Intimate Relationship with God
Embracing Divine Fellowship: The Path to Righteousness and Intimacy with God
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.
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,
During His time on earth, Jesus Christ utilized the power of the Holy Spirit (Isa. 42:1; Matt. 4:1; Luke 4:18-19). His purpose was to demonstrate to us that dependence on the Holy Spirit’s power is necessary to learn, think, and apply God’s Word and to fulfill the Christian life.
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.
This diagram can help to visualize the 3 things necessary to be upright.
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 believer can never get out of the top circle.
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
These two phrases only apply to believers who are doers of the Word; believers with metabolized Bible doctrine, the thinking of Christ, in their souls who apply it to their lives. The application of the promises of Psalm 91 brings great comfort, encouragement and security to them.
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.
Conclusion
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.
Only when our souls are saturated with the thinking of Jesus Christ can we have an intimate relationship with God.