How would you feel if you were called into the Oval Office to be brought before the President of the United States (or into the President’s office of any nation)?
How would you feel if you were called into court for a violation of the law?
How would you feel if you were called before the throne of God?
Nervous? Guilty? Embarrassed? Wanting to turn and run?
That’s how I would feel. I’m just nervous being called to court for jury duty! And when I had the privilege of viewing the Oval Office (yes, that Oval Office!), I was in awe and nervous. (No, the President wasn’t there.)
All those thoughts came to me as I meditated on Jude 1:24-25 the other day.
“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” (ESV)
I had such a deep sense of the awesomeness of being sinful in my present state and yet when I stand before the throne of God, I will be blameless and be qualified to experience God’s glory with great joy!!!!!
Before I was cleansed by Jesus’ sacrificial death, I carried around a huge load of guilt and condemnation. For those eighteen years, the thought of feeling blameless and not being called “Guilty and Condemned!” when I stood before God’s throne was inconceivable. I thought I had to earn my way into heaven, and the scale that measured my good deeds and my bad deeds was hugely lower on the bad deeds side. I could only hope that some day my good deeds would out-weight my bad ones. But it sure wasn’t looking promising.
But then came that day, October 1st, 1967, when I responded to God’s call to depend upon His saving grace instead of earning my way into heaven. What glory! And what a sense of freedom from guilt and condemnation.
I’m so grateful for the doxology of Jude 1:24-25. I can almost hear the Hallelujah Chorus being played as I read it. What glory. What blessing. What joy. Those verses tell us we won’t be timid when we come before His throne. We’ll come in joy and blameless. That’s the justification of “just as if I’d never sinned.”
What do you sense when you read those verses? I hope you’ll share them with me.