We Can Please God, 2

We can please God through Jesus Christ.

The moment that we put our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, we go from a position of displeasing God to a position of pleasing him: God declares us righteous based entirely on what the Lord Jesus has done for us.

But also at that same moment when we put our trust in the Lord Jesus, God begins a process of making us like Jesus, changing us by his Holy Spirit who has come to live inside us. The Holy Spirit gives us new desires and new power to live in such a way that our actions please God.

When we go to be with Jesus (either at our death or when he returns for us), this process of making us fully like Jesus will be complete, and we will be perfect, not only in our position before God but also in our actual practice. Until then, our perfect standing is not perfectly matched with our actual state, which is marred by imperfection. But in spite of our failure perfectly to obey God, God freely pardons the imperfections in our obedience through Jesus Christ, and he delights in us, blessing our obedience as if it were perfect. All of this is by God's grace alone, received through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.