July 10, 2016

Romans 4:5 NKJV - "But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness."

Commentary:

Got credit?  What's your "credit score?"  Happy with what you have in assets?  Are your assets more than your debts?  Too often people measure their "eligibility" for heaven in terms of assets versus debits and hope their assets win!  Well, let me respond to this in two ways:  First, if you haven't trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, then it doesn't matter how much "assets" you may have because even one debt in your "debit" account would wipe out ALL your "assets!"  My second response is this:  If you're a believer in Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, then your "assets" are INFINITE and your "debits" are ZERO!  "How can that be?" you ask?

First, remember what I said over the last two days.  When you put your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior then you receive His gift of salvation and the affect of His "nailing all your transgressions" on His cross.  He emptied your debit column by taking your sins Himself and being judged for them.  You don't have to face judgment in hell forever because Jesus took the  punishment Himself!

Second, something else happened that also is expressed in the Bible in "accounting terms."  The perfect righteous standing that Jesus has with His Father is something you and I need to stand before God, as well.  We didn't have the kind of righteousness required by God for all of our so-called righteous acts were "self-righteous" and were despicable to God!  We needed what Jesus had and the wonderful truth is that while He took our sins on Himself at the cross He also made it possible for His righteousness to be given to us when we believed on Him.  Romans 5:1 tells us that we are "...justified by faith..."  To be "justified" means to be "declared righteous" by God.  Jesus took our sins and gave us His righteousness instead!  He "accounted" His righteousness to us!  Our "debit" column is marked "Paid in Full."  Our "asset" column is marked "God's Infinite Riches in Christ!"  We have ALL we need to stand before God because we have Jesus!