“The LORD will not abandon his people, because that would dishonor his great name. For it has pleased the LORD to make you his very own people.”
1 Samuel 12:22 NLT
http://bible.com/116/1sa.12.22.nlt
This verse gives us some great insight into the heart of God and His incredible grace for us. If you haven’t read, Part 1 of this series, don’t skip ahead, go back and read it now.
The irony of God not abandoning us for the glory of His name is that we often fail at bringing glory to God.
We have demonstrated over and over by our words and behavior that we are not perfect once we are saved. Sadly our actions have many times inaccurately reflected the heart of God to the world. Our failures get projected onto God by the ones who don’t know Him as their adoptive Daddy. So we discover the irony, the tragedy of this verse. God saves us to bring Him glory. Once we are saved, our failures bring Him dishonor.
So is there any good in this or is this just a sad infomercial on the affects of sin?
Our hope is this: God knew it and still did it. God knew our actions and our failures but still chose to make us His people. God has resolved to be faithful despite the outcome and despite the dishonor we bring to Him.
Our hope is this: God's faithfulness hass very little to do with us or our behavior and has everything to do with His character and His commitment to being who He said He would be. So is this a free pass on sinning? We may even be able to convince ourselves that we are helping God be better at being faithful by sinning more, so let's get our Mardi Gras on! We aren't the first ones to think this. Paul asked the same question in Romans 6:1, "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?" Paul answers his proposed question with an emphatic "NO!" He goes on to say that if we are repentant, that means we are dead to sin and dead to our old way of life we lived in sin. We have left all that old life-sin-stuff in a casket, nailed the lid shut and claimed new life in Jesus. We live forward, leaving our life of sin, being grateful that we have been forgiven. And we are forgiven by the faithfulness of God, not because we pleaded extra hard to be saved or because we said the magic words, or because we cleaned up our mess good. No, our salvation is completely because of who God is, not because of us. This reassurance should motivate us to honor Him with the choices that we make every day, doing our best to bring glory to His name.