Faith and Feelings

James 2:12 So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

In Jesus, God's invisible attributes are made visible. In Jesus, God's love is made complete. Jesus is the summation and the pinacle of all of God's divine qualities. In Jesus God's seemingly contradictory and paradoxical absolutes are reconciled.

God is love. God is also just. How can a loving God judge people for sinning when they are incapable of being righteous?

By taking their sins upon Himself and judging those sins on the cross of Christ and dispensing His own perfect righteousness to all who believe. Mercy triumphs over justice. But neither is diminished. God's perfect justice reached its perfection in Christ. And God's perfect love achieved perfection in Christ at the same time. These two seemingly contradictory qualities of God reach not only their perfection in Christ but are perfectly harmonized and resolved in Christ so that there is no longer any conflict. God's love and God's mercy and God's justice and God's righteousness all find their perfection and summation in Christ Jesus.

Jesus fulfilled the law that we could not obey, and He fulfilled it with God's perfect righteousness. Jesus paid the penalty for all our sins that we couldn't pay, and He paid it so perfectly that God's justice was completely filled up by Jesus's sacrifice. Jesus defeated all of the works of the evil one, and He freed us from the power of lies and from sickness and oppression. Jesus redeemed the earth and all of mankind from the curse of sin that came about as a result of our own free will, but He didn't take away our free will. He reconciled the paradox of man's sinfulness and free will with perfect obedience and righteousness. Our perfection and righteousness are free gifts that are inherited and imputed to us by grace through faith in Jesus. And along with His free gift of righteousness, Jesus also bestows on us His authority. We are adopted as sons of God. 1 Jn 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!

With Jesus's redemption we are better off than Adam and Eve were. They got to hang out with God in the cool of the evening, but we get to experience God's presence in our hearts; our spirits are elevated into God's very throneroom through Jesus. The Earth still groans as it waits for its redemption, but it is God's mercy that waits until all who are thirsty will come and drink before He finally ends the existence of evil and casts the devil into the lake of fire. Mankind currently hangs precariously between life and death and is in a state of suspended judgment. The evil one is already judged, but God is witholding His punishment until all who are called will come to Him. At the end of days, God will display His righteousness through contrasting it with the exceeding sinfulness of sin by allowing the devil to be unleashed for a season.

In the mean time, we have the power and fellowship of God's Holy Spirit. We cast out demons and pray for the sick, and they get better. We trample over serpents and scorpions. Our names are written in the Book of Life. We overcome the world through the blood of Jesus and by the word of our testimony. We are accumulating eternal rewards through our obedience and slight suffering for a short time.

Romans 8:18-31

2 Tim 1:12 For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.

Phil 1:6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ

1 Jn 3:20 For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.

So we see that it is most important that we have faith that can carry us through regardless of our feelings. Our feelings constantly change, but God's word is eternal, and God's faithfulness is absolutely reliable. 2 Tim 2:13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.

So even though we are many times tempted to place our faith in our feelings, because those feelings of God's presence and His love are overwhelming while we are experiencing them, we must remember that our faith is in Him and not in ourselves or our feelings. Feelings will betray us. Our faith is in His faithfulness and His grace and the redemption Jesus paid for in His own blood. When we call out to God, we call to a God Who is near, not one Who is far away. We don't need to get His attention. His attention is always toward us. We need to remember His closeness to us and redirect our attention back toward Him and refocus our attention on the things that matter, the things of eternity.

Our faith is ultimately in God's word. Matt 24:35 Jesus said "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away."