Ordinary people like you and me get stumped by big biblical words like "justification by faith." "Can't you make it simple?" someone asks. Well, it's in the Bible, and therefore God must want us to understand. Don't throw up your hands in despair, "It's beyond me! Might as well flip on the TV, that's easier than trying to study." But in fact, it's all as simple as 2 + 2 = 4 if you want to understand what God is saying, enough to ask Him in sincerity to teach you. He welcomes pray-ers (people who ask Him!) who don't have doctoral degrees! And there's good reason to want to understand because the final test of the mark of the beast versus the seal of God may well center in some issue like this.
(1) This has to do with the simple understandings of the heart, not intricate head-knowledge: "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness" (Rom. 10:10).
(2) It is healing the heart-alienation from God that is natural to all of us ("the carnal mind is enmity against God," Rom. 8:7). Healing that human enmity is the greatest problem God has ever faced. He can create worlds and fling Milky Ways into space easier than changing cold, worldly, self-loving human hearts to be at-one-with Him.
(3) What the Bible is saying is that nothing but the sight of blood can melt that icy hardness of the human heart: "We were reconciled to God by the death of His Son" (Rom. 5:10).
(4) That means simply "justification by faith": "much more then, being now justified by his blood, ..." (vs. 9).
(5) We alienated humans must see Somebody's blood flowing and realize that it was we who shed it. Whose blood? Of the Son of God!
(6) If there's an ounce of honesty in our souls, the result is in verse 11: "We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the at-one-ment."
(7) We "survey the wondrous cross /On which the Prince of glory died, / [and] My richest gain I count but loss / And pour contempt on all my pride." That's justification by faith. Simple.
Copyright © 2009 by Robert J. Wieland.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Daily Bread - Readings about life and the Word of God.
