Acceptance Through Performance

We all want to be accepted. Many of us rely on performance to achieve acceptance. As young children we try to win the approval of our parents. As students, we work hard to win the approval of our teachers. We want the acceptance of our peers so we conform our behavior accordingly. As employees, we want our employers to accept us so we work hard to please them.
Depending on which denomination we belong to, we conform to denominational practices to win the approval of fellow church members and God’s approval. All of these and many other examples are part of the reality of living in this world and in our society. We live in a performance based society. There is a direct correlation between our performance and our acceptance. Even the rebels of society, the drop-outs or nonconformists have their own performance criteria for winning acceptance from their fellow rebels or peers.

The Old Law was also based on performance. But, Jesus came and died on the cross. He put an end to winning acceptance through performance. Jesus paid the price through His shed blood for all of our sins. He paid the price for our acceptance. We have been justified through His blood. God accepts us because of what Jesus did. We cannot add to that acceptance or improve on it. We no longer have to perform to be accepted by God. He wants us to trust in Him and His Son’s death for us for our acceptance.

Romans 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Galatians 2:16 nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.

Philippians 3:9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from {the} Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which {comes} from God on the basis of faith,

This righteousness is not based on our performance, rather our faith in Jesus and His life and death for us, His performance for us. We are now accepted by God through our faith in Jesus.

This Godly and grace-based acceptance goes against our grain, against our nature, against our society. Our minds are programmed to win acceptance through performance. We are born into the Kingdom of God but still live in the world. We live in this world but are not of this world. We live in a performance based world but do not depend on our performance for God’s acceptance.

However, this strong tendency towards performance for acceptance easily slips into our relationship with God and the church. The reality of our world is largely based on performance. We cannot change this and have to walk in it every day. Even though God now accepts us because of His Son, we still have to please our boss, our teacher, our friends and so on. But, at the core of our being, we now find an acceptance from the almighty God, the creator of the world and universe. He loves us just as we are. He has made us into new creations and we have been justified, right now, just as we are. We have been cleansed by His blood. His Son lives in our hearts.

God knows and understands that a performance for acceptance system is in our veins, deeply ingrained in our society and world. He wants to deliver us from this superficial means of gaining acceptance to His Kingdom’s perspective on acceptance. This requires a major paradigm shift, one that is beyond our natural ability to change. Even though we still have to work and perform for worldly acceptance in our every day lives, He wants to impart His acceptance in the inner most core of our being. He wants us to know, where it really counts, that we are totally acceptable to Him because of His Son’s sacrifice.

As He makes this core acceptance real to us, we gradually become free from depending on the world around us for acceptance. We still live and work in the world, but our dependence for acceptance is shifted from our performance to Him and His Son’s death. Only God can deliver us from the performance forces at work around us.

Ephesians 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,

Ephesians 3:17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; {and} that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

Ephesians 3:18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

Ephesians 3:19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

We begin to see evidence of a paradigm shift towards His acceptance and away from a performance based acceptance when we accept others because Jesus accepts them. When we stop judging others based on their performance is when we know we are beginning to have faith in His acceptance of us. As His love and acceptance becomes more real, that love begins to permeate our being and flow from us to others. When we are able, through His Spirit, to comprehend His acceptance of us, we begin accepting others and imparting this wonderful, unearned, love to those around us.