Meditation on the Text of the Week

The Gospel in a Nutshell

We believe in the God Who justifies the ungodly. This lies at the heart of the Christian faith, as revealed in God's Word. In Romans 4:5 we read, "But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness."

God justifies the ungodly--that is, us--not by ignoring our sin, and acting as if it did not exist. We ourselves do this sort of thing. When we say, "I am going to act as if this never happened" we are overlooking something and pretending that it never occurred. When God justifies the ungodly, however, He does not do so by means of lying or dissembling. He openly and candidly tells us that we are ungodly. In the first three chapters of Romans the Spirit inspires Paul to accuse and convict the entire human race, descended from Adam, of sin. There are no exceptions. None.

God justifies us by binding us to a Representative, the Man Christ Jesus. Christ represents us in living out an entirely and completely holy life--faithfully keeping all the commandments of God in thought, word and deed all the days of His life. His righteousness is credited to us, because He is our God-designated representative. But He also represents us by personally assuming all the guilt of our sin and standing in our place for its punishment. Christ binds His righteousness to us; He also binds our sin to Himself.

By this means, God justifies the ungodly. It is in Christ and being bound to Him that all our blessings originate; it is from Christ that all blessings flow. Our faith is nothing more or less than our entrusting ourselves to God and His Christ, to do what we could not do--remove our sin and bring us into God's presence holy and cleansed. That is why Paul declares that "faith is reckoned as righteousness."

Thanks be to God for His Messiah. And thanks be to Messiah for His faithfulness to His heavenly Father and to us.