johnmarkharris.net

1 Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Seeking to worship God, even the right God, in the wrong way falls outside of the category reserved for horseshoes and hand grenades known as “close enough.” If you don’t connect with God through Jesus Christ, then you’ve not connected with God. The question (typically hypothetical) that gets asked goes something like: “what about those who don’t know about Jesus?” That question is almost directly addressed in these verses. Here is a people, God’s People even, who are ignorant of Jesus (the righteousness of God) and so they did not worship God in the correct way. They were zealous… yet misguided. Paul’s prayer is that they would be saved through Jesus Christ. If we are not leading well-meaning people to Jesus, they will spend eternity apart from God. How sad will it be on the Day of Judgment when we see those headed to the lake of fire and we say “but they seemed so senesce…” It’s all about Jesus, be sure you tell someone about Him today.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

It’s striking how different Paul’s attitude was towards sin than the typical western Christian. One gets the impression from the average modern churchgoer that as long as you think happy thoughts about Jesus, then it doesn’t really matter what you do. Nothing could be farther from what the New Testament actually says. “God forbid!” (KJV) If you’re a Christian, you’ve died to yourself, so you no longer fall into those temptations of selfishness (which all sin is) without some serious guilt and repentance. If you’re able to just go on doing what the Bible calls sin, and not do the things the Bible actually calls you to do… I don’t think Paul would honestly count you as a genuine Christian just yet. Salvation involves repentance. There’s no way to be saved from sin you don’t think is wrong. As for His forgiveness today, rely on His strength to resist temptation, and confess as you continue to fall short… Do we just trust that God’s love is big enough and if I sin “oh well, I’m under grace not law” BY NO MEANS! It doesn’t work that way… if your faith does work that way, then you’re not following the Jesus of the Bible. You need to trust Him today…

 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned… Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

It’s not my fault, it’s only human nature, right? Well, not so much. Adam and Eve sinned, and as a result all of humanity’s nature is broken, so broken that we all will sin. But that’s just it, we all will sin. Even though we all will make the choice, that’s just what it is, we choose to sin. We are all responsible. In the same way those who choose to sin are condemned (which is, by the way, everyone), those who choose Jesus are forgiven. It is not automatic. As great as salvation is, you still must make the choice. Follow Jesus, give Him your life, make Him your Lord… you’ll never regret it!

“Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness

We need to stop trying to be good. Oh sure, to be a Christian means to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit and to live a holy life, but we need to be sure we don’t count on our personal goodness to give us a better standing before God. The way we act is just the natural outflow of who we already are in Christ… we just do it. Just like Abraham, our spiritual forefather, it was not because of his hard work that God accepted him, it was because he trusted in God’s promises. Trust God, believe in him, and you’ll be counted good (or righteous). Look for the reward God can give, not the reward for being a “do-gooder” 🙂

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Why did God send Jesus to die on the cross? Is it because He loves you? Well, sure, He does love you… we all know John 3:16. Did Jesus come because He loves the Father? Absolutely, that’s true as well… but there’s another aspect to the death of Jesus, God had to send Him to die because of who He is. See, all those people who lived before Jesus walked the earth, people in the Old Testament times, were not destroyed and punished for their sins… why not? Well, because God promised He would take care of it… so He had to. God is righteous, and so to prove His righteousness, He put forward Jesus as His solution to sin (even the sin of those Old Testament people). Jesus satisfies the requirements God made for Himself. This means God can still be JUST (punish sin) and JUSTIFIER (the one who saves us) at the same time. God is amazing… trust Him today!