One Person To Please

Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed. Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant. Galatians 1:8-10

PAUL WAS SAYING SOMETHING that would not win him many friends. Most people are not particularly drawn to someone who pronounces a curse on someone else. Did Paul just love ruffling feathers? Was he arrogant in his beliefs? Was he uncaring about those who faced an eternal future apart from Christ? No. Paul was willing to speak this way about those who preach a way into God’s good graces other than faith in Christ’s finished work because his desire to please God was so much higher on his list of priorities than pleasing people.

This is the kind of commitment to the truth of the gospel and freedom from pleasing people that we all want. And it’s what we want for our children.

Our need for approval is deeply wired into us. It’s not seeking after approval and the personal satisfaction it provides that Jesus condemns; it is seeking approval from the wrong source. If we’re always looking for approval from other people, we’ll never get enough, and it will never last long enough. In Christ we have already been given all the approval we really need and all the approval that really matters. Jesus was God’s beloved Son in whom he was well pleased. Once we are joined to Christ, that approval splashes over onto us. Joined to Christ, we are accepted and approved.

Day by day, as our children come home, worn down by disapproval from others, we can keep pointing them to the one person whose approval really matters, assuring them that as they are in Christ, they already have this divine approval.

Lord, please make ________ into a person who lives for your approval, not the praise of other people. By your great and sufficient grace, shrink and disable ________’s deep need for human approval. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, grant ________ greater assurance that, in you, he already has God’s full acceptance and everlasting approval.