The Power Everyone Needs

People are fascinated by the subject of power. Solar power, electric power, nuclear power, the power of nature, psychological and political power, mental and spiritual power…various kinds of power fire our imaginations and draw our attention like a magnet.

Often we long for powers we don’t have. Who hasn’t wished for the power to fly, or to overcome a bully, or to achieve some impossible dream? It is this kind of wishing that has led to the creation of many myths and comic book heroes like Zeus or Hercules or Superman—ultra-human figures who possess super-powers mere mortals can only dream of.

If the Bible is to be believed, there is an all-important super-human ability that every person desperately needs, but that very few people seem to want. And that is the power to please our Creator.

Have you ever had a beloved pet, child, or spouse who always seemed to live only to please you? Whenever you came home he or she would come running up to greet you with a lavish display of joy and affection. He or she would go out of their way to bring you satisfaction or pleasure, making you feel like a person of royal privilege. As fellow creatures we can have a profound, pleasing effect on one another even in spite of our many imperfections.

But the Scriptures teach us that the infinite Lord of Heaven and earth is of a completely different order of being from those He has created. When this God created the universe, all he made was according to a holy standard of perfection that we can’t begin to imagine—a creation totally free of death, disease, defects and disobedience. When God surveyed all He’d fashioned and produced at the dawn of creation, He pronounced it “very good.” He gave every living thing the capacity to please, and to go on pleasing, the One who had made it.

This capacity, however, wasn’t a power that couldn’t be lost or forfeited. There were at least two kinds of creatures—angels and humans—who could lose the power to please God. Both of these beings were given a freedom of choice whereby their original perfect standing with the Maker could be cast aside and forfeited. The ability to please a perfect Creator had to be maintained by a life of perfect obedience, devotion and trust.

Satan and his demon followers chose to rebel against God because of pride and arrogance, and they were cast out of Heaven. Our first parents Adam and Eve chose to disobey God’s law and were driven out of Paradise here on earth. By rejecting God’s standard of perfect obedience, they were in effect rejecting God Himself.

As human beings who are used to life in a fallen, sinful world, we find it natural to wonder, “Why is God so hard to please?” “Why can’t He relent and lower His standards so that pleasing Him would be do-able?” “If He is a God of love, why can’t He simply forgive and forget?”

One way to understand this is to see all of God’s attributes as integral parts of His being. Everything God is, He is perfectly and to the infinite degree. He cannot just love someone “a little” or “half-way” because He IS love. He cannot give people “more” or “less” justice, for His is PERFECT justice. One cannot please God “a little bit” or “a bit more”…it’s either totally pleasing to Him, or not at all!

For our Creator to be satisfied with less than total obedience, trust and devotion would be like you and me being able to live without food and air. To survive without food or air we’d have to cease being human, and to be pleased with less than perfection, God would have to cease being God.

Obviously, then, imperfect human beings lack the power to please God. Paul puts it this way in Romans 3: “There is no one righteous, not even one…all have turned aside and have together become worthless. There is none who understands, no one who seeks God. There is no one who does good, not even one…For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” It is not just that we CHOOSE not to please God. The fact is that we lack the power of doing so, as well as the desire to please Him.

This situation is compounded by the fact that a right standing with God is necessary in order for any of us to escape eternal punishment for our sins. The Bible insists that without holiness “no one will see the Lord” and that our God will “by no means clear the guilty.”

“But,” we might wonder, “isn’t it possible to perform some kind of extra-credit assignment to counteract the curse of my sins? Can’t I earn my way into God’s pleasure if I work very, very hard?”

The Bible leaves no doubt that this is a false hope. Even when we are born, it teaches we are ALREADY starting out with a huge load of guilt in our deficit column. Our first representatives Adam and Eve saddled us with “original sin”—a sin nature that is in itself repugnant and offensive to God. Because they used their free will to choose to reject God, you and I inherited a nature that makes us incapable of perfect obedience from the start!

This sinful nature makes lying, cheating, lusting and hating as natural to us as hunger and thirst. Even if I wanted to perform good deeds to outweigh the bad, the bad deeds I’ve already done are still on my record. And God’s perfect justice demands eternal punishment for lawbreakers, no matter how small the infraction. Remember, rejecting even ONE of God’s laws is the same as rejecting God Himself.

Wow! What a bleak picture! And so it would be…apart from God’s grace.

There is one, and ONLY one, human being who has the power to please God. In fact, He has always had it, He has kept and maintained it, and—best of all—He has earned the right to share that awesome power with helpless, hopeless sinners like you and I.

The good news is that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the God-man, came down from Heaven as a human baby, so that He could live a life of perfect law-keeping—pleasing God the Father and making Him (Jesus) the perfect sin-bearing sacrifice for hell-deserving sinners. “Christ died once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”

Before He went to the cross to fulfill His mission and die for our sins, Jesus told His disciples, “I will send you another Comforter to be with you.” This other Comforter is the Holy Spirit. This awesome Person of the Godhead comes to live in those who believe in the Person and finished work of Jesus Christ. He changes their hearts in an act of regeneration—new birth!—and brings new Christians both the desire and the power to please God, by the grace that is found in their Savior Jesus.

I hope that you, as you read this and the Spirit-inspired words of the Gospel, will see Jesus Christ as the true Lord and Savior of your soul. He lives and rules today at God the Father’s right hand. He calls all people everywhere to repent and trust in His power to save them from sin and its just punishment. O sinner, call on Him today for forgiveness and eternal life!

Only this crucified, risen, ascended Savior can give sinners the power to please their Creator and enjoy Him forever.