The Excellence of God in Us

by G. A. N. James

We who are born of the Spirit of God to be the children or offspring of God are expected to please God. To please one is to satisfy one's expectation standard of excellence. Indeed, God's standard is without dispute excellence in all dimensions. To please God is therefore to meet God’s standard of excellence in who we are and what we do.

Therefore, the awesome challenge that confronts us is how can we please God. God is perfect in all His ways and to us on the other hand belong infirmities, weaknesses, and failures. But the Holy Spirit has constantly helped me to realize that in the face of the challenge to please God and in the light of our frail humanity, we need not despair. Hallelujah! God who wants us to please Him - yes, to meet His standard of excellence - did not leave us in despair and frustration.

One of the Scripture passages that have brought great hope, faith, and comfort to me in this is Philippians 2:13: "It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." Another is Hebrews 13:20-21: "Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen."

These Scripture passages tell us if only we can allow God to work in us, if only we can depend absolutely upon God, then God Himself will produce in us and through us what meets His good pleasure in His standard of excellence. This is amazing but it is true.

The philosophy of living and achieving of the world is one of self-reliance. It is egocentric - self esteem, self actualization, self help, and so forth are. It is good for the faithless people of the world who ignore and reject the supernatural resources of God in their operations. And so, they turn to themselves in everything they do.

Unfortunately, much of that philosophy is laced into our presentation of the Gospel and into our Christian life-style. This makes it hard for many Christians to truly and actually live by faith, which is living in absolute dependence on God. Many professing Christians see Christianity as a self-based life of self improvement and self discipline. They derive this concept of Christianity from the distorted form of the Gospel they hear - a social gospel twisted by human psychology and human rehabilitation.

Many professing Christians do not seem to appreciate that Christianity is a "non-me" life and that Christianity is the life of Christ being lived in "me" (Galatians 2:20). And so, the extent to which this worldly philosophy directs our life-style we find that the "Christian" life we live is filled more or less with apologies for our failures in terms of our human weaknesses, or sometimes boasting for our successes in terms of our self efforts and cleverness, or even adulation of human heroes and despising of failed humans.

In the realm of a godless world, such a human-centred philosophy of living is needed and may achieve much where humanity desperately needs social and moral change but will not turn to God for that change. It provides an improvised damage control whereby human rehabilitation is substituted for human transformation but it is not an effective solution to a morally and spiritually depraved human nature. Yet, we must commend the army of social workers who tirelessly operate in our cities, towns, and villages within the worldly philosophy of social change to maintain, postpone, or restore some form of sanity in human behaviour.

But to lace this worldly philosophy of social change into the Gospel is a presumptuous mistake. The Gospel can stand on its own in its integrity and purity to bring true salvation and effective change to depraved humanity. The Gospel of Christ in its purity is indisputably “the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Romans 1:16). Note the the essence of the effectiveness of the Gospel - the power of God! The power of God needs no human props for effectiveness.

According to Paul our Lord Jesus Christ sent him “to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:17-18). The salvation and deliverance of sinners come completely from the power of the Cross of Christ. To highlight the effectiveness of the power of the Cross in the salvation and deliverance of sinners, the preaching of the Gospel must be void of human wisdom and philosophy.

The Gospel, therefore, must focus plainly on the power of the Cross, regardless to the simplicity or apparent foolishness of the message. God wants through the simplicity of the Gospel to demonstrate the futility of human wisdom and philosophy in His plan of salvation. And so, Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 1:21-24: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

To pad up, color, and mix up the Gospel of Christ with worldly human-centred philosophy of social change, as is done commonly in Christendom today, is an unfortunate error with obvious consequences among professing Christians. According to the Scripture, it dulls the effect of the Cross of Christ. Evidence shows it does not produce genuine Christianity in those who adhere to it. Instead, it has popularized a form of nominal Christianity which shows off a veneer of  self-righteousness and piety that deny in practice God gives to a true Christian the power to be godly. In fact, as is obvious, with regard to the truth that real godliness is produced in Christians by the power of God and not the vain self-righteous efforts of man, they argue that no Christian can be holy in this world. And so, they pursue a self-generated, socially acceptable, good behaviour on the surface. And in this, while they are ever trying and ever failing, they excuse themselves with the well-known pious tidbits that God is still working on them, still chipping away the old. Whereas, according to the Scripture, God’s work of salvation is not to rehabilitate or chip away the old fallen human nature but to regenerate it into a new man; it is not a psychological disciplining of the old man, but a divine transformation into a creation.

Paul overcame this worldly philosophy when he sought God with agonizing apologies for his own human infirmities, earnestly asking God to take away these infirmities or the overwhelming challenges he confronted. Instead God brought the human-centred Paul to the startling realization that it is not his human infirmities being taken way that will cause him to produce God's excellence but by Christ living in Him. Here is Paul's inspiring testimony in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10: "And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

To know and do the good, acceptable and perfect will of God we will have to stop conforming to this world, especially in our mindset or philosophy of living, and let the Spirit renew our minds (Romans 12:2). Too many professing Christians accept and promote a humanist life-style of mediocrity and constant failing because their minds are hooked to the world's self-centered philosophy of achievement - “I” and “Me” and being “just human.” Salvation was designed by God as the answer to the cries and frustration of human failures and the solution to the sin or coming short characteristic of humanity. It was designed and presented by God in Christ to work effectively and it does work effectively if we will accept the Gospel mindset of being humbly and absolutely dependent upon the Christ who lives in us as Christians.

I love Paul's admonition along this line in Colossians 2:8-10: "Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power."

God wants us to please Him without Him compromising His standard of excellence. The Gospel makes it plain that God makes us Christians by creating His workmanship in Christ. Who can find fault in God’s workmanship. God has also given us in the Gospel the principle and power to please Him in His excellence. The divine working principle is faith in God and is practiced by absolute dependence upon God, allowing Him to operate by His mighty power and produce in and through us that which meets His standard of excellence. "For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us" (2 Corinthians 4:6-7).

In this light we must refrain from adulating man or exalting our own accomplishment. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:25-31: “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God - and righteousness and sanctification and redemption - that, as it is written, ‘HE WHO GLORIES, LET HIM GLORY IN THE LORD.’” He states again in 2 Corinthians 10:17-18: “But ‘HE WHO GLORIES, LET HIM GLORY IN THE LORD.’ For not he who commends himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends.”

It is also a check for some of us who easily and presumptuously criticize and despise  the children of God and the Church, the Body of Christ. According to Romans 8:33-34: “Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.” Indeed the excellence of God’s children and the Body of Christ is clearly of God and beyond the judgment of man. To attempt to criticize or despise any of them is to attempt to criticize or despise God.

If we will preach and believe the plain Gospel, if we will put our faith in the power of the cross of Christ, if we will live and function according to God's principle of absolute dependence on the Christ who lives in us, according to the Gospel, then we cannot but genuinely bring forth a lifestyle of excellence that pleases God in everything we do. May God help us all to actually please Him and glorify Him in excellence as the norm of our Christian walk in spite of our human infirmities.

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