Justified…”just as if I’d”….

Day 150

Be encouraged friends…there is Grace in Jesus Christ.  If you will believe in Him, you will be JUSTIFIED.  What does that mean?

Noah Webster tells that “justify means – In theology, to pardon and clear form guilt; to absolve or acquit from guilt and merited punishment, and to accept as righteous on account of the merits of the Savior, or by the application of Christ’s atonement to the offender.”

Here is a really cool passage. This assures us that you will DIE if you sin…isn’t that great?  It assures you that there are consequences to your sin.  Why is that great?  Because it means that God’s Law is true.  And if you violate it…it is not good.  But wait Dan…I don’t want to die if I just break the law.  Can a guy catch a break?  Nope…you can’t.  UNLESS somebody else will pay your penalty for you sin…because this passage below says that you are going to PAY for your sin.

Ezekiel 18:20 – The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.

UNLESS…somebody will pay the debt for you.  AND that is ”part” of the good news of Jesus Christ.  If you will only believe in Him, and trust in Him, and turn your life over to Him….He will JUSTIFY you.  JUST AS IF I’D never sinned.  Wow…that is good news.  But Dan…you said that is part of the good news…what is the rest.

The REAL GOOD NEWS is that Jesus did not die to get men into heaven….HE DIED TO GET HEAVEN INTO MEN!!!  That means that we have the opportunity to be in heaven right now.  That happens through living the life the Christ wants you to live!

You see if you are dead…you only have two choices.  Stay dead or come to life!  Huh?  Read the passage below…

Romans 6:5-12 – 5For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin.

8Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

I know…that is blowing your mind.  Mine too!  BUT… it is TRUE!  So as my friends from the Shawshank Redemption say…..”you can get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Be encouraged…if you are “in” Christ…you have a clean slate…you are JUST AS IF I’d…never sinned.  Don’t think so?

 Hebrews 8:12 – “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Grace and Peace, Dan