Being Remembered

By Lorinda Hall

What does it take for us to be remembered by God? Perhaps when we ask this question of ourselves a vision of someone like Mother Teresa comes to mind. Maybe we think that to be remembered by God we must emulate her life in some way, devoting our lives to charitable deeds and good works.

The people in Matthew 7:21 (see below) were obviously religious people, they probably knew a lot about God but it is clear they didn’t have a relationship with Him. God didn’t know them. You see being known or remembered by God is not about just doing good things or living by a good set of morals. Jesus makes the point here very clearly that we will only ‘enter the kingdom of heaven’ when we do the will of the Father. When we are found in His kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, then we are remembered by God.

To begin with we are not found in His kingdom. We’ve all rejected God and his plan for our lives we have become like ‘foreigners’ and ‘strangers’ to Him. But thankfully through Christ we are able to find a pathway back to God and back to the plan has for us. A pathway back to being remembered and known by God.

So we who were ‘aliens’ from God’s kingdom, and ‘strangers’ to all that He’d planned for us have opportunity to be ‘brought near’ again to God. We can be ‘brought near’, back into relationship with God, by the ‘blood of Christ’ which He shed on the cross. We can be restored to the plan He had for us which is found ‘in Christ Jesus’.

So what does it mean to be ‘in Christ Jesus’? This verse is not just talking about Jesus the individual person, but about a corporate ‘body of Christ’, a community of believers who are living in connection with each other and with Christ. You see when God planned who we were to be as an individual He didn’t plan us in isolation. He also planned the specific context for us to express and live out who we are. The bible gives us a picture of a natural body to illustrate and help us understand how God designed us to live together. Each of us has a unique role to play, and because of this we need each other. The bible says that ‘every part does it’s share.

There are ‘good works’ for us to do, but they are works that God has specifically prepared ‘beforehand’ for each of us. They are not good works of our definition or choosing. They are works that are in line with who God created us to be and the role He has for us to play in the community of His believers.

Further Study:

Matthew 7:21-24 Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 3 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

Ephesians 2:12-13 that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.