Tag: justification

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Romans Devotionals

Peace with God

Romans

This week, I’m preparing a message on Mark 5, so as I read this passage, I couldn’t help but think of the woman Jesus healed in Mark 5:25-34.

She had been suffering from a bleeding for 12 years. It was a problem that made her an outcast in society and unable to go to the synagogue or temple to worship God.

But when she reached out to Jesus in faith, she was healed. And Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be healed from your affliction.” (Mark 5:34)

By her faith, she was justified in God’s sight, gaining both peace with him and access to him.

And as she would look back on her afflictions, she found hope, because God poured his love into her heart.

Her life is a picture of our ours. We were cut off from God, but now through faith we have peace with God, and we stand before him by grace as his sons and daughters.

Once we stood in shame, having fallen short of the glory of God, separated from him by our sin. (Romans 3:23).

Now by his grace, let us boast in the hope of the glory of God, drawing near to him and rejoicing in his presence as his beloved children. (Romans 5:2)

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Galatians

A promoter of sin?

Galatians

One of the accusations Christians face, particularly from the cults, is that by adopting a gospel of salvation by grace alone apart from works, we actually promote sin.

After all, if we are saved by faith in Christ apart from trying to keep the rules, why keep any rules at all? Why not just lie, steal, commit adultery, watch pornography, etc? What’s to stop us from living that way if salvation is by grace alone?

Even Christians wonder this sometimes. If we’re not living by rules, doesn’t that mean we can just live any way that we want to?

Don’t we simply have to have rules and keep them if we are to live the Christian life? Isn’t the only alternative becoming like all the other people in the world, living in sin?

That’s what the Judaizers (those who said you must keep Jewish law in order to be truly Christian) were saying to Paul and the Galatians: “By throwing away the law, you are lowering yourself to the standard of the pagans. You’re becoming like them.”

And whenever they saw Paul or the Galatians either breaking Jewish law or flat out sinning (because all of us do fall even though we are Christians), they were quick to point to them and say,

“See. It’s just like we said. You’re acting just like the pagans. By this gospel of grace, you are actually making Christ a promoter of sin.”

In Paul’s words here, we see his response to these accusations. He said,

We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’ know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified. (Galatians 2:15-16)

In other words, Paul is saying, “We (that is, Peter and himself) are Jews, not Gentiles. Yet we admit that we cannot be made right before God by obeying the Jewish law. By ‘obeying’ the law no one can be justified.”

Why not? Because in order to be justified by the law, you must keep it perfectly, and no one can do that.

And so Paul told Peter, “So we too, along with the Gentiles, realize that we must put our faith in Jesus in order to be made right with God.”

He then brings up the argument of the Judaizers.

If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin?(Galatians 2:17a)

Paul’s saying, “People are pointing to us as people who are seeking to be justified by grace, and saying, ‘Look at you! Even though you say you belong to Christ, there’s still all this sin in your life. This proves that your gospel promotes sin. This proves that your Christ promotes sin.'”

Paul’s response?

Absolutely not! (Galatians 2:17b)

He explains,

If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. (Galatians 2:18)

What does Paul mean by this?

I think he’s saying this:

“Let’s say that I do what you want me to. I bring back the law and say, ‘To be a Christian, you must follow all these Jewish laws.’ Will that stop people from sinning? Has it ever stopped you from sinning?

No. All bringing back the law will do is bring us back to square one: realizing that we are sinners in need of a Savior.”

What can we get from this? We need to get away from the idea that following God’s law can in any way make us righteous before him. It can’t. All it can do is point out our sin and our need for a Savior.

There is only one way we can be made righteous before God, and that’s by putting our faith in Christ.

How does doing this make us righteous before God? We’ll talk about this more tomorrow.

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Romans

Fully persuaded

Romans

It’s always cool to find something new in scripture, even after having read it all my life.

The verses that strikes me here are verses 16-17, and especially 17.

Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring–not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham.

He is the father of us all. As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.”

He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed–the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. (Romans 4:16-17)

The God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.

When you think about it, that’s what our salvation is all about.

We were walking dead men before God saved us, condemned because of our sin. But through Jesus’ death on the cross for us, we have now been given life.

It’s the second half of that that really strikes me, though. It seems to point to creation first of all. The ESV puts it this way,

[God] calls into existence the things that do not exist.

In other words, from the mind of God came all that exists today.

