“…yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.” Galatians 2:16

“But when things began to fall apart for me and I went back into the heart of those messages I’d picked up over the years, I started to see what else was lurking in there. It was like this message had gotten imprinted on my cells: Whatever you do keep going, because if you slow down and actually feel it all, who knows where that might lead? Through the help of a number of guides over a number of years, I begin to see a new way to be, one rooted in the enduring truth: There’s nothing to prove.” (Bell, Rob. Everything is Spiritual . St. Martin’s Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

Somewhere along the way a lot of Christians have been taught that there is something to prove to G-d if we are to end up in the right place after we die. This makes sense to our human brain. If I want to earn a first place in a race, I must train and train and train. If I want to get a better position at work, I need to work harder and harder. It is innate to believe that anything worth getting or achieving requires hard work.

And then along comes Paul who says something so shocking to our human brains we cannot seem to comprehend it: we are not justified by works, but through faith in Jesus. Here it is stated in the Solid Declaration from the Formula of Concord under part III: the Righteousness of Faith:

“…we believe, teach, and confess unanimously, in accordance with the comprehensive summary of our faith and confession presented above, that poor sinful man is justified before God, that is, absolved and declared free and exempt from all his sins, and from the sentence of well-deserved condemnation, and adopted into sonship and heirship of eternal life, without any merit or worth of our own, also without any preceding, present, or any subsequent works, out of pure grace, because of the sole merit, complete obedience, bitter suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord Christ alone, whose obedience is reckoned to us for righteousness.

These treasures are offered us by the Holy Ghost in the promise of the holy Gospel; and faith alone is the only means by which we lay hold upon, accept, and apply, and appropriate them to ourselves. This faith is a gift of God, by which we truly learn to know Christ, our Redeemer, in the Word of the Gospel, and trust in Him, that for the sake of His obedience alone we have the forgiveness of sins by grace, are regarded as godly and righteous by God the father, and are eternally saved.”

And all G-d’s people said: Amen!

Pastor Dave