The most fundamental and foundational doctrine in all of scripture is justification by faith alone. Without God declaring a sinner just, they will be condemned for all eternity. However, through saving faith, a person embraces Jesus as the Messiah while recognizing that His shed blood accomplishes redemption. At this point the sinner who is now redeemed becomes one with Christ and is declared right with God, thereby sparing him or her from eternal damnation and instead providing eternal security.
Ponder for a moment that Jesus’s sacrificial death on the cross accomplished salvation as mentioned. God put Jesus forward as the sacrifice for sin in His blood, effective through faith. Through faith God imputes Jesus’s righteousness to us, giving us equal status with Him in the Kingdom. So, God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
But let’s go back to the beginning. From eternity past, the Three Persons of the Godhead saw the need to redeem sinners. Collectively, they determined that God the Son would pay the penalty to redeem His people from the bondage of their sin. In the fullness of time, Jesus came to Earth and fulfilled all the requirements of the law by resisting all temptation including from Satan himself. He thoroughly met his role as Rabbi by teaching about the Kingdom and what it means to have Kingdom character while performing various miracles. Finally, His three-year ministry ended with a humiliating execution. All hope was not lost. On the third day He rose from the dead, showing that His people along with Him will conquer death. Believers, then, have hope beyond this life and can see that in the future they will be part of Jesus’s eternal Kingdom. To further provide hope, Jesus met with His disciples and witnessed to 500 people before He ascended. Believers are assured based on what the angels told the disciples in the first chapter of Acts that Jesus will come back the same way He left. Currently, Jesus serves as our mediator providing us the way to God and brings us back to Him when we go astray.
The reason I labor this is because Jesus is the one whom we should live for. Sounds simple, right? Not really. In Romans, Paul who was a leading apostle and received the more acclaim in the New Testament than any other apostle shared the following: ‘The good that I want to do, I don’t do and the bad I wish to avoid I do anyway.’ People make the obvious statement by remarking that once people receive salvation, they still sin. Though we are no longer subject to the law’s condemnation and we have the assurance of eternal life, we struggle to obey. For example, Paul was humble enough to admit that he struggled with obedience. Most Christians, if they are honest, will say the same thing. People have what are often called ‘pet sins’ which may take many years into their sanctification to overcome. Sometimes believers know that something is not good, but they do it anyway. Each time we as Christians choose to sin, we are living for ourselves. When we stop and think about making these choices it is important to consider something quite basic. Without even reading anything said here, a Christian can tell you that Jesus atoned for their sin thus giving them new life, that He currently intercedes for them, and that He promises to endure them now and into eternity, and that He will come again. That is our hope.
As far as sin is concerned, everyone does it for a reason. The bottom line is that we sin because we find pleasure or comfort in it, or else we wouldn’t do it. We Christians are called, however, to mortify-put to death—the sin that’s in us. Or, to put it another way, we are called to die more and more to disobedience and to live more and more to obedience. Sometimes we see no hope in our struggles despite knowing that Jesus will finish what He has begun in us according to His promises and power. Jesus brought us out of the dominion of darkness and into His Kingdom. And now, because He holds all things together, we trust in Him and take comfort in knowing what He can accomplish for us, not only for eternity, but for here in this life too.
So, as Christians, we always say that we want to grow in holiness. That’s easy to say, but not so easy to do. Nevertheless, with all that I have remarked about Christ in terms about His eternal plan to redeem us, showing mercy on us as sinners, giving us new life, and continuing to minister for us, doesn’t it make sense to live for Him rather than ourselves? As Paul put it, “whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
It is important to remember that once God converts us, He unites us with Jesus and makes us part of His family so that we can also refer to ourselves as being His adopted sons and daughters. He has changed our position from being in a state of condemnation to being in a state of new life. If we Christians want to be holy, we must show by our actions that we are a part of a unique family who lives for Jesus and not ourselves. Let’s be sure then that, by our choices, we are saying that Christ is worth living for because of what He has done for us. Let’s show others that God has justified us through faith and that we are mortifying sin in our lives.
In His Image 