But we also see this concept of “calling things that are not as though they were” in the story of Abraham.

God told him that he would be the father of many nations and that the whole world would be blessed through him.

The incredible thing about all these promises is that God made them when Abraham was 75 and Sarah 65. Yet they all came to pass.

What was true in the mind of God concerning Abraham, eventually all became reality.

And Abraham never wavered in his belief that God could do what he promised.

He did have his doubts on how exactly it would happen, (thus the whole debacle with Hagar and Ishmael), but as to the actual promise of God, he never considered the possibility that God would lie.

Paul puts it this way,

Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead–since he was about a hundred years old–and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.

Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4:19-22)

Paul then says,

The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness–for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. (Romans 4:23-24)

As I was looking at this today, it seemed to me that all that Paul said points to the idea of justification.

It’s a tough concept to grasp.

How can God call people who are clearly not righteous, righteous in his sight? How can God call people who clearly still sin, righteous?

The answer is found back in verse 17. He “calls things that are not as though they were.”

That’s justification in a nutshell. He calls us righteous as though we already were.

Why? Because in his mind, we already are. He sees us not just for what we are now, but what we will be.

Before God created the universe, in his mind’s eye, he already saw what it would be like, and with a word, it came to be.

When God made his promise to Abraham, in his mind’s eye, he saw that all he promised would come to pass, and by his power, it did.

And when God looks at us, he sees in his mind’s eye what we will be. And by his power, we will be transformed into his likeness.

It’s a process that is happening day by day and will come to its completion when we stand before him in heaven.

Because of this, God can look at us as we are and call us righteous.

So often, though, we like Abraham look at the reality of today. That we are weak. Sinful.

But like Abraham, let us believe without wavering what God has promised. Let us be fully persuaded that he has the power to do what he has promised: to change us and make us truly righteous someday.

Not just in God’s mind. But in reality. (2 Corinthians 3:18; 1 John 3:2)

With that in mind, let us be strengthened in our faith, giving glory to him, not because of anything we’ve done, but because of what Jesus did.

He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. (Romans 4:25)

Categories
Romans

To be accepted by God

Sitting at the cross

Our deepest need, whether felt or not, is to be accepted. And not just by anyone. But to be accepted by God.

When we are accepted by God, and we understand this in our souls, our life changes. We find contentment, joy, and peace. We find life.

But how can we be accepted by God? One thing Paul makes clear: it won’t come from following the law. In verse 23, he writes,

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

The word for sin in Greek is a very interesting one. It’s an archery term that means “to miss the mark.”

But it’s not just a picture of missing the bullseye. It’s a picture of completely missing the target.

In other words, we’re not even close to perfection. We fall far short of God’s holiness.

Let’s put it this way. Imagine you sin three times a day. That’s not too bad right?

But multiply that by 365 days in a year. Then multiply that by your age. Suddenly, depending on your age, you’re talking about the tens of thousands.

God can literally read off a list against you that would take hours to complete. And that’s if you’re relatively “good.”

Because of this, we all stand condemned. None of us can stand before God and say, “I’m good enough to be accepted by you. I’ve kept all your laws perfectly.”

The good news? In verse 21, Paul tells us,

But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. (Romans 3:21)

How do we get this righteousness? Paul tells us in verses 22-25.

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. (Romans 3:22-25)

What is Paul saying? We have a lot of what I call Christianese here.

First he talks about redemption. What is redemption?

Redemption is the buying of someone’s freedom out of slavery. All of us were in slavery to sin and the kingdom of Satan. But Jesus bought us out from all that. That’s redemption.

How did he buy us? Through his blood on the cross.

Paul says that God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement.

Atonement simply means a covering. That through Christ’s death on the cross, he covers over our sin and forgives it, drawing us to himself.

Perhaps a better translation of atonement would be another 50-cent word, “propitiation.”

The idea is that God poured his wrath for our sins on Jesus, and now that wrath toward us is appeased.

However you translate it, the point is clear. It is through Christ’s work on the cross we are accepted, not by our works.

And through his death we have now been justified. That simply means that with our sins paid for, God no longer looks upon us as sinners.

You can look at it this way. “God sees me just as if I’d never sinned.”

So now, we are accepted by grace.

Grace is simply the receiving of something that we don’t deserve. We deserved wrath because we turned our backs on God. But instead, God accepts us as his sons and daughters.

All we have to do is have faith, putting our trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins.

Have you done so?