This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”
—Romans 1:17 (NLT)
The Good News of the Gospel tells us that we are made right with God through faith in Christ. Faith in His finished work of salvation is the only way to live a righteous and holy life. It is impossible to make ourselves righteous by living a holy life. Only Jesus earned our holiness. It is His gift to us. Righteousness is His work in us.
Only those who have been made righteous by Jesus can live a holy life. We received His righteousness through faith in the finished work of Jesus, and we now live our lives by faith in that finished work. Without faith in the perfect and finished work of Jesus, we have no hope.
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” Paul wrote (Romans 10:17, NKJ).
Faith comes from hearing the Word. You were made right with God when you believed the Gospel in your heart. You were saved when you declared it (Romans 10:10). You accepted its truth by faith. You knew you were forgiven and loved. Do you still know you are forgiven and loved or has life shaken your assurance? “Having heard” the Word in the past doesn’t build your faith now. You have to “hear” the Word, again and again, to renew your mind to believe (Romans 12:2).
When your problems and the enemy’s attacks and lies convince you that God doesn’t love you, you will try to earn back God’s acceptance and love. But God has never left you or stopped loving you. There is nothing you can do to earn God’s love. He has loved you from the beginning of time and will until the end of time. He accepted you as His own when you believed in Jesus. The righteousness of Christ lives in you, and you live in Him. Righteousness is a state of grace. You didn't earn it then, and you can't earn it now. You have to believe it to live it.
Quit struggling to win God’s love. It is tiring trying to win something that is already yours. Believing who you are in Christ is the only way to be convinced of His love for you.
Paul knew how to rejoice when he ran into problems because He knew who He was in Christ.
“We can rejoice, too,” Paul wrote, “when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love” (Romans 5:3-5, NLT).
When we believe that God has the answer to our problems, we praise Him. Those problems develop strength of character instead of defeating us. We have hope and great confidence in God. We know that He first loved us (I John 4:19). And that His work of salvation in us doesn’t lack a thing. It is complete, thorough, and finished. Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see (Hebrews 11:1). The hope God has given us never leads to disappointment! When we believe God’s promises are ours, we choose to live by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthian 5:7)! And when we believe, no enemy—no lie—nothing has any power to rob us of what is ours in Christ!
Do you want to live His life to the fullest? His life in you is lived by faith. When you believe in your heart that you are entirely new and lack nothing in Christ, what you see and feel doesn’t determine who you are. The righteousness Christ has given you determines who you are.
When Christ died for mankind, He died for the whole world. His finished work is a state of grace that is true for eternity. We enter into that state of grace through faith when we receive Christ’s righteousness as the perfect payment for our sins. And we are sealed in that state of grace by the promise of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13).
The Holy Spirit reveals who you are in the Word. Renew your mind with God’s truth (Romans 12:2). Believe in the finished work of Jesus in your life! Know who you are in Christ. Faith will fuel you. Your mind will be flooded with the love of the Holy Spirit, and you will know that the love of God fully dwells in you.
“I have glorified You on the earth,” Jesus said to His Father. “I have finished the work which You have given Me to do (John 17:4, NKJV).
When you believe you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:21)—when you believe that the work of Jesus is finished (John 17:4), you stand strong in God’s power through each problem in life knowing He has already taken care of it. You see God’s finished outcome. And you walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).
We don’t receive from God through anything we do. We don’t perform to receive. We receive from God through faith in what Jesus has done. It is His work—not ours. Jesus has given us right standing with God. He has earned God’s holiness for us through His finished work. He has earned all of the blessings of God to supply our needs (Philippians 4:19).
When we exercise our faith to believe Him, God is pleased (Hebrews 11:6). And we experience His blessings according to what we believe (Mathew 9:29).
© 2023 Lynn Lacher
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