Romans 3:26
When we were children, we would say a prayer over our food that went, “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food, Amen”. There is good theology packed into that prayer of thanksgiving, because God truly is good and He is great. Due to the climate of the Old Testament, where God is seen killing those who sin and putting plagues on many others, how can we prove to the world that our God is truly “good” and “great”?
We know that God functioned in the aforementioned capacity in the Old Testament because He was dealing with man through the Covenant of Law, where man was held accountable for his keeping or breaking of God’s perfect law. No man could keep it, so every man was judged for his failures. When Jesus came, He lived that law to perfection and then laid down His life at Calvary so that we could have His goodness. In short, He lived it so that we won’t have to. He died, so that we can live. This changed God’s attitude, for it appeased His wrath (Isaiah 53:11, 1 John 2:2).
If God continues to look upon our sin with anger and then strikes us with cancer and tumors as a way to “keep us in line”, then He was obviously not appeased with Jesus’ sacrifice at the cross. For the church to preach that God is “keeping score” and is ready to pour out His wrath on this earth, shows a fundamental lack of understanding just how finished the finished work of the cross is. Will God show wrath to the earth again? He certainly will, but not while His church is here, for the blood is on the door of our hearts (John 3:36; 1 Thessalonians 5:9).
God declares to the earth just how righteous that He is through one act; bringing complete justification to those who have placed faith in Jesus Christ. Paul said that this one act shows that God is just (Romans 3:26). God being “just” means that God is fair and that He has perfect justice. If He justifies us when we believe in Jesus Christ and that constitutes God being just and fair then that means that all of our sin has been placed in the body of Christ at Calvary, and that God is honoring the price that Jesus paid by forgiving us.
Justification makes us appear before God as if we have never sinned in our life. This act is miraculously done by no effort on our part; it is all a gift of God’s grace through Christ’s finished work. By justifying us upon our faith in Jesus, God proves to the world that He is a righteous God. If He required us to earn our salvation or our blessings by works then He would be guilty of killing His Son for our sins and then holding us accountable for them as well.
It is an insult to Christ’s finished work when someone insinuates that you must pay for your own sins and failures. For you to think that your sin is greater than grace’s ability to save you is to think very highly of your ability to fail. In fact, that attitude thinks more of sin than it does of the Savior. His sacrifice was so all encompassing that you and I will never be able to “out sin” God’s abundant grace, for where our sin abounds, His grace will always super-abound (Romans 5:20).
May you go forward today with the blessed assurance that your Father is righteous for He has declared you justified through the finished work of Jesus Christ His Son!
When we were children, we would say a prayer over our food that went, “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food, Amen”. There is good theology packed into that prayer of thanksgiving, because God truly is good and He is great. Due to the climate of the Old Testament, where God is seen killing those who sin and putting plagues on many others, how can we prove to the world that our God is truly “good” and “great”?
We know that God functioned in the aforementioned capacity in the Old Testament because He was dealing with man through the Covenant of Law, where man was held accountable for his keeping or breaking of God’s perfect law. No man could keep it, so every man was judged for his failures. When Jesus came, He lived that law to perfection and then laid down His life at Calvary so that we could have His goodness. In short, He lived it so that we won’t have to. He died, so that we can live. This changed God’s attitude, for it appeased His wrath (Isaiah 53:11, 1 John 2:2).
If God continues to look upon our sin with anger and then strikes us with cancer and tumors as a way to “keep us in line”, then He was obviously not appeased with Jesus’ sacrifice at the cross. For the church to preach that God is “keeping score” and is ready to pour out His wrath on this earth, shows a fundamental lack of understanding just how finished the finished work of the cross is. Will God show wrath to the earth again? He certainly will, but not while His church is here, for the blood is on the door of our hearts (John 3:36; 1 Thessalonians 5:9).
God declares to the earth just how righteous that He is through one act; bringing complete justification to those who have placed faith in Jesus Christ. Paul said that this one act shows that God is just (Romans 3:26). God being “just” means that God is fair and that He has perfect justice. If He justifies us when we believe in Jesus Christ and that constitutes God being just and fair then that means that all of our sin has been placed in the body of Christ at Calvary, and that God is honoring the price that Jesus paid by forgiving us.
Justification makes us appear before God as if we have never sinned in our life. This act is miraculously done by no effort on our part; it is all a gift of God’s grace through Christ’s finished work. By justifying us upon our faith in Jesus, God proves to the world that He is a righteous God. If He required us to earn our salvation or our blessings by works then He would be guilty of killing His Son for our sins and then holding us accountable for them as well.
It is an insult to Christ’s finished work when someone insinuates that you must pay for your own sins and failures. For you to think that your sin is greater than grace’s ability to save you is to think very highly of your ability to fail. In fact, that attitude thinks more of sin than it does of the Savior. His sacrifice was so all encompassing that you and I will never be able to “out sin” God’s abundant grace, for where our sin abounds, His grace will always super-abound (Romans 5:20).
May you go forward today with the blessed assurance that your Father is righteous for He has declared you justified through the finished work of Jesus Christ His Son!
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