You're saved the same way God's people always have been—but not the way most think.
Romans 4:1-8 (NIV)
CONTEXT: We're going to spend three days this week working through Romans 4, which will help us understand that salvation in Christ alone is not just for us as New Testament Christians, but also applied to God's chosen people who lived long before Christ.
4 What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? 2 If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. 3 What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
4 Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. 5 However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. 6 David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
7 “Blessed are those
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
8 Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”
Canons of Dordt
Point 1 - God's Unconditional Election
7 - Election
8 - A Single Decree of Election
This election is not of many kinds, but one and the same for all who were to be saved in the Old and the New Testament.
For Scripture declares that there is a single good pleasure, purpose, and plan of God’s will,
by which he chose us from eternity
both to grace and to glory,
both to salvation and to the way of salvation,
which God prepared in advance for us to walk in.
Summary
One of the biggest obstacles to the gospel people have faced through the centuries, and continue to face today, is the idea that salvation must be earned. The general consensus out there is that God looks at all of your words, thoughts, and deeds from your entire life and sets them out on divine scales - the good stuff on one side and the sinful stuff on the other. Whichever way the scales tip, then, determines your eternal destiny.
It was even easier for first century Jewish people to fall into this trap. Afterall, the Old Testament is chock full of rules and regulations designed to atone for every conceivable type of sin a person might commit. So it seems to make sense that if you just did the hard work of not infringing the commandments in the first place, and then were careful to follow the proper procedures if you did break the law, then your divine scales would certainly tip toward heaven.
Paul seeks to slay that misconception here in Romans 4. He writes that if Abraham, the archetypal Jew, were saved because of how his scale tipped (his works), then he'd certainly have something to boast about. But then Paul drops a theological bomb: Abraham wasn't saved by the things he did or didn't do - nobody ever has been!
As proof for his shocking claim, Paul cites what is arguably one of the most important verses of the Old Testament: Genesis 15:6 - Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.
What this means is that your instinct is right to understand God demands good works (righteousness) from you, but your instinct is wrong when it hopelessly tries to earn that righteousness. The one and only way to attain the perfect righteousness you need to have peace with God is by believing in Him; that is, when you put your faith in the God of our salvation, He credits you the perfect righteousness Christ earned as if it were your own.
Dig Deeper
This week we're coming to understand that even though God's people have been identified in different ways throughout history - first as the Hebrews / Jews, and later as members of the Christian Church - He has always had just one path to salvation. In other words, all of the rites and rituals performed in the Old Testament didn't actually save anyone. Those things, as Hebrews puts it, were only a shadow of the good things that were coming in Christ.
God's people in Israel were saved the exact same way you are: by faith. Paul writes, to the one who... trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. This means that even though many of these faithful Israelites lived centuries, or even millennia before Jesus, the perfect righteousness He would attain counted for them even before He fulfilled it in time.
Praise God today that you've been given the perfect righteousness you desperately need for eternal salvation in the same exact way all of God's elect all throughout history have: through belief and trust in the true and living God. As David writes in the psalm Paul quotes, Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the LORD does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, the God of Abraham and the God of the Church;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that you will do good works only out of gratitude for the grace you've been gifted, and not as the basis for your salvation;
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
Read the New Testament in a year! Today: Acts 18
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