A faith that overcomes

Romans 1:16-17

Six words on paper, “The righteous shall live by faith” and maybe one like me needs to understand the meaning of the word righteous.  My computer dictionary has this quote: (of a person or conduct) morally right or justifiable, virtuous.  Next, I looked to a wise man name Blaise Pascal, “There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.”  It seems that Pascal is telling us something the dictionary did not and that is a righteous person does not see himself as righteous, but as a sinner.  Then we have Jesus Christ giving this insight about a righteous person; “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

When it comes to being a righteous and honest person one must do what I call the mirror check, yes, an assessment or examination of why God would allow you into His heaven.  A level is often needed, without one we believe something to be correct or straight when it is crooked, and my level is the Bible, God’s handbook on living life on planet earth.  When the apostle Paul addressed the issue of righteousness, he stated in Romans 3:10, “None is righteous, no not one” one must look at the audience that he was addressing.  It was people who wrongly believed they could, by keeping the ten commandments, be righteous in God’s sight and yet the Scriptures are clear that if one breaks just one, they are guilty of all.  The commandments are a mirror to show us the impossibility of meeting God’s standards and the need of finding a solution to that dilemma and Jesus, the cross, and His resurrection is God’s plan for redeeming all of mankind.

Romans 3:20, is the level a warped world needs, it makes clear that ones actions will not make straight what is crooked in the soul of mankind.  “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” 

God the Father is righteous (just); Jesus Christ his Son is the Righteous (Just) One; the Father through the Son and in the Spirit gives the gift of righteousness (justice) to repentant sinners for salvation; such believing sinners are declared righteous (just) by the Father through the Son, are made righteous (just) by the Holy Spirit working in them, and will be wholly righteous (just) in the age to come. They are and will be righteous because they are in a covenant relation with the living God, who is the God of all grace and mercy and who will bring to completion what he has begun in them by declaring them righteous for Christ's sake.  (Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology)

Now let us address verse 16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”  And how should the righteous live?  By faith, and we are instructed in Scripture not to look to self but to the Father, Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”  Even faith is a gift from God and something we should always be asking the Father for is more faith.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice