God Is on Your SideSample

FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH

It’s important to remember that God being on your side doesn’t mean that he picks sides. In the book of Joshua in the Old Testament, Joshua asks the angelic commander of God’s armies whose side he is on:

Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”

—Joshua 5:13-14 NIV

In other words: I’m on God’s side. The real question is how we stand in relation to God.

When Abraham Lincoln was asked whether he thought God supported his side of the Civil War, he wisely reflected, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is al­ways right.”

God doesn’t take sides, on a horizontal level, in our messy human spats. Rather, God comes down to our side, on a vertical level, to encounter us in Christ and transform us in the midst of our mess.

God being on your side doesn’t mean he endorses everything you do. Jesus came “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 NIV). Your savior shows up with grace to save you from sin and truth to call out the sin he’s saving you from.

Jesus confronts and challenges us. Yet even here, as theologian Karl Barth observes, God’s “No” to our sin is embedded within his bigger “Yes” to our humanity—the very humanity he’s come to rescue. God’s confrontation, in other words, unveils an even deeper sense in which he’s on our side. Jesus tells his disciples, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32 NIV).

Even when Jesus confronts you, he’s out to set you free.

When have you experienced a time when God’s challenge to you showed how much he was on your side, loving and rescuing you? Where might God be lovingly confronting you today?