“David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.’” — Romans 4:6-8
Grace is indeed a gift we could never earn. At the same time, our sin has given us an incredible debt before God. And no amount of good works could pay our debt. But the truth is that the Believer is given a credited righteousness straight from Jesus. The word “credited” (in the Bible) is a financial term for transferring a balance to our account — more specifically, a negative account.
For example, think of it like this. Imagine you opened your bank app and saw your whole life’s savings was negative 50 billion dollars. Given that information, how could you get out of that mess? You’d have nowhere to turn. Even if you had $76 of hard-earned money to put toward your debt, that would be just like a drop in the bucket.
That’s what our sin debt to God is like. In our pride, we think we can do enough good works to pay it off. But nothing will dig us out of that negative account. Simply put, we need a Savior to pay our debt and say, “I’ll take care of it.”
Made Righteous
In His grace, Jesus died to pay our sin debt. Titus 3:5 NLT says, “He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.”
But you know what, Christian? Jesus doesn’t just say, “I’ll pay for it and get you back to a zero balance.” Because of His great love, He says, “I will give you 50 billion dollars to get you out of debt, and THEN I will give you 50 billion more to get your balance up to my standard of righteousness.”
Christian, we are not just made sinless; we are also made righteous.
Jesus says, “I will pay the debt and link my account to yours. It will be as if you have all my life’s savings as your own. Along with that, I will give you my righteousness.”
Praising God for His righteousness credited to us,
Posted in A Word from the Pastor