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Intimate Relationship with God
The first verse we are going to examine that expresses the
intimate relationship we can have with God is Proverbs 3:32:
Pro 3:32 For the devious are
an abomination to the LORD; But He is intimate with the upright.
We have 2 contrasting relationships with God expressed here; a
person can either be an abomination to Him or a person can be intimate
with Him. Intimate is the perfect word to describe the relationship God
desires to have between Him and us.
First, let’s examine what is meant by intimate in Proverbs 3:32.
In this context, the Hebrew word translated intimate has the meaning of council; council as in a familiar conversation or the relationship between an intimate circle of friends. Maybe you know what that’s like. Your intimate circle of friends are the ones that you can relax with; let down your hair with, so to speak. Intimate connotes a very close fellowship that can be found only in a few. They are the ones that you can say things to that you wouldn’t say to anyone else. They are the ones that you can have great conversations with.
We have the best fellowship and friendship with
others when we are of like mind with them. It's no different with God.
He wants you to be like-minded with Him so that He can have that close
personal friendship with you.
Next let’s examine what is meant by upright in Proverbs
3:32.
Verse 32 does say who God is intimate with: He is intimate with
the upright. Who are the upright?
Let's begin with God. God is complete, perfect and immutable righteousness. He is the
ultimate of what might be called “uprightness”.
The devious in verse 32 are described in the context of
Proverbs chapter 3, but basically, an abomination is anything that is
incompatible with God’s perfect and immutable righteousness, His
“uprightness”, and therefore abhorrent to Him. This is the very
definition of sin: anything that doesn’t meet His righteous standard is
an abomination, is abhorrent, to God. God can tolerate nothing less than
His perfect and immutable righteousness, His uprightness.
This makes it rather interesting, and certainly revealing, that
Jesus Christ came to
this earth even though He abhorred our sins. And yet, God loved us
so much that He sent His Son. We were an abomination and yet Christ died
for us.
In light of this, it’s easy to see that the first step for any
person to have that intimate relationship with God is by being upright
in the eyes of God; to be as good as God is, to possess His perfect
righteousness. The only way this is possible is by meeting our Lord’s
first objective for the human race, to be saved. See
Believe in Me if you aren’t familiar with
this.
But here we are exploring what comes next after we are saved to
achieve that intimate relationship with God.
The Christian way of life is a supernatural way of life that
demands a supernatural means of execution. The supernatural means of
execution is provided by the Holy Spirit.
Eph
3:16 that He would grant you, according to the riches
of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the
inner man,
The Holy Spirit is faithful to assist the believer in all things
(John 14:16) and to teach him God’s Word (1 Cor. 2:13).
We cannot have an intimate relationship with God without the power
of God the Holy Spirit. We are commanded to be filled with the Spirit
(Ephesians 5:18) and to live our life under the control of the Holy
Spirit, to walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16, 25)
Eph
5:18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is
dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit,
Gal
5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not
carry out the desire of the flesh.
Gal
5:25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by
the Spirit.
1 John chapter 1, verses 8 and 10 are just two of many passages of
Scripture that tells us we still sin after we are saved.
1Jn
1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving
ourselves and the truth is not in us.
1Jn
1:10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a
liar and His word is not in us.
Devious in Proverbs 3:32 can refer to both the unbeliever
and the believer. Sins we commit after we are saved are just as
abhorrent to God as the sins we commit before we are saved.
When believers sin, they lose the filling of the Holy Spirit and
are in a state of what is referred to as carnality. If the believer
remains carnal for too long a period of time, the Holy Spirit is grieved (Ephesians
4:30) and possibly quenched (1 Thessalonians 5:19). The believer no longer walks by means of the
Spirit. There is no intimate relationship with God when the believer is
carnal and when the Holy Spirit
is grieved or quenched.
1 John 1:9 gives us the remedy to the problem of our post
salvation sins:
1Jn
1:9 If we confess [name]
our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Confessing, or naming, our sins to God the Father and being
cleansed from all unrighteousness is a necessity for our being
upright and intimate with God: He is intimate with the upright
(Pro 3:32b). Our entire spiritual life after we are saved depends
on this.
Jesus Christ states the importance of this in John 4:23&24:
Joh 4:23
Yet a time is coming and has now come when
the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth,
for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
Joh 4:24
God is spirit, and his worshipers must
worship in the Spirit and in truth." NIV
This passage emphasizes the necessity for both the power of God
the Holy Spirit and knowledge [epignosis] of the truth for an intimate
relationship with God. See Epignosis for more detail on how the power of
the Holy Spirit relates to knowledge of the truth.
To summarize, there are 3 things necessary to be upright so
that we can have an intimate relationship with God:
To be saved and therefore possess God’s perfect righteousness
To be filled with the Holy Spirit
To be growing to spiritual maturity by means of epignosis, i.e.
metabolized Bible doctrine, the thinking of Christ, in our souls. The
more of Christ’s thinking we have in our soul, the more spiritually
mature we are.
