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I grew up in a Lutheran church, and the words of the great reformer, Martin Luther, still resound in my heart and my mind with distinct, punctuating clarity and the utmost of conviction, "The just shall live by faith!" He defied the hierarchy and authority of the papacy, as he stood in subservient garments, and submitted his conscience to the Word of God, proclaiming, "I cannot, and I will not, recant." I am captured by Luther’s fervency and his willingness to risk, to challenge, and to base his faith solely on the words of Scripture.
The words that changed Luther’s mind and heart as he grasped an understanding of them are found in Romans 1:17, "For therein [in the gospel] is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith." Our ladies Sunday School class is studying the book of Romans, and having outlined the book as a whole, and being introduced to Paul and his readers, we came to this verse that is the key truth of the entire book. I wanted the clarity and passion of Luther, and I was frustrated that I fell so far short. Attempting to capture even the centrality of Luther’s understanding within the short space of this devotional seems even more futile. But I have been known to attempt the futile before, so let me attempt.
The just shall live by faith. Those are words that my entire belief structure rests on. And, prayerfully, yours as well. Faith – that intangible, life-giving gift from God that gives substance to every dynamic and implication of the gospel message – that faith, allows us to enter into the very righteousness of God. As Luther saw, we too must see, that works prescribed by a church, imposed by fellow believers, or insisted on by my own flawed beliefs, can do nothing to erase the hideous scars of sin in our lives and can do nothing to remove us from the condemnation of that sin. What we so often try to do, God has already done. Faith makes an intellectual choice by the grace of God, to personally appropriate the gospel message. I am a sinner. Out of God’s love and righteousness arose the sacrificial, cleansing death of His Son. That sacrifice wraps the very righteousness of God around the believing sinner. That’s it!! The just shall live by faith. It is faith, and faith alone, that imparts not only God’s righteousness, but also the eternality of a relationship with Him. And the just continue to live by faith.
And that’s where sometimes our faith begins to grow appendages. We believe by faith, we are wholly cleansed by faith, and we enter into a father-child relationship with the One who initiated it all by faith, and then we start "doing" again. "Doing" is okay, if we have it in its proper place. Most do-ers though, are attempting to keep God happy and accepting of them by fulfilling all the "oughts" of a Christian – I ought to be good, I ought to pray, I ought to give to others, I ought to be patient, I ought to fix all my problems so I look right to everybody else. Faith needs to be the foundational stabilizer in our Christian lives, its motivating and energizing force, its very reason for continuing existence. We need to live our Christian lives in total dependence on the Father who gave it to us – that’s faith. Our "doing" is simply an outgrowth of our faith, not a condition for the life-giving relationship with our Father that is birthed and nurtured solely by faith.
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