“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…” – ROMANS 5:1 (NKJV)
Justified is such a strong word! In the Greek, it literally means “to render righteous or such as he ought to be.” In other words, my original design was right before God. We have been restored to our original design and it’s in right standing with Father God.
That standing is such that as far as God is concerned, there has never ever been anything between us and Him. There’s no wedge, no animosity or anger. This is based not on what we’ve done, but it’s totally based on what God did.
“Right standing with God is based not on what we’ve done, but on what God did.”
This concept flies in the face of society – even in Christian circles – because we are so performance based.
Let me state it another way: Have you ever spent time repenting and repenting and repenting over something you had done the prior week, and you’re still repenting today!? Or maybe you have waited two or three days before you felt like you could talk to God about it?
People mourn over something they’ve done wrong as if the Cross of Christ wasn’t enough; they think they somehow have to add to the work of the Cross to receive forgiveness. But forgiveness has already been paid for!
When we take things out of what Jesus has done and focus in on what we do, it becomes Law instead of grace. When that happens, we stop looking at eternal truth and start looking at our circumstances and how we feel we don’t measure up.
But God is not asking you to measure up! Jesus measured up for us!
“God’s not asking you to measure up! Jesus measured up for us!”
Jesus didn’t miss the mark in anything. And beyond that, Jesus was sacrificed for that reason! He was humanity’s scapegoat. There’s a reason why John the Baptist, talking about Jesus, proclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)
If He takes them away, they’re no longer there.
Jesus fulfilled every aspect of the Law. In Matthew 5:18, He’s recorded saying, “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.” Every T is crossed and every I is dotted!
God took it away by nailing it to the Cross. He took the opposing documents that could have identified us as guilty, and He took those away and removed them from us. Because of that, we can stand before Him as though we have never done anything wrong.
Think about it!
Have you ever had animosity against somebody and you see that person coming so you go the other way? Well, God saw you coming and He didn’t go the other way! He wants us to know that there’s nothing wrong between us and Him!
Colossians 1:21-22 reminds us we were once alienated and enemies in our mind because of our evil behavior, “yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight!”
God never saw us as an enemy! If He had seen us as an enemy – someone unworthy and worthless in His sight – He would have never sent Jesus! The truth is, you are so valuable to Father God that He sent His own Son Jesus to pay the price for our sin, to redeem us back to our original design!
To watch the June 20, 2021 message on which this post was based, CLICK HERE.
