jesus Christ said he will never leave us nor forsake us, we should remember the only reasons you will have to forsake someone is if they do something wrong. Yet Jesus is making the promise, that even when we do something wrong, He is still with us.
There are times in this life, when Guilt, Shame and Condemnation come because of our actions or lack thereof. Yet in those times we can know, by faith in what Jesus promised, that the feeling of Separation is not the reality coming from God, rather it is something we put upon ourselves in our Minds. (Colossians 1:21) It is in those moment, we need to believe what he said, and have faith that He is in us, and will fulfil his purpose and plans for our lives.