ROMANS 5:1 – Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

THEME OF THE DAY. THEOLOGY THAT THRILLS. This is a significant year in church history. It is the 500th year anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. That monumental event God brought about through a German Monk named Martin Luther restored the Bible to the church and God’s people as the sole source of spiritual authority and church practice. Today, we are products of the Reformation, not that we exalt the event itself, for in its simplest definition it was a recovery of Biblical Christianity laid down by the Apostles. And what has been heralded as the chief battle cry of the Reformation was the doctrine of justification by faith or “Sola Fide.” Martin Luther stated this is “the article of faith that decides whether the church is standing or falling.” I would add “it is the key point of Biblical theology that determines if a Christian walks consistently in the joy of the Lord or is tossed to and fro on the rough seas of doubt and unbelief.”

The definition of justification or of being justified is “The gracious act of God in declaring righteous the sinner who believes in Jesus Christ.” We may expound that to “declare that a person on trial is not liable to any penalty but is entitled to all the privileges due to those who have kept the law.” Another way of defining justification or of being justified is “the act of a judge pronouncing the opposite sentence to condemnation – that of acquittal and legal immunity.” To bring this home to practical Christian living, it is God – the ultimate Judge – declaring us who have broken His law and stand guilty before Him set free from the broken law’s penalty due to the substitutionary life and death of the Lord Jesus. All of us may now stand up, raise our hands and heart to heaven and cry, “Hallelujah, what a God and what a Savior.” This is theology that thrills the soul and empowers one to live a life of joy and purpose in the Lord. But it must be theology understood and relied upon.

Many Christians experience a roller coaster ride of spiritual highs and lows as they live out their Christian lives. They hear a great sermon, enjoy a wonderful concert, attend a moving conference, go on an exhilarating retreat, or read an impactful book and they are living the “high” life of spirituality. They are rejoicing, testifying far and wide of God’s goodness and love to them. But soon . . . the “fizzle” or “tingle” wears off. The challenges of everyday life gets in the way bringing us down from the Mount of Transfiguration. Parenting gets hard. Marriages grow stale. The job is an anchor dragging us to the depths of the sea of discouragement. Church isn’t exciting. And to top off all these incidents of life under the sun, we sin in all these areas. We daily fail to obey. We are saints who still sin and the devil comes in with accusation after accusation after accusation and we get spiritually beaten down. Soon, if we don’t understand justification by faith, we will be so discouraged over our sin and life, we have no joy and no impact for Jesus.

The only way to avoid the spiritual roller coaster is to know, preach to ourselves, and cling to the theology of justification by faith. We must become “preachers” to our own souls and constantly remind ourselves what God says about us, not what the devil, ourselves, even other people say about us. To be justified by God means He never sees us as guilty, unpardoned, and outside of His Son. No matter what sin we commit, no matter how many times we fail, we are still declared right before God. Our performance as a Christian doesn’t increase our justification or remove our justification. Now how we respond to my last statement tells us if we really understand justification by faith and are indeed justified by faith in Christ. If we can say, “Praise the Lord. My sins are gone. I am justified” and don’t see this as a call to pursue holiness, to daily fight against sin, and be relentlessly resolved to die to ourselves, we don’t get it. Justification never leads to loose and lazy Christian living. But if we see it right, the theology of justification by faith will fuel our desire for holiness and energize us to live the Christian life with joy for the glory of Him who justifies sinners.

PRAYER: “Father, thank You so much for opening my eyes to truth and particularly the truth of justification by faith.”

QUOTE: “Justification is a declaration, not an experience, of God saying, ‘Right before me because of My Son’s merits.’”