Faith, Part 2

Quite a while has passed since the writing of my last post, and I finally have decided to write once more. In this post I will be exploring faith from the perspective of salvation.

    We are justified by our faith, and by our faith alone. (Rom. 5:1)  Such is the clear teaching of the new testament.   When we have faith in Jesus Christ, we do not regard him as a mere probability, but as the everlasting King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He becomes, to us, the supreme reality on which all other realities merely depend. He is the eternal Son of God, who became flesh and made atonement for mankind, shedding His blood, dying, and rising again.  He lives in the presence of the Father, making intercession for us. (Rom. 8:34)

     We are not saved by saying a 'sinner's prayer', making a 'decision for Christ', 'walking the aisle', or being raised in a Christian home. For none of these things in themselves entail faith, and no one becomes a Christian as a result of these things. It is the divine, God given faith which saves us.

    It is a mystery - how when the moment we truly believe, the Lord God justifies us, pronounces us not guilty, and makes us right before him.  But this is what he has promised to do, and God does not lie.  We can do all the works in the world to try to make ourselves right with God, but alas! it is to no avail.  Many have gone down the path of trying to do good works in the hope of meriting the favor of God, but it simply does not work.

  When we are saved, must we then try to repay Jesus for the cross? No! We are not perfected by the flesh, when we have begun by the spirit! (Gal. 3:3) We must live our Christian life in the same way in which we are saved, by faith, allowing God to work through us while we lean on him and trust him fully.

Thank you for reading these thoughts. I know that they were written in a rather abstract and haphazard way, but I hope you were blessed by them nevertheless.