THE GIFT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS #6

The Bible tells us that the gift of righteousness, which is 'apart from law' and which is 'from God' 'comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe'.

What is this 'faith in Jesus Christ' through which this gift of righteousness is given? The testimony of the Scripture is that it is genuine Biblical faith in Jesus Christ ' a faith that believes that Jesus is who he claimed to be, a faith that includes recognition of and submission to his authority as Lord and God: that not only knows that he is God, that not only says that he is God, but also acknowledges him as God in whole orientation of one's life of thought, attitude, word and action.

This faith in Jesus Christ, which is enabled only by the sovereign hand of God the Father, is the reversal of the Genesis 3 rejection of God. In believing in Christ, in receiving him as our Lord and God, we are repenting of that sin of rejecting God which is the foundation of all sins. In acknowledging Christ we are acknowledging God. In receiving Christ we are receiving God. In submitting to Christ we are submitting to God.

It is this returning to God by turning to Christ that is the 'faith' through which Gospel 'righteousness' is given to us. This 'faith' is not a righteous act on our part; rather, it also is the gift of God to us. He reveals the truth about Jesus to us, he liberates our spirit to believe, he takes away the dark blindness of our minds and enables us to see and to believe the truth.

We in our time-bound lives and thinking, like to place all these aspects of salvation in a time-sequenced 'process'. We want to say this happens first, then this, then this. But God is not so bound and limited. While the various components of salvation have a theological order of necessity, with one component necessary for the implementation of another, in God's eternal perspective, they occur simultaneously.

Just as the Bible speaks of instantaneous creation rather than evolution, so it speaks of instantaneous salvation, not an extended process.

In one gracious, eternal, instantaneous act he saves us ' in one gracious action he effects in us and applies to us all of the necessary components of our salvation.

'Faith' ('believing') is one of those gracious God-given components.

Scriptures: Romans 3:21-22; John 1;12; 5:24; 8:31; 20:31; Romans 10:9; James 2:14-26;1 John 5:1,10-12; Matthew 11:27; 16:17; John 6:44; 2 Corinthians 4:6; John 12:44-46; 14:6-9; Ephesians 2:8.