Day 5 – How Close Is Close?

God loves to paint pictures for us – often word pictures. When He wanted Abraham to know how many descendants he would have, He took him out at night and said, “Look at the stars – how many can you count?” (Gen 15:5). 

So when the Lord wanted to get us to see how close He wants us to be with Him, He gave us some beautiful word pictures.

The first pictures a human relationship we all understand: in many verses in the New Testament, we are called the children of God. Rom 8:16 says, “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God…” This speaks to a very close, intimate relationship – children and parents. Think of how close young children are to their parents. They want to be with them, they want to share everything with them. They also want their protection and security. This is a great description of us and God. It’s interesting also that we are both born into His family (Jn 1:13, Jn 3:3, 1Pet 1:23), and adopted into His family (Eph 1:5, Rom 8:15, Gal 4:5).

But then God describes an even closer relationship – that of marriage. We are the Bride of Christ. Eph 5:22-32 describes this well. When a couple get married, they draw close to one another because of their love. At their wedding ceremony, they are set apart to one another and set apart from everyone else in the world. They are dedicated to one another, and have a special place in each other’s heart. This is much like our relationship with God. Because of His great love, He brought us close to Himself. We are set apart from the world to God. We are dedicated to one another and we have a special place in His heart – and vice versa.

But it get even closer than that. He calls us His body – the Body of Christ (1Cor 12:27). Think of that analogy – how close are you with your body? It’s almost a ridiculous question; we are completely united with our body. We don’t do anything without our body being involved. This is how closely God wants to relate to us. Together, we make up His body here on the earth. We need to take this word picture seriously, because it shows probably the highest level of unity you can imagine. This is how God wants to be to us. And just the way our body functions as a complete system, so we are to operate in complete unity and support one for another.

We are not trying to be his children – we are. We are not trying to be the Bride – we are. We are not trying to be His Body – we are. We need to rest in this knowledge and rather than working toward these relationships, we need to work from them.

Consider:

How close can a person get with God?

Could I be closer to God than I am now?