Nearness to God

C. S. Lewis talks about nearness to God in two ways: nearness of approach and likeness to God.
          In Likeness to God, humans were created in the image of God. Through the fall, that image has been marred—much like an image is distorted in a defective mirror. We imperfectly reflect a perfect God.
          Nearness in approach has to do with the state of humans as they seek God and find Him through the salvation that is freely offered in Christ.
          He uses an analogy. Let’s suppose that we are doing a mountain walk to our home village. At noon we come to the top of a cliff where we are very near it because it is just below us. We could drop a stone into it. But there is no way to get directly down to the village because we have no equipment and we are no mountain climbers. We must take a long way around, ten miles maybe. At many points during that detour we will, spatially, be farther from the village than we were when we sat above the cliff. But only spatially. In terms of progress we will be far nearer our home.
          God does not want us sitting on the cliff counting on our likeness to Him to get us to Him. We may think we are good enough, but there is no way to get to Him from there. We don’t have the equipment—and we don’t have the skill. The only way to God is the path around—the path through the cross. That’s why God wants us to seek Him; He doesn’t want us to rest on our feelings of being near enough. He wants us to go down the only real path in which He can be found.
-Pastor Dino Griffin