Living In His PowerSample

Trust In Someone Greater

In 2019, billionaire investor and philanthropist Robert Smith announced the ultimate graduation gift: a grant to pay off student loan debt for all Morehouse College graduates in the Class of 2019. He made the announcement at the college's commencement address. I imagine the students being astonished when they heard that. They needed someone to step in their place to retire their liabilities and debts on their balance sheet. They needed somebody else, a billionaire, to step up for them, someone greater than them.

Paul shows us who that person that steps up for us is. His name is Jesus. Our resume alone will not get it done. We need somebody else. Philippians 3:7-9 says, “But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith.”

Paul is saying here, “I don’t need circumcision, my religious heritage, or my resume. I need the righteousness that comes from God. I know my liabilities with sin. Now I need assets and I am trusting in Someone greater than me.” On our balance sheet, we all have liabilities. We are steeped in debt with our sins before God. Our assets are not enough; we must trust in someone greater than us. Who is that? It is Jesus Christ. His resume, prophesied all throughout the Old Testament, was that He would be the Savior of the world. He was born in Bethlehem, He was born of a virgin, He lived a sinless life, and died on a cross to pay for our sins. He rose from the grave to conquer the grave in death. He sits at the right hand of the Father and has sent the Holy Spirit to indwell the hearts of believers.

That is His resume. Do you know what is left for us to do? We must take our debts, the liabilities on our balance sheet that our assets could never erase, and place them at the foot of the cross. We need to say: “Jesus, I need You, someone greater than me, to find my righteousness in You alone. I don’t have enough righteousness on my own. I need Your righteousness.”

And He grants us imparted righteousness. God gives us the Holy Spirit to live inside of us. We are a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come. He has taken my sins and removed them. Jesus said, “It is finished.”