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Being close to God requires faith and obedience. Follow Abraham’s example to become God’s friend and receive His blessings.
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES can favorably pull strings, so to speak. Thus, people seek to cultivate friendship with the movers and shakers of society. For, indeed, rich dividends await those who are associated with the high and mighty. However, not a few suffer utter misfortune precipitated by their benefactor’s fall from grace. After all, no matter what trappings of power they have donned, they too, are mere mortals.
Knowing this, those who are truly wise seek to be counted among those whom God considers His friends—to be intimate with Him. For He alone is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. And being man’s Creator, the Father alone knows what is good for man and, in fact, already planned to make him prosper and to give him hope and a future (Jer. 29:11). Hence, we should all strive to be counted as a friend of God, like Abraham, so that we will experience His goodness and more importantly, fulfill our reason for being: serving God in the manner that is acceptable and truly pleasing to Him.
The patriarch Abraham is called “the friend of God:”
“And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ And he was called the friend of God.
“Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar?” (James 2:23, 21 New King James Version)
The Bible enlightens us as to the quality of Abraham: he didn’t simply believe or have faith in God but, most importantly, he coupled his faith with works—the most significant of which was his obeying of God’s command to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. Abraham’s obedience to God was already plain to see long before he sojourned to the land of Moriah:
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would afterward receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” (Heb. 11:8 nkjv)
When God spoke to him and commanded him to leave the land of his fathers and go where He wanted him to, Abraham didn’t think twice although he journeyed “not knowing where he was going.” Such was his faith in God! Maintaining that calibre of faith worth emulating, he went on to prove his conviction once again when God promised him an offspring:
“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” (Rom. 4:18–21 New International Version)
Were Abraham a man of lesser virtues, he would have scoffed at God’s promise that he would become the father of many nations. However, “being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised,” he did not waver in his trust and faith in God. Thus, showing unconditional obedience to and faith in God, Abraham was blessed. God counted him a friend.
“And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled.” (Col. 1:21 nkjv)God’s enemies are those who are alienated from Him because of “wicked works” or sin. The ones who are alienated from God are those who are separate from or are without Christ:
“That at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” (Eph. 2:12 nkjv)Aside from being counted as enemies of God, those who are separate from Christ have “no hope” for God’s promise. Worst, they are “without God.” This means that, despite their efforts to serve and call to God, He will not listen to those who are separated from Him because of sin:
“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear.” (Isa. 59:2 nkjv)In the face of this truth, everyone—since “all have sinned” (Rom. 3:23 nkjv)—needs to be reconciled to God so as not to remain among His enemies and suffer the consequences.
The Bible enlightens us concerning how sinners can be reconciled with God:
“And that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.
“Having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace.” (Eph. 2:16, 15 nkjv)
Only through Jesus Christ can a sinner—an enemy of God—be reconciled with Him. And Christ effects this reconciliation in His “one body.” Thus, for a sinner to be reconciled with God and thus, end his enmity with God, he needs to be in the “one body” of Christ. The “one body” of Christ is none other than His Church:
“And He is the head of the body, the church …” (Col. 1:18 nkjv)
By joining the “one body” of Christ and remaining in it, enmity with God ends. And when enmity ends, friendship with God begins, thus:
“But now, by means of the physical death of his Son, God has made you his friends, in order to bring you, holy, pure, and faultless, into his presence.” (Col. 1:22 Good News Bible)
This is the divine reason everyone ought to join the one true Church: the Church Of Christ.
Lest people think that membership in the Church Of Christ is the only requirement for one to be saved, we ought to keep in mind the admonition of the Bible, thus:
“Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless.” (II Pet. 3:13–14 nkjv)
Having found peace with God (by joining the “one body” or Church Of Christ), one ought to be diligent to be found “without spot or blameless.” Thus, obedience to God does not end when one becomes a member of the Church Of Christ. In fact, he should all the more strive to make sure that he doesn’t relapse into his old sinful ways. For the Bible says, thus:
“Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be … But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.” (Rom. 8:7, 9 nkjv)
This is why members of the Church Of Christ or the Iglesia Ni Cristo are always taught to live the same kind of life that Jesus lived even if this world has spiralled into a moral morass. For the Bible says thus:
“Anyone who claims to be intimate with God ought to live the same kind of life Jesus lived.” (I John 2:6 The Message)
Thus, they avoid the “works of the flesh” such as “adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness … hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries; … anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language … ” (Gal. 5:19–20; Col. 3:8 nkjv).
For, if there is a way to become intimate with God, it’s not one that is paved with sins and transgressions. It is a path of unconditional obedience to God that includes joining and remaining in the true Church Of Christ, and maintaining a righteous way of life.