The solid line around the top circle indicates it is a permanent
relationship that believers enter at the moment they are saved. The
believer shares Christ’s righteousness among many other things. This
eternal relationship can never be lost.
The broken line around the bottom circle indicates it is a temporary relationship. It includes the filling of the Holy Spirit mentioned above. It is what is meant in John 4:24 when it says “his worshipers must worship in the Spirit”. Temporal fellowship depends on the believer’s volition. Because believers still possess their sinful nature after they are saved, they will use their volition to sin and lose the filling of the Holy Spirit and temporal fellowship. If they use their volition to rebound, i.e. confess their sins as per 1 John 1:9, they regain temporal fellowship and the filling of the Holy Spirit.
Only when believers are in the bottom circle can they be doers of
the Word, i.e. grow to spiritual maturity by means of epignosis,
metabolized Bible doctrine, and then apply that doctrine to their lives.
So, God is intimate with those who are upright as described above,
He sits with them as with familiar friends. Can you imagine being a friend of God? The Lord Jesus Christ
said it in John 15:14:
Joh
15:14 You are my friends if you do what I command.
How do you know what He commands if you don’t know the commands, if you don’t know Him, if you don’t Think Like Him?
So, you must know
who He is, what He thinks, what He commands and how He operates in your
life. If you know that, you are upright in every sense of that word. You
are an intimate friend of God when you have knowledge of Him and His
ways and of His Son. That’s the only way to avoid being an abomination
and to be intimate with the Almighty.
Let’s take a look at another passage that speaks of the intimate
relationship we can have with God; Psalm 91:14-16.
Psa 91:14 "Because he
has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him
securely on high, because he has known My name.
Psa
91:15 "He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I
will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.
Psa 91:16 "With a long
life I will satisfy him And let him see My salvation."
God is speaking to us in these 3 verses; they come straight from
God, they are His promises. These verses are an incredible summary
statement by God of the divine deliverance and divine security promised
throughout Psalm 91.
Every word, every line, in these 3 verses are full of comfort and
encouragement for believers, especially in time of trouble.
Verse 14 promises deliverance and protection.
Verse 15 promises the answer to prayer, God’s presence in trouble
and deliverance of a kind that brings honor to the one who is delivered.
Verse 16 promises length of days in this life and a comprehension
of how rich and many faceted the salvation, the deliverance, of God is.
The promise of physical deliverance in Psalm 91 applies to every
believer in Jesus Christ. However, to the maturing believer, these
promises bring security to the soul. Why is that?
The answer can be found in the two “because” phrases in verse 14:
Because he has loved Me
Because he has known My name
First let’s look at the second phrase because the first phrase
depends upon it.
Because he has known My name
The Hebrew word translated name here means more than just
knowing the names of God that we find in the Bible. A name in
Hebrew represents a person; often it represents the character of that
person. Certainly, the name of God - Elohim, Jehovah, Jesus Christ -
refers to His person, His essence, His characteristics, His promises.
Knowing one’s name is the Hebrew way of saying one person is well
acquainted with the other. The mature believer is well acquainted
with God; he is intimately familiar with His character, His
essence, His promises, His Word - with the mind of Christ.
Without metabolized Bible doctrine, the thinking of Christ, we do
not know His name. We may know a word that is used to represent
Him, but we don’t know His name in the Hebrew sense.
Because he has loved Me
The subject of love is discussed in detail in the section of
this web page titled Virtue Love. Here we’ll just cover it briefly.
One of the most important phrases in the entire Bible regarding
love can be found in the last phrase of 1 John 4:8: God
is love. Love is a characteristic or attribute of God’s
essence. Everything that God does is motivated by His love.
God loves us. This is stated in 1 John 4:19:
1Jn
4:19 We love him,
because he first loved us.
KJV
We can only return God’s love
because He loved us first. This brings us to our phrase in Psalm 91:14:
Because he has loved Me.
The basic meaning of the Hebrew word translated love here is love.
But it also carries the meaning of “to be attached”. This phrase might
also be translated: Because he is attached to Me.
This is a beautiful analogy as to how we as mature believers love God
and how God is attached to us in love. We love Him, because He first
loved us.
To love someone, you must be well
acquainted with them; you must be intimately familiar with
their character. If you are to love God, you must know who and what He
is. You can know God only to the extent that you learn what God
has revealed about Himself in His Word, to the extent that you
know His name.
Understanding who and what God is and relying upon His perfect
character in both adversity and prosperity builds a foundation of
confidence, inner peace, and spiritual strength; a wonderful description
of an intimate relationship with God.
Intimate with Almighty God, intimate with the God of the universe - that’s what we must be as believers in Jesus Christ. To do that we must be upright, we must know His name, we must love Him. The only way to achieve these is by living the spiritual life He has designed for us, meeting the biblical standards that He has set for us, thinking like Jesus Christ.
Copyright © 2018 - 2022 Raymond L. Cowan
Last modified: 10/18/2022
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