Day Thirty-Seven
DAY THIRTY SEVEN
I was a nurse for 10 years, and on more than one occasion I was called by one of the junior nurses, because they could not rouse a patient. We had to go through several checks to confirm death; one of the sure signs that someone was dead is that they didn’t respond to stimulus, there was no movement or action.
Yesterday we spoke of faith as an action word, a catalyst for our hope and belief; it is the visible response to our belief that creates a declaration that we expect God to move, expect things to change. If our faith is dead, or in a coma, there will be no action, we will feel paralyzed by our circumstances and defeated by them.
Lets compare this action with what the Bible calls “works.” I remember growing up, and hearing people say, “what if Jesus came back when you are at the movies?” (I was always a little confused about this one, because I was pretty sure Jesus would enjoy the movies I went too?!) or “God would not approve of you wearing slacks to church”
Galatians 2:16
Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
Works are what we do to try to deserve Gods attention and help. They are the religious practices that we go through in order to feel good enough to receive anything from God. Works operate through guilt faith operates through grace
As a Roman Catholic priest and monk, Martin Luther fastidiously observed all of the rituals and disciplines of his order, but none of them seemed to bring him close to God. He feared God and His righteous judgment, but he also hated God because of His demand for perfect righteousness. Try as he might, Luther knew that he could never satisfy God’s standard.
“I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, ‘the righteousness of God,’ because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and deals righteously in punishing the unrighteous…. Night and day I pondered until … I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before ‘the righteousness of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gateway to heaven.”
Today lets examine our hearts and make sure we are operating our faith through grace and not through guilt attached to the law.
Scripture to meditate on: Galatians chapter 3