Thursday, October 18, 2012

Thursday, October 18 ~ Miriam

Today's passage from the Chronological Bible In a Year Reading Plan is John 6.
Today's scripture focus is  Romans 4:4-8.


Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are those
    whose transgressions are forgiven,
    whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the one
    whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”[a]

So, basically what Paul is saying here is that when we work, our wages are owed to us.  If we believe that we could earn our way into heaven based on how we act or what we do, we're essentially saying God would OWE us righteousness, or entry into heaven's glory.  God doesn't owe us anything!  We, on the other hand, owe HIM EVERYTHING!  He is the one who justifies us through faith in Jesus Christ.  He is the one who makes us righteous and holy when we accept our own wretchedness and confess that on our own we are vile sinners, no matter how hard we may try to be good.  He is the one that provided us grace and redemption because HE gave us Someone to take our place, to assume our filthy rags, to bear the punishment for our sins.  It's all from Him, so all we do must be for HIM, not for ourselves.  Oh, how easy it is to lose sight of that.  MacArthur says the following:


The word in verse 4 is interesting, katergazomai, the word that talks about working there. It means "to do that which brings results." If we received righteousness because of some work of our own doing, then there would be no grace involved, it would just be meritio ... it would just be like going to work, putting in your eight hours, collecting your check at the end of the week. You don't go to your boss and say, "Hey, I've given a full week, please be gracious and pay me." You don't want grace, you want pay for your works, he's in debt to you. And God is not. God is not. God is in the debt of no man, you can earn no saving wages, God owes you absolutely nothing and that is abundantly clear in the Scripture. Because the intended purpose, you see, of all men and all creation and everything that is, the intended purpose of all of this is to give God what? Glory and if men were redeemed by works, it would violate the intended purpose of the universe. All things are by Him and for Him.
Later on in Romans, I think Paul makes an excellent affirmation of this great truth as he comes to the great benediction at the end of chapter 11 and says: "For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things to whom be glory forever, amen." And as you read the great paean of praise that is the first chapter of Ephesians, you see that everything He does in redemption He does to the praise of His glory, to the praise of His glory, to the praise of His glory. You see in chapter 3 of Ephesians that everything He does through the Holy Spirit's power in the church is that He might be glorified in the church, that everything that is is that God may be glorified. And so, there is no wage paid to man else he steal the glory of God.


And then we have David saying in verses 7-8, "blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered... whose sin the Lord will never count..."  That's not because of us.  Basically, he's saying we all have transgressions and the only people who are blessed are those whose sins Jesus' blood has covered and therefore their sins will not be counted against them.  That can only happen through God's grace and forgiveness, and only through our belief that our sin cannot be removed from us unless we accept the gift of Jesus having taken our just punishment upon himself.  There is no great scale of justice, no weighing of good vs. bad that we've done in our lifetime, nothing we can do that is good enough to cover up or prevent God's noticing the bad.  Only by grace through faith.  Only by grace through faith.  What an amazingly gracious, generous, loving and forgiving God we serve.

Tomorrow's scripture focus:  Romans 4:9-12.
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage:  Matthew 15; Mark 7.

1 comment:

Tammy said...

Amen! It's always ever all about Him.