Romans 4:20 - Romans 5:6: “No unbelief wavered him concerning the promise of God […], fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was ‘counted to him as righteousness’. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ […] and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”
I would like to encourage all of you who are perhaps struggling with either coming back to God because you’ve wandered away, or maybe you are wrestling with the idea of knowing for certain that if you are a believer then you will be saved. Actually, the second part touches on a very interesting thought that I will soon get to!
But first, my dear sibling in Christ, know and remember that you have peace with God. How? Through Christ alone. Why? Because our faith in him justifies us. This is clearly stated in Romans 5:1. And for some reason, tonight this verse is what sticks out to me, even though I’m sure there are plenty of powerful verses that jump out to you when you read the referenced passage above.
Anyway, I find that sometimes Christians wonder whether they are “truly saved [from going to hell]” by simply believing that Christ died for their sins once and for all, and that three days after Jesus died he rose from the dead and now is seated at the right hand of God, and makes intercession on their behalf. Some people think simply believing is not enough. You have to actually do it; live out your faith. And some people think that if you are not doing the deeds, then you do not truly have the faith. I don’t care which statement relates to you. Come, let us listen to the word of God together.
Romans 5:1 reminds me that it is our faith that justifies us. Our faith makes us “on good terms” with God. We have peace with God because of our faith in Christ. Therefore, the righteousness that is His is now also counted to us, because of our faith, just like it was counted to Abraham because of his faith.
That’s right. Abraham put his faith in Christ.
It doesn’t matter where you are in your personal relationship with God, whether you feel like you have a lot of sins that can’t be confessed to Him because He’d never love someone so imperfect. Well, I’ve got news for you. At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly (Rom5:6). The UNgodly.
That’s right. Jesus came to save sinners like yourself. So come to him, because he loves you already, even if you don’t love yourself.
So now let’s move on to that second idea I mentioned: does believing equal salvation?
See, I would like to put forward the idea that Satan and his demons believe. And they shudder (James 2:19). However, even though they believe, they are not saved. So then by that logic, simply believing is not enough then?! Let me be VERY careful with these ideas…
The idea here is that “simply believing” doesn’t really mean there’s any transformation, and doesn’t mean all of a sudden you’re holy and righteous. Belief is just a conclusion, a mental judgment that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have put your faith in Christ. I think this is the state those demons are in. They believe there is one God, but they don’t put their faith in Christ. I have no clue what they do put their faith into, or whether they have any faith at all…
And now some of you might be thinking: “I put my faith in Christ; that is what separates me from those demons.” Well, perhaps, but let’s not let this all get to our heads. Where do you think this faith came from? The Bible says that faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of Christ (Rom10:17). So you see, we are saved by our faith, which didn’t come from within ourselves but actually came from God! This is why our salvation is not OUR own doing, so that we can’t boast about it to anyone.
That’s right. It was all God’s work, even in the beginning.
Romans 4:15-16a — “For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression. That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring[…]”
These two verses really stood out to me. At first, when I read them, I thought to myself what kind of meaning this had for me in my everyday life. What did it mean, that “where there is no law there is no transgression” and “that is why it depends on faith”?
Turns out, you can’t be judged a sinner if there’s no standard against which you are judged. And, more importantly, because this law does exist, we are all rightfully to be judged as guilty of breaking it. And so it follows that if we are guilty, then we deserve punishment (aka the wrath). But now even more importantly, that’s why we know our salvation doesn’t come from our works! That is why we can be certain of our salvation, because it is a promise to us by grace through faith!
And this faith is the same faith that was counted to Abraham as righteousness. “But the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” (Rom4:23-25)
So, even though sometimes you might waver in your faith and wonder if you are truly saved, remember this promise of grace from God! If your faith is the same faith that Abraham had, then you are a child of promise, and are guaranteed to receive this promise of salvation from God!
God is not an infomercial. He doesn’t give empty promises and guarantees.
Romans 3:19-31.
In this passage there are so many morsels of truth! I will share with you some of my thoughts as I was reading these verses.
v20: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”
I checked up Matthew Henry’s commentary on the previous verse, and his commentary rolled into this verse too. But essentially, it is impossible to try and make ourselves blameless by obeying the law of the Jews (aka ten commandments and other Jewish laws). Are you only outwardly obeying the Biblical laws? If so, you cannot save yourself. You will begin to realize that it is impossible, because the law was put there to show you your sins!
v22: “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.[…]”
Now, this needs to be read together as a chunk from v21-25. You should really go and read this for yourself. I find it so awesome, because it reminds me of my faith. But yes, ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Therefore, we are ALL heading on a dangerous path. However, God chose to justify us because of no other reason that a gift of grace. And this gift is that instead of us having to repay the debts of our sins, Jesus Christ actually became the propitiation (the conciliatory offering to God) by shedding his blood. It is this blood that we Christians receive in faith.
v28: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
This verse is what gives us no reason to boast in how “holy” we are because we obey x amount of laws or rescued y number of kittens stuck in trees. We don’t boast in our deeds, because our deeds aren’t what save us. It is ONLY through faith!
v29-30: God is ONE.
And since our God is the God of the Jews as well as the Gentiles (aka God is God over EVERYONE), he will justify everyone who has the faith.
v31: “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.”
I sometimes struggle with this bit too. If we’re justified by faith, then does that mean our deeds have no consequence? By no means! As it turns out, it should be our faith that gives us the strength to continually uphold the law, even when it gets difficult, even when it doesn’t look cool, even when it means breaking up with your non-Christian significant other.
Sometimes I wonder how many people actually read my posts. Hopefully I get a few readers to whom the Word of God is speaking. It would be truly miraculous (aka act of God, not of man!) if His words cause change in your life.
Romans 1:32 - 2:1 - Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.
How many times have you heard the phrase “practice what you preach”? As a Christian, I think there’s much more to this saying that a mere chiding for committing hypocrisy. I’ll get to that idea in a sec, but first, the Word of God!
When I read the Bible, I often start at the beginning of a chapter. It just seems like a good place to start. However, when that beginning is clearly a continuation of an existing thought, I’d like to go back further and get the entire message. You know: “therefore… what is it there for?”
Anyway, in these two verses, Paul continues his writing to the saints (aka believers) in Rome. There are apparently some Christians, who already “know God’s righteous decree”, that are stamping their seal of approval on a whole heap of nasty sinful acts (Romans 1:29-31).
Now, I think this doesn’t really mean cheering and encouraging people to do these things. Rather, I think that some Christians are exposed to this kind of stuff and instead of removing themselves from that environment, they just sort of chuckle a bit and look around nervously hoping no one realizes they’re Christian. Does this sound like someone you might know? …
Anyway, I think for “these guys”, Paul has essentially written that God gave them up to a debased mind (Romans 1:28). But that’s okay, because eventually the judgment of God will fall on those people (Romans 2:2).
So that was Rom1:32. Now in chapter 2, Paul is warning against judgment. Not only that, he’s also calling out those hypocrites who preach against the aforementioned actions but who perform those very same actions. But you should really read on.
Verses 3-5 really hit home the message. In reading these verses, I almost hear Paul shocked that his readers might actually think judging others can provide them escape from God’s judgment. “Really?! You really think so? Don’t you know that God’s mercy is supposed to transform you, not to allow you to continue your sinful ways?”
I wonder how many Christians will feel tension within themselves when they realize that God’s great unconditional love is not what they initially understood it to be.
Romans 1:18-23
When we greet people, it’s often something like “hey, how’s it going” and then we don’t even stop to listen to the reply. Has that ever happened to you, maybe walking between classes or walking to school, and passing by a friend you “greet” them but just keep on walking?
Paul here doesn’t do that. Well, he is actually writing a letter, rather than simply greeting someone passing by… But he does not start with just “To Whom This May Concern”. Instead, Paul states who he is, reminds us of who God is, and who we are.
I like Paul’s introduction a lot because he actually summarizes the gospel here. The gospel is foretold through the Scriptures, it’s all about Jesus, and his resurrection!!!
Anyways, that was just me enjoying the encouragement and excitement that Paul’s introduction has brought me. The passage I read tonight is Romans 1:18-23, and my thoughts after reading it is that it’s quite sad. I mean, there are people who are suppressing the truth of God! To these people, they have actually been shown who God is, and also his divine nature; and yet these guys didn’t honour God. They didn’t acknowledge that he was in fact God.
Instead, these unrighteous people got lost in their “futile thinking” and got their hearts darkened. These people ended up turning away to “images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things”. This makes me think about those religions who worship demigods or man-like gods (e.g. Roman/Greek/etc gods) and also religions that worship animals or animal spirits and such. I wonder if these people really do know God but then chose their own images… I don’t really know how they’d be satisfied with their images and their gods whom they’ve created themselves.
But then again, don’t Christians struggle with the same things? We know who God is, know that he deserves to be honoured and praised and blessed and thanked, but instead, we decide to put faith in our marks or our salaries. Instead of looking to God, we look to ourselves, and try to rationalize using our logic. Claiming to be wise, we became fools.
Recently I went on a winter retreat with my Christian fellowship. One of the problems I noticed was that there were so many things to do that it really distracted us from the real purpose of why we went in the first place. But later on, we actually got back on track, so that was good =)
But now, half a week into “the real world”, what are you focused on? Are you distracted? Maybe it’s time to get back on track…
