Welcome to Part-4 of our September series, “Loud Ideas, Quiet Truth,” where we will explore 5 “loud” cultural ideas – widely held beliefs that everyone talks about —and learn how to think about them Biblically. Together we’ll see the quiet truth of the Bible—Scripture’s enduring relevance and stable power to meet the challenges of our loud world.

The purpose is not to explore each of these wide-ranging topics to their depths, but to broadly identify the world’s perspective on each idea, and then look to Scripture to understand it in God-honoring ways and to learn to speak about it confidently and faithfully. Consequently, we will see how applicable the Bible is to our everyday lives. 

So far, we’ve explored aesthetics, attitude, and attention.

This week, we’ll take a look at APPROVAL. 

I don’t think it’s overstating the idea to say that most people long for acceptance and even a stamp of approval from other people. We naturally look to others to find the recognition and attention we are hoping for and for confirmation that we “fit in” somehow. Of course, it’s good to find friends, fellowship, and love. But we must balance the enjoyment we find in a group of like-minded friends with the caution not to feed off their approval or fall into the trap of people pleasing to keep their approval. 

It’s also about more than just “passing the test” with others. Approval can also be about:

• Needing to be liked and followed on social media
• Needing others’ acknowledgement when you are right or best at something
• Needing your accomplishments, ideas, or input to be validated by others
• Needing to constantly be with people to receive attention, praise, or affirmation

When you need the world to approve of you, it’s time to look at what the Bible says about approval. As a Christian, our identity and self-worth are not tied up in the world or based upon others’ evaluation of us. But that can be hard to remember sometimes. 

After all, what happens when we need social media for our small business, but the “likes” don’t come? 

Or what about when we put ourselves out there to make a friend, but they aren’t interested? Or when your romantic partner ends the relationship?

How do we cope with getting overlooked at work for a promotion, even though we deserve it?

What about when we put a creative work out into the world (art, photography, dance, writing, etc.) and it isn’t well received (or even acknowledged)?

Don’t we all feel rejected when our hard work isn’t complimented, when we don’t get invited to join something, when people don’t choose us, or we aren’t acknowledged?

These are difficult things to accept. It’s easy to say, “you don’t need the world’s approval,” but that doesn’t make it sting less when they look away. Even if we don’t thrive off the world’s approval because we know who we are in Christ, I think it’s safe to say that all of us have probably wished for its approval at some point, for some reason! So, how should we think about this topic in a Biblical and practical way?

I have found the Apostle Paul extremely helpful on this subject. Here are 3 things Paul teaches that might help you see “Approval” in a new and better way:

1. Being a child of God orients us toward God, not the World

“…for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.” (Gal 3:26).

JI Packer’s chapter, “Sons of God” in Knowing God really changed my life. This chapter not only explains what it means to be a “child of God” but it describes the radical reorientation that God’s adoption brings into our lives. In this chapter, Packer explains that our entire Christian life must be understood in terms of our adoption. While that is too much to unpack here, it has direct ramifications for “APPROVAL.” 

Scripture tells us that as Christians we are not to be “of the world” or to “love the things of the world” (1 John 2:15-17). But there is more to being a Christian than just abstaining–there is our adoption. We are called OUT of the world and INTO God’s family. Listen to Paul’s words here:

“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (Rom 8:16-17)

“So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (Gal 4:7)

Think about this for a moment. You now have a family forever. Your position has made you a co-heir with Christ. Your position includes salvation, God’s favor, an inheritance (Col. 1:12; 1 Peter 1:3-5), and every spiritual blessing (Eph 1:4), all because the Father loves YOU:  

“In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” (Eph 1:4b-6)

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10)

Not only does adoption give us “absolute stability and security” (more on that next week), but as adopted children through Jesus Christ, we are “ruled, loved, companied with, and honoured” by our Heavenly Father (Packer, 186). 

Through Christ, you are approved—welcomed and accepted into God’s family and you will now only know an “eternity of love” as Packer says (Rom 8:38-39). 

So, how should we respond to these beautiful, life-changing realities?

Is it to turn right around and seek from the world what the Creator of the world has already more than abundantly given us?

2. Being a child of God means we live to please God, not seek the World’s approval

“but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.” (1 Thess 2:4)

Like Paul, all Christians are called to please God, not man. We follow Jesus’ example:

“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” (John 6:38)

And Packer reminds us in his Concise Theology that we please God through our:

• Faith (Heb 11:5-6)
• Praise (Ps 69:30-31)
• Generosity (Phil 4:18; Heb 13:16)
• Obedience (Col 3:20)
• Service (2 Tim 2:4) (Concise Theology, 185).

When living to please God inevitably puts us at odds with the world (John 15:18-19), we are comforted by remembering that we are the blessed sons of God, and we are fortified by following the example of our Savior. We have received Christ and been given love, acceptance, forgiveness, hope, and purpose. These are the gifts that ease the sting of the world’s rejection and keep our minds on things above (Col 3:2).

3. Being a child of God gives us freedom to interact with, but not depend on the World

Paul continues (from verse 4 above) to explain that seeking to please God (instead of people) allowed him (and his co-workers) to love the Thessalonian church well:

“For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us,” (1 Thess 2:5-8).

In The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer describes the prideful man as someone who labors under the “burden of self-love” and who feels hurt anytime someone “delivers an affront” to his idol. Tozer asks, “How can you hope to have inward peace?” Look around at all those who are constantly worried about “self”:

“The sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them,” (Tozer, 94). 

But the sons of God are released from that burden and given rest. We humble ourselves and place ourselves entirely in God’s hands.  Tozer describes the humble man:

“He rests perfectly content to allow God to set His own values. He will be patient to wait for the day when everything will get its own price tag and real worth will come into its own. Then the righteous shall shine forth in the kingdom of their Father,” (Tozer, 95).  

And in the meantime, as Tozer explains, we are not held captive to the pride, pretense, and artificiality that characterizes the world. Instead, we are free to offer ourselves in love and service like Paul did without needing the world’s approval or depending upon the world’s validation. When we no longer seek flattery, glory, or approval because we live only to please our Father who loves us, we can go wherever He calls us completely unburdened from the desire for worldly affection or attention. 

“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us  that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. ‘Amen’.” (Heb 13:20-21)

May we live for Him this week–unburdened by the need for worldly approval and confident in our position as a child of God!