Two Approaches to God

There is only one way to heaven and that is through Jesus Christ. In John 14:6 Jesus states “I am the way the truth and the life, nobody comes to the Father except through Me.”

However there are two ways we can approach God. We can either approach God based on His goodness or we can approach God based on our sin and shortcomings.

We can praise God for His goodness or we can seek God and cry out in repentance of our sin.

The Psalms uses these two approaches throughout. Many Psalms praise the goodness of the Lord and his attributes, whilst others cry out to Him in anguish of the writer’s sin.

Psalm 45 focuses solely on God’s goodness.

Psalm 45:2-3 “Everyday I will bless You and I will praise Your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable.”

Psalm 118 too focuses upon God’s goodness:

Psalm 118:1 “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.”

Nothing is greater than God and we must seek Him on this basis and acknowledge His glory and mercy.

In Psalm 51 we can see the other approach we may take to God, the approach based upon His mercy and our sin and failure. Psalm 51 is a solemn prayer of repentance, which focuses on the writer’s sin in contrast to God’s mercy.

Psalm 51:1-2 “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your loving kindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is always before me.”

In Daniel 9, Daniel prays to God for repentance. He pleads with God and acknowledges the shortcomings of the undeserving people.

Daniel 9:4 “O Lord great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him and with those who keep His commandments.”

In Daniel 9:16 Daniel cries out, “…O Lord according to all your righteousness, I pray, let Your anger and Your fury be turned away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; because for our sins, and for the iniquities of out fathers, Jerusalem and Your people are a reproach to all those around us.”

In 1 Maccabees 13:45-46, the apocryphal book, when Simon, Israel’s high priest at that time, has brought his great army to retake the city of Gazara (Gaza), those within the city cry out to them “Do not treat us according to our wicked acts, but according to your mercy!”

This is how we should approach God. Not on our terms but on His, not according to our wicked acts, but according to His mercy.

The two approaches can even be seen in the themes of different books in the Bible. For example the book of Song of Solomon focuses on our relationship with God from our point of view. It focuses on the love of God and the intimacy that we can have with Him through Christ. In comparison the book of Hosea focuses on our relationship with God through the point of view of Him and our sin. It focuses on how we have rejected and continue to reject Him, yet still He is able to forgive us and love us.

There are two ways to approach God; either based on His goodness or based on our wickedness. But, there is one thing that is always necessary when we approach God and that is to be humble before Him. For God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34).

We must come before Almighty God humbled by His goodness, humbled by our sin and wickedness in comparison to His perfection, and humbled by God’s mercy toward us through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ upon the cross.

Acts 16:31 “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”

-BACChristian