Grow Your Vocabulary: Devotions From Time Of GraceSample

Justification

If you would interview 100 people on the street and ask them questions about their religious beliefs about God and salvation, you would hear thoughts about mankind’s struggles and how each individual has the ability and obligation to improve himself or herself and learn to be nicer to other people.

The Bible’s message is far more intense: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23,24). Did you grasp that powerful double truth? Mankind doesn’t just have a few flaws--we have all fallen short of the Creator’s righteous expectations. We are all under God’s wrath and judgment; we are all candidates for hell.

But the passage’s twin truth reveals that God completely on his own did what our deeds could not--he justified us. As Christ breathed his last breath on the cross, the Father declared the world not guilty of its sins. As that powerful message gets to people through Word and sacrament, they come to faith in Christ and believe that his stunning work applies to them personally. Thus they are justified by faith and personally receive and experience God’s thrilling verdict of Not Guilty!

There is an impulse in each of our hearts to excuse our own failings and justify ourselves by pointing to nicer features of our lives. Fight that urge. Claim the justification that Christ bought for you, and then you will enjoy God’s glorious peace.