To All Who Believe

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

TO ALL WHO BELIEVE

Rom 3:21-26

21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

NI

Well, there it is the whole of the gospel in one statement. A righteousness from God has been made known. We have known, through our study, the truth that the Law and the Prophets testified to this righteousness from God, although all we need to do is simply believe what God has said through Paul. It is a fact that we all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. There is not one of us that is righteous, no matter how hard we try to live a good life that pleases God, or how many good deeds we might be able to do, we have absolutely no righteousness within ourselves. It sounds sort of depressing to think there is nothing we can do within ourselves to gain any righteousness at all. But the good news is that we can gain righteousness from God through faith in Jesus Christ. All we need to do is believe, and because we do believe we are freely, which is a keyword, justified by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. Two important words are justified and redemption. The Greek word translated as justified means to be rendered innocent and the Greek word translated as redemption means the ramson has been paid or ramson in full. What more do we need than to be rendered by God as innocent and that he has paid all the ramson to buy us back from the darkness of sin and death. All we have to do is believe. There is nothing more required of us in order to be declared holy and blameless in his sight than to believe. Yes, we would what to do good things for the kingdom of God. Yes, we would what to bring glory and honor unto our God and we might think that our “good deeds” accomplish that, but we might be wrong in thinking in that manner. There are many good deeds done by pagans, or non-believers who perform many humanitarian deeds that help people. Although we want to do those things to enhance the kingdom, unless all that we do is done in the name of the Lord and he is given all the credit for anything that we do, our deeds are no different than that of the pagans. This would mean we cannot boast or brag about our deeds, or our ministries. All that we are, all we have, and all that we do is because of God, who started this good work in our lives and is the one who is going to complete it. Our primary goal in life is to believe. All else will fall into place if we only believe.