“you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
through Jesus Christ
It is Jesus Christ who mediates our acceptance to God. We cannot negotiate acceptance with God based on who or what we are.
In the Old Testament, only access to God was the privilege of a few professional priests. Among them, only the high priest could enter the holy of holies and that only once a year. In the New Testament, the privilege of access to God is that of every believer. The Christian is at once both a temple (1 Cor. 6:19-20) and a priest. It is also our task to build bridges to God for other people.
Through Jesus Christ, the new and living way, every Christian has the right to access God personally.
We can go immediately into the presence of God without a mediator. If it were not for the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, we could not go directly into the presence of God. Because of him, God admits us into his presence.
Romans 5:2, “Through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
PRINCIPLE:
Jesus Christ earned our right to have access into the presence of God.
APPLICATION:
Often Christians do not pray because they feel that they do not have the right to pray. They think that they are not good enough for God to listen to them. This is to miss the whole point. To feel “good enough” implies that God accepts our prayer based on who we are and what we have done. This is not the basis of God receiving our prayers.
The basis of God accepting our prayer is the work of Christ on the cross. He earned our right to access God. That is why we come to God “in Jesus’ name.” We come to God on the authority of what Jesus Christ did, not what we do.
If this is true, why not exercise your right to pray without guilt?
