God is so good. I'm overwhelmed right now with a new revelation of His righteous.
Pause. Let's rewind. Back to Gospel 101. You'll never graduate from this class anyway (PTL!) so get comfortable.
What is point one of saving people? Showing them how sinful they are, right? How they're going to hell if they die tonight or get hit by a bus? That MAY be effective if numbers is how you measure fruit. It certainly seems to work to get people to slip their hand in the air or to run up front during the altar call. Then they have some great fire insurance, but usually go back to feeling bad about their sin. Because "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." God uses this. He is so good. He uses our bad strategies and feeble attempts for actual relationship. This is incredible. But I want to love Him in the BEST way I can. I want to understand the Gospel the way God wanted it to be understood. I want it presented Paul's way.
I never questioned it, I guess. It is part of the glorified Romans Road, afterall. But earlier this week God stuck this passage in my path twice. The first was when a dear sister Ginny Hall posted this passage on her wall in it's context. I started tearing up, realizing how beautiful Romans 3 really is. It doesn't bring condemnation, it brings life. I started turning it over in my head and heart. Then I went to my parents' house for dinner the other night and had one of the best talks ever with my mom. She was telling me about how at different times in her life God has spoken to her in such different ways through the same verses. That night, she mentioned how God was revealing that in Romans 3:23, specifically, she'd always seen the first half, and missed the reality that we were created for Glory.
WHOA. Mom. For realz. That hit me like a ton of (really good) bricks. I haven't been able to shake the thought. We were created for GLORY! When God created us, He meant for us to walk in Glory. To go from Glory to Glory. He placed dreams in our heart that we might experience Glory! The Gospel is not supposed to focus on our sinfulness. It is afterall, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not the Gospel of sinful man. We were created to experience the SURPASSING GLORY of God. Let's look at that passage in context:
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.
(Romans 3:21-26 ESV)
WHAT? There's not even a period after the end of Romans 3:23? We were never supposed to stop there.
Now I'll paraphrase it as I now understand it:
But now the glory, holiness, and righteousness of God has been made flesh in Jesus. He was totally apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets all point to Him and show His mission: for the righteousness of God (through faith in Jesus Christ) to indwell all who believe. Because of His given gift of grace, there is now no distinction between those who feel they have kept the law and those who know they have broken it: 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 incredible loving righteousness, because in his divine love and power, he refrained from the enforcing the debt we owed him and instead He chose to pass over former sins. It was to show his crazy righteousness that is for right now: He is both the Perfect Judge who judges us AND the one who justiFIES us and makes us holy like Him. He is the Judge and Jury, the Lawmaker and our Lawyer, and beyond that, He decided to stand in our place as Defendant. He did all of this for the one who has faith in Jesus.
(Romans 3:21-26 me. haha)
How incredible is that? I bless you with Joy as you learn to put the focus on Jesus and free yourself from the felt need to condemn yourself. That's so old-covenant, afterall.
