Six months ago I wrote that anything that is earned is not a gift and because we cannot earn our salvation, because we will always fall short of the glory of God, there is nothing for us to cling to except the hope that our belief in God rescuing us through the blood of Jesus Christ will save us from our sins. Today, I want to look at how belief in the hope that God will save is actually the righteousness needed to fall before the glory of God and be accepted into His awesome grace and power. To do this, we need to look at Romans 4:3. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. (Romans 4:3) Here’s how I read this: if we can find ourselves to believe then that’s all we need for God’s grace and mercy to rule in our lives. But I want to caveat that word “belief” because we often lose sight of the meaning of the word. If “belief” is the acceptance that something is true, then in accepting that truth requires you to act in accordance of that acceptance. What I mean is, “believing” is not just a mental exercise to wrap your head around an idea. Rather, “believing” in its truest sense is wrapping your actions around what you confess as being true and living into it. Therefore, when the Apostle Paul says that Abraham believed God, it is implied that Abraham, in believing God, threw himself wholeheartedly at the work of God in his life and followed God into the unknown. That following God in his belief was what was counted as righteousness. There is a difference between earning righteousness which doesn’t act on hope but on entitlement; whereas, I’m articulating a hope, a belief, that leads Abraham to act– that should lead us to act. The motivations are different and the results are different. So let’s turn this around to us. Are we just the type of people who say they believe and don’t follow up? You know, the people who say they believe in the good causes as long as it’s not interfering with your own plans and motivations. Or are we the type of people that say they believe and follow that up with actions of belief? The type of people who put their money, their bodies and their heart and soul into the things they believe. Is your belief going to be counted to you as righteousness or will it just be a fleeting story of how you should’ve and could’ve? You choose.
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