Identifying Improper Motives for Seeking Christ
Seeking Jesus with skewed motives is not only applicable before conversion. True Christians have to constantly check themselves in this category. You know you are seeking Jesus for the wrong reasons when something goes haywire in your life and you want to throw in the towel, spiritually speaking. Whenever a circumstance causes you to turn away from the Lord, a false motive for seeking Christ has just been exposed. It could be health trials, financial struggles, relationship tension, or other things that are taken away or not granted by God in the first place. If a circumstance turns you away from the Lord, then your faith was not resting in the finished work of Christ, but in the misguided belief that Christ would make your earthly existence smooth and easy. How can we be sure of this? Throughout the difficulties of life, how does our position in Christ before God change? How does Christ’s complete salvation package morph depending on our circumstances? The answer is: It doesn’t! No matter what happens to you, if you are in Christ today, then you will be in Christ tomorrow, still saved from your sins and still heaven bound to be with God forever. Isn’t that what ultimately matters? Isn’t that how Jesus can be referred to the anchor of our souls? The problem is that we drop down other anchors, representing many things, and then when the strong winds of life come, these anchors are too weak to sink into the ocean floor and consequently we end up being blown all over the place.
At the end of Rom. 8, Paul bursts forth with the promise of the unbreakable love of Christ amidst the difficulty and pain of life: 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Perhaps you noticed that he presupposes or assumes something in his argument. He presupposes that the love of Christ is the most important thing in our lives. Some might read those verses and think or perhaps be tempted to think–”Yes, the love of Christ is great and I know I’ve been saved, but how is that going to help my health, finances or relationships?” The answer–it may not improve those things! But knowing the love of Christ will help you respond godly in the midst of those things. And this presupposes something else–that godly living is your primary ambition in life just as Paul declared that pleasing Christ was his primary ambition in 2 Cor. 5. But that is not always our primary ambition; sometimes our primary ambition is to have the smoother and easier life–”In order to obey you Lord, I need easier circumstances. Your love demonstrated at the cross is insufficient for me right now; I need _______ to have a fulfilled life.” If not fought against vigorously, this is a pathway to apostasy because that is the thinking of the natural mind and that thinking, unchecked, always turns hostile towards God.