Greetings again my friends! I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family and friends. Now that the food has had a chance to settle, I’m eager to share with you something we should ALL be thankful for!
As you’ll recall, we discussed how the law shows us how guilty we are of sin, and that we can’t be made right with God by keeping the law (because, at some point, we will break it).
But now God has shown us a way to be made right with Him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets in the Old Testament. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ (Gal. 2:16). And this isn’t just true for Christians, it is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are (Col. 3:11).
For you see, everyone has sinned; in other words we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with kindness we don’t deserve, declares that we are blameless. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty for our sins (Heb. 9:12). God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood (I Pet. 1:19). This sacrifice shows that God was being fair (I John 4:10) when He held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, because He was looking ahead and including them in what He would do in the future. God did this to demonstrate His goodness, because He is fair and just, and He declares sinners to be right in His sight when they believe in Jesus.
Can we brag, then, that we have done anything at all to be accepted by God? No! (I Cor. 1:29-31) Our acquittal is not based on how well we obeyed the law. It is based on faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law (Acts 13:39).
After all, is God the God of Adventists only? Isn’t He also the God of the Jews, the Catholics, the Moslems? Of course He is! There is only ONE God, and He makes people right with Himself only by faith, whether they are Adventists, Christians, or anyone. Well then, if we emphasize faith, does this mean that we can forget about the law, throw out the Old Testament? Of course not! (Matt. 5:17) In fact, only when we have faith do we truly fulfill the law!
I’ll leave you for now to ponder that, but I look forward to continuing this discussion on faith with you!
Your friend in Christ,
Paul
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