Justified

 DEVOTION

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

JUSTIFIED

Acts 13:38-41

38 "Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. 39 Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses. 40 Take care that what the prophets have said does not happen to you:  41 "'Look, you scoffers, wonder and perish, for I am going to do something in your days that you would never believe, even if someone told you.'"

NIV

Through Jesus our sins or forgiven. If that is not good news, then there is no good news. All other news is eclipsed by the forgiveness of our sin. There is no possible way that we could be justified by any other means, then through Jesus. We can try to be as good as we can, but no matter how much we try, we fail miserably. If we think that we are good, and that we do all the right things, avoiding all the bad things, then we simply are deceiving ourselves. If we could be that good, then Jesus did not have to come to earth to die on the cross, paying the price for us. Even after we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior and have the Spirit within, we still fail to be good enough or do enough to be qualified or justified. It is so simple, we are saved by grace, least any of us could boast. Although this boasting is in reference to how  we get into heaven, as in well, we got here because of all the good deeds we did. Well, we got here because we did better good deeds and you did. Well, we got here because we did more better good deeds than you did. On and on the boasting goes, and that is why we cannot boast, for we are only saved through faith in Jesus Christ. Even through we are saved by grace, we have to be careful not to think more highly of ourselves than we should. We can still get caught up in showing off to an extent, enumerating all the things we do for the Lord. It becomes easier today to boast without making it look like we are boasting because all the social media platforms available. We can tell the world ever time we do this or that, because that is the normal thing done. Every little event, or good deed that we are involved in, every ministry, even ever time we sneeze, we feel we must tell the world. Is this type of culture, it is difficult to be humble. If we practice being humble before God, then it comes more and more naturally to be humble before men. That is almost counter-cultural, but we have come out of the world, and into the kingdom of God and Jesus showed us the way to humility, giving himself, even onto death, for us. The plain fact is that we are justified through Jesus, and it is a done deal. Now, having said that, we also must believe is everything else Jesus said. We must take care that we do not scoff at anything regarding the word of God, that is no thinking against the truth. We either believe or we don’t.