An Important Truth

Guys — make sure you understand and are able to pass on this important truth from God’s Word. I came upon this passage as I was reading this morning: Genesis 15:5–6 (ESV) 5 And [God] brought [Abram] outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

This verse is an important key to understanding the gospel. God gave Abram a promise and Abram simply believed God. God counted his believing as righteousness. The law had not yet come, but we know that Abram, like all of us, was a sinner. And yet, because he believed God, God credited him with righteousness.

In Genesis 12, God had promised to bless Abram and his seed. This promise was unconditional and had nothing to do with obedience. It had to do with believing the promise which God had made.

Another key passage that the New Testament picks up is Habakkuk 2:4, which says that the just shall live by faith. Faith doesn’t mean just believing that things will turn out all right. Faith means believing what God has said. A just person, a justified person, is one who believes God.

Now you will have to dig out the rest of this for yourselves, but the gist is that God unconditionally promised to bless Abram and his seed. (Unconditionally means Abram had no laws to obey to earn the promise.) The New Testament teaches that the seed is Jesus Christ and all of those who are in Christ because of their faith in Him. Jesus says that He will eternally save those who believe Him. Those who trust Christ in this way are forgiven all of their sins and justified from everything from which you cannot be justified by keeping the law (Acts 13:39).

The promise is to Abram and his seed, and if you believe what God has said, you are Abram’s seed and heirs of the unconditional promises of God (Galatians 3:29). Don’t try to earn it by keeping the law. The standards are so high you can’t keep it no matter how hard you try. But God, in His grace and kindness, has provided eternal life to all those who believe His promise of forgiveness in Christ. (Dig deeper into Romans 4-6 and Galatians 3-4)

How Can a Man be Righteous Before God?

“How can a man be righteous before God?” (Job 9:2). In my opinion, this is one of the most important questions that needs to be answered. When you stand before God, and if He were to ask you, “Why should I receive you into my heaven?”, what would you say?  In our heart of hearts, we know that a god of some kind exists. All around us we see the evidence of an intelligent being who is the architect of all we see. Instinctively, we also know that this being is much more powerful than we are. The Bible tells us that it is appointed for us to die once and then face judgment. The fear of death and what comes next is universal. We also know that whatever this god’s standards are, we don’t measure up. What will happen to us when we face the judge of the universe? All of this is why Job asked, “How can a man be righteous before God?” The Bible actually gives us the answer to this question.

The Bible describes God as being perfectly good, righteous, and just. That has implications we are not comfortable with. I think most of us really hope that God is like a grandpa. Grandpas won’t let kids get away with terribly naughty behavior but will, if necessary, apply some moderate sanctions to keep their grandchildren from getting hurt or damaging the furniture. But, for most things, they will overlook behavior that is wrong but basically normal childhood character showing itself. We want a god like that – a god that will punish people like Hitler or Stalin but let us off the hook when it comes to the everyday sins normal good people commit. The problem is that that god doesn’t exist.

The real God loves us more than grandpa does, but He is also a perfectly just judge who must make judgments from the bench that are perfectly consistent with His character and laws. We are not used to that. There is leniency in almost every area of life where rulings are made. As students we often receive opportunities to retake a test or have a tardy ignored. Police sometimes just give us a warning instead of a ticket. Even though I’m not a sports enthusiast, I’ve noticed that rulings on the court or field are generally pretty strict and the rules held to fairly consistently. But in many areas of life there is leniency. Yet even in this kind of culture, what would our reaction be if a judge releases a serial killer or even a serial thief saying something like, “I really care about this guy’s needs, and he seems remorseful, so even though he has committed this crime 20 times, I’m going to let him off this time too”? There would certainly be outrage. We expect our judges to be just and not ignore crime. Yet, at the same time, we expect God to give us a pass and ignore our countless infractions of His law.

God is just. That is what is so scary about facing Him at the judgment. The Bible says, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). It is this knowledge that caused Job to ask the question, “How can a man be righteous before God?” Trying to keep the law won’t work because we are unable to keep it. God says that if a person keeps the whole law and yet breaks it in one point, he is guilty of all of it (James 2:10).  With that kind of standard, who is going to be able to stand? In fact, the writer of Psalm 130 asks this very question, “If you Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3).

God has designed an amazing answer to this question and solution to His “dilemma.” (God doesn’t really have a dilemma, but in our minds his dilemma appears to be how to forgive people he loves while at the same time maintaining justice and His own righteous character.)

What He has done is to come here to earth Himself in the second person of the trinity. He took on actual human flesh and lived here among us as the God-man, Jesus (John 1). Having lived a life without sin, perfectly keeping the law and loving God and neighbor as the law commanded, He was mocked, tortured, and killed. God has said that the punishment for sin is death – physical death and separation from God. Jesus endured those consequences of sin, even though He had never committed a single sin in His life.

God has promised to count Jesus’ death as the death penalty that we deserved. The Bible says in Ezekiel 18:20 that the soul that sins must die. But God is willing to count Jesus’ death as my death and as your death. He is willing to say that when Jesus died, you died. The death penalty has been carried out. Because of the curse on our physical bodies, we will still die physically. It’s spiritual death we’re focusing on here. Spiritual death involves being separated from God and sent to Hell to be punished forever. It is, indeed, a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. God is promising to count Jesus’ death on the cross as the eternal spiritual death that you and I deserve. Even more amazingly, God declares that He will credit you and me with Jesus’ perfect record. In other words, when God would look at our record, He would find that we had obeyed every law and every standard perfectly. Those with a perfect record are welcomed into heaven.

The Bible says, “He made Him (Jesus) to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

“Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness – by whose stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).

But who is this for? Who gets credited with Jesus’ perfect obedience, and for whose sins did Jesus get blamed and executed? The answer is simple: For those who believe. We’re not talking about believing in God. We’re talking about believing the facts He has given us and believing and accepting that the offer He is making is true.

God has given us this promise in what is called the Gospel, the Good News. He is making this offer of complete forgiveness of all sins, past, present, and future. With that comes the offer to credit us with Jesus’ righteousness. It is a gift. You can’t work for or earn a gift. If you work for it, it is no longer a gift. Paul says it this way, “And if by grace (a free unearned gift), then it is no longer of works; otherwise, grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise, work is no longer work” (Romans 11:6).   

Believing is the key, It’s not saying that we believe, but actual believing. “But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness” (Romans 4:5).

“If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).

“He who believes in the Son (Jesus) has (present tense) everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:31).

Jesus, Himself, said, “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). To repent means to change your mind about who Jesus is and about what it takes to be accepted by Him. You realize that all of the good deeds in the world, all of the church-going, all of the money-giving, none of that is going to earn you a place with God. You can’t do any of it with pure motives or to the level that would be needed to earn your way in.

It’s believing. It’s not having faith in faith or a generic I-believe-in-God faith. But it is believing the testimony that God has given concerning His son (1 John 5:10). If you repent, and accept Jesus’ testimony that He is the son of God, and you believe that His death satisfied God’s death requirement for you a sinner, then God promises that all of your sins have been removed and paid for by Jesus, and you are declared righteous and will go to heaven when you die. The judgment for you has already been administered against Jesus on the cross.

That is the answer to Job’s question as to how a man can be righteous before God. He can be righteous by repenting of his former rebellious life and accepting God’s free gift by faith.

“But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed…, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a [substitute sacrifice] by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate … at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:21-26).

There you have it. God can be just and still declare us righteous because of what Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross.

Ephesians 5:3

But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.

In the previous chapter Paul taught us the principle of putting off and putting on. Here in chapter 5, we are learning that we should be imitators of God. Here again we are given instruction as to what should be part of our Christian life and what should be avoided.

In verse 3 we are given some additional things that should not be part of our Christian life. The first is sexual immorality. The Greek word here is porneia. We can immediately see that we get our word pornography from this Greek root word. Pornography is basically sexual immorality displayed in word or picture form.

God tells us here that sexual immorality should not even be named among us. Two other things will be included in this list. But think of it! Immorality should not be even named among us. However, in our day, because of our ability to see virtually any immoral behavior portrayed on our computers or phones, porneia is not only named among us, but indulged in enthusiastically. This should not be!

The second thing he says shouldn’t even be named among us is impurity, uncleanness. This fits in with the idea of sexual immorality because we all, especially as young people, knew the difference between a “clean” or a “dirty” joke. We know the kinds of things that pollute our minds and hearts. None of this uncleanness should be representative of our character.

The last thing he mentions in this short list is covetousness. In Colossians 3:5, Paul calls covetousness idolatry. When we covet something, we are revealing the existence of an idol in our lives. Idolatry is not part of the character of a Christian.

These three things, sexual immorality, uncleanness, and covetousness should be put off so that the true character of the new man can be put on.


Exported from Logos Bible Software, 9:16 AM April 14, 2021.

Ephesians 3:11

This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,

This eternal plan which we discussed in the last post was according to the eternal purpose of God. I can’t stress this enough. God’s decrees and plans are eternal. His plans and purposes are not dependent on what people do. This eternal plan was realized in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So, let’s summarize the last couple of verses. God has had an eternal purpose, realized and revealed through Jesus Christ coming into the world as a man. This mystery has been hidden for all generations until revealed to the apostles and prophets of the first century.

Paul’s preaching as well as our own is to bring this mystery to light. And what is the goal? That the multifaceted wisdom of God might be made down to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.

A key part of this is to understand that making known the wisdom of God to the principalities and powers occurs through the church. The church is the body of Christ. The church is the people whom God has saved, filled with His Spirit and commissioned to worship together and proclaim the gospel. So, living as a Christian as part of the church involves more than just being a good testimony to those who are around us. It involves demonstrating to these powers, even those we wrestle against, demonstrating what God is like. How merciful and gracious He is in having taken enemies and turned them into friends, joint-heirs with Christ to rule and reign with Him.


Exported from Logos Bible Software, 1:16 PM December 3, 2020.

Ephesians 3:7

Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power.

In verse 6, Paul had said that Gentiles are fellow heirs and members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus. How is that possible? Through the gospel.

Now in verse 7, Paul says that he was made a minister of that gospel. That means he is a steward or caretaker of it. His life is involved with serving the cause of the gospel.

How did he come to this position? He tells us that it came as a result of the gift of God’s grace. In other words, he was given this service through no merit if his own, but only because God decided to give it to him.

But, this isn’t an easy thing to be taken for granted. It was given by the working (energizing) of God’s power.

So let’s make sure we have the picture. Paul was a Jewish leader, stridently against the teachings of Christians. God met him on the road to Damascus and turned his life around. Then out of sheer grace and with the almighty power of the spirit of God, God handed him this work of service of the gospel. This message essentially told Gentiles they were in. Believe the gospel and you’re in.


Exported from Logos Bible Software, 9:40 AM November 24, 2020.

Ephesians 3:6

This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

So what is the mystery we have been talking about? Paul explains it in verse 6. The mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

In the Old Testament, God had made unconditional promises to Abraham and his seed. And, as we learn in other places in Paul’s writings, Christ is that seed, and those who trust Christ are heirs together of the promise. (Romans 4:16; Galatians 3:7-9; Galatians 3:29) That is what Paul is alluding to here in verse 6.


Exported from Logos Bible Software, 9:27 AM November 24, 2020.

Ephesians 3:4-5

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

Paul has been writing about the mystery that was given to him by revelation. In verse 4 he tells his readers that they will understand the insight he has into this mystery as they read his letter to them.

This mystery had not been revealed to any of the previous generations of people, but God had chosen to reveal it to the generation during and shortly after the life of Christ.

The revelation of the mystery was given specifically to the apostles and prophets. These are men who were specifically selected by God to be the recipients of this mystery. The revelation came through the work of the Holy Spirit.

It’s important to note that Paul had formerly opposed any teaching related to the gospel of Christ. He had tortured, imprisoned, and killed many of Jesus’ followers. And yet, here he is, sticking his neck out, so to speak, in order to claim that he was one of those who was the recipient of this message. That is an amazing conversion!


Exported from Logos Bible Software, 9:21 AM November 24, 2020.

Ephesians 2:20-22

built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

In verse 20, Paul continues from verse 19 where he had said Gentiles are now fellow citizens and members of the household of God.

This household, of which we are a part, has been built on a foundation. What is that foundation? The apostles and prophets. They came before us and laid the foundation for us. And more than that, the cornerstone, or capstone, is none other than Jesus Christ.

With Christ the center-supporting piece of the foundation, the whole superstructure is built up in Him.

And has the structure is built piece by piece, member by member, it is joined together. (Colossians 2:19 speaks of it being knit together.) The whole body of Christ is knit, joined, united together and what? It grows. God is building His church. It is growing as new people believe and are joined to the body.

And what is it becoming? It is becoming a holy temple in the Lord. What is a temple. It is the place where God Himself lives and is worshipped.

Verse 22 continues the thought. This is not just theoretical about hypothetical people being joined to the body. Verse 22 says, “In him you also….”

You. Yes, you! If you are a believer, you have been knit into the body that is a dwelling place for God by the Spirit! Think about that. A dwelling place of God.


Exported from Logos Bible Software, 9:44 AM November 17, 2020.

Ephesians 2:19

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God

As a result of all that has been said, we Gentiles are no longer strangers and aliens.

I think part of what keeps us from grasping the immensity of this is the fact that we don’t understand how great was our distance from God. We were outside the promises. We had no hope and were without God. I’m not just speaking of the time in our life before we came to Christ. I mean in the whole history of the world prior to the coming of Christ, Gentiles were outside. There was no access to God for them. The covenants of promise said nothing to them until Christ came and the mystery of the Gospel was revealed.

So, we are no longer strangers and aliens, but 1) fellow citizens with the saints, and 2) members of the household of God. When we trust Christ by faith, we are in — we are citizens, not aliens. We are in the family!


Exported from Logos Bible Software, 9:38 AM November 17, 2020.

Ephesians 2:10

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Verse 10 begins with another “for.” He has just told us that our salvation is not of works, otherwise we would boast. Why is it not of works, Paul? Because we are His workmanship. The emphasis, I think, is on the word “His.” God is the master craftsman and we are His workmanship.

What is the goal of His creative working? We were created in Christ Jesus for good works. Salvation comes ahead of the works. God prepared these good works ahead of time for us to walk in them. When we walk in faithful obedience to God, we know that any good works we do, He prepared before hand for us. He has gifted each believer to fit into the body where He wants us to function. He prepares the works that we should do in that part of the body. There is no need to be looking around at what other people do and what gifts they have. God has prepared our works for us personally that we would walk in them. And, by walking in them, or, in other words, living them out, we are helping to build up the body of Christ.


Exported from Logos Bible Software, 8:48 PM November 4, 2020.