“I am delighted to find that sin stings you, and that you hate it. The more hatred of sin the better. A sin-hating soul is a God-loving soul. If sin never distresses you, then God has never favored you.” (Spurgeon)
The passage I read was Romans 5:1-5
You can find that passage here:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%205:1-5&version=NIV
The verse that most stood out to me:
3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;
As I reflect:
Verse 1 says that we have been justified through faith. Ephesians 2:8 says that we have been saved by grace through faith. The concept being discussed here is in fact the very foundation of our salvation and the dynamics that includes. For if you take away “faith”, all that is and is promised to be in the relationship you have with God, then changes. Romans 5:1-2 says we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ and we have access into His grace. But, without faith we would no longer have peace with God, but rather we would be in a failed relationship separated from our creator by our sin and our lack of faith in what redeeming work was done on the cross for us. Without faith, we would lose that access into His grace. We would lose all the promises and blessings freely offered to the children of God. And certainly above all else, we would lose our eternal life with Christ; our access to the throne room; our ticket to Heaven. We would be unsaved and headed down the road to our own eternal destruction is it were not for our faith in the redeeming work of Jesus. Martin Luther once said of this passage, “In the whole Bible there is hardly another chapter which can equal this triumphant text.” I agree. I think of the courtroom scenario where God is fixing to slam down the gavel and sentence us for the sins which we are guilty for. We cannot at that moment stand up and say that we are justified for our sins; our failures to abide by His law, because of our own merit. There is nothing that we could possibly do that would justify our disobedience before our Creator. But, when Jesus stands at our side and says that our punishment (death) for our sins was paid in full and we spent a life time believing and trusting in what He not only did on the cross, but in our lives, then we can say that we are justified by faith in Him who justified us by merit that we couldn’t earn. It’s only the first 2 verses of the passage and yet without it, our entire relationship and belief system would simply fall short.
The last 3 verses say that we not only boast in the hope of the glory of God in the obviously good or easy circumstances of life, but also in the more difficult or trying times. The ides is expressed in that our sufferings produces perseverance and perseverance produces character, and that character in turn produces hope that despite the circumstance, God will be present and glorified in you.
When some suffer, they chose to focus on despair and hopelessness and often find themselves at a bitter and hateful or sorrowful end. For the true follower of Christ, suffering instead causes us to focus all the more on Christ’s work in our lives and thus we are filled with hope as we learn perseverance. The situations can be very much the same, but the outcome as well as the attitude of the believer is largely different than that of the world. We having been justified through faith, can have hope in the glory of God regardless of our circumstances. In this way we are largely separated from the world and can be a witness in how God works in one’s heart/life.
My response to the Lord:
Lord, I am thankful. Simply thankful. Be glorified in every circumstance in my life.
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