Justified.

Today's Reading:

But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.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. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.-Romans 3:21-26

What I Think:

So, tonight we were talking about this passage of scripture in Romans and I began to realize how much I still have to learn about the bible. I mean, we've all heard (or at least I have) the whole "all have fallen short of the glory of god (verse 23)" part of this verse. But, when we dig deeper into the word, we begin to realize that this is our foundation. The rock on which our faith stands. But, there are a lotta big words in this passage. And I don't know about you, but I tend to just skip over them. I mean, I know we sing about things like rightousness and justification and atonement in hymns and such, but when do we really use these word in everyday life...almost never. And yet, our faith lies in these little words. So, we're going to go through the definitions and then dig into the word.

righteousness:right standing with god. it means we are completely perfect, sinless. we are completley right with him. as in a-okay.

faith:belief that demonstates itself through actions. Hebrews 11:1 puts it as "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." it differs from belief, because belief is the intellectual understanding of a concept. belief is the understanding that a chair will support your weight. faith is actually sitting in the chair. Belief in and of itself means nothing until you jump. then, it becomes faith.

sin:three letter word. means more than three letters implies. to miss the mark. it comes from archery when someone would miss the intended target. we all have sinned and fallen short, when the mark is god. it would be like asking the best athlete to throw a football from alabama to california. even tebow can't do it. its impossible.

justified:and yet, even though we all fall short and sin, god declares us righteous. its a legal term. does not mean you are perfect. or righteous. it means god looks away from our sins and says that we are righteous. he legally changes our status from that of a stranger to one of a son/daughter of the king. we are no longer under wrath. it is not being righteous (that's sanctification). he does this because of jesus, not because we deserve it or because of how "good we are".

grace:a free, undeserved gift. positive. not mercy, because mercy is not getting something "bad" that we deserve. Ephesians 2:8-9 calls salvation a gift from god. this is grace.

redemption: to be bought back. think chuck-e-cheese. you spend on this money on tokens to "purchase" a really crappy bracelet. god gave his one and only perfect son and traded him in for...you got it...you. the sinner. we were enslaved by wrath and the king has bought you back. the reason for this is that even though god is omnipotent, it doesn't mean he can do all things. by this i mean that he can only do things consistant with his character. he can not sin, for example. he has to punish the sin we have committed, so he "trades it in" for his son.

atonement: propetiation. wrath satisfier. jesus took on god's wrath for us. love does not pay the price for our sin, someone has to die. its like this: you are standing before a judge having committed a horrible crime.you confess before the judge and he forgives you, but he must uphold his law. somebody has to pay for the crime. the judge's son walks up and offers to pay the fine. the judge then tells his son the penalty, or fine, is death. the judge's son then pays the fine by dying in your place. that is atonement.

in the old testement, they didn't have jesus, so what did they do? god told them to use sacrifices. these sacrifices were like a credit card. looking forward to payment of the debt later. the price was paid with jesus. god knew even then that he would have to send his son. it was part of sin coming into the world. by this, all we have to do is plave our COMPLETE FAITH and trust in jesus alone. nothing more, nothing less. verses 3:28-31 and chapter 4 go on to say that we are only who we are because of our faith. its not our communion, not our baptism that saves us. its not your family or your church that saves you. in faith alone. faith not works. it would be great if we no longer sinned, but we are still made justified in god when we place our complete faith in him.

jesus's blood provided the means to which god justifies us. faith in jesus is the means people are justified to god and made righteous. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." the great swap. he who had no sin, took our sin.


In a nutshell: god's pretty amazing, why don't we place our faith in him?