Much more then,
having now been justified
by His blood, we
shall be saved
from wrath through
Him. For if
when we were enemies
we were
reconciled to God
through the death
of His Son, much
more, having been
reconciled, we shall
be saved by His life.
Romans 5:9–10
Do you need
some good news today? Here it is! You are justified: not of yourselves, but by
the blood of Jesus. This justification removes from you His wrath. Do you need
more? Here it is! You were enemies of God, and if this is true then you only
deserved His wrath, death, and eternal death. This is most important: you were
reconciled to Him by His blood, the blood of Jesus Christ flowing from His
body, down the cross, onto the ground, dying a horrible, painful, death, just