DAY 214

THREE KINDS OF PEOPLE

Psalm 57, 58 & 59 and Romans 4

I was very much aware of the length of my post yesterday, sorry it was so long, but I felt it necessary to pull together the first three chapters. Today is shorter. In chapter four Paul demonstrates through both Abraham and David that God throughout the ages has counted people “righteous” because of their faith and not their works. Let me try and drive that point home. I recently read there are three kinds of people:

1.      Those who do not believe in God and you may or may not find them in church.

2.      Those who are in Church and believe they have a right relationship with Him because they have faith in Him through His Son Jesus Christ.

3.      Those who are in Church and believe they have a right relationship with God because they are doing pretty well, they haven’t murdered anyone, they are coming to Church, and they are trying hard…in all they are pretty good people.

The point of chapters one through three is that it is God’s grace and favor towards us…and furthermore we “are not good enough.” Paul’s point today is simply that this is not something new from God…He has been behaving this way through the ages. And if you look at the language you will note that our faith actually has a double effect: there is the negative canceling or covering of the sin…and the positive crediting of righteousness. Not only are we forgiven…we are not left in some neutral position…we are put in a positive one.

There are two bits that I want to unpack, the first is verse 15…”the law brings wrath…” How does that happen? Quite simply the law makes demands, we cannot keep them and so we transgress, and the transgression incurs wrath. This compares to God’s grace which makes promises that when we believe we are blessed with being right with God (verses 16).

The second bit has to do with what Abraham did when the promise was not immediately fulfilled: He hoped against hope. In other words, he did not give up on God. We should not give up either. Abraham waited 25 years before Isaac was born.

To close today’s blog we see that the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David is the God who raised Jesus from the dead, I pray you will hang in there, even in those tough times like Abraham did…That is why his faith was "counted to him as righteousness." But the words "it was counted to him" were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. I pray you will, of the three kinds of people, the one who has faith in Jesus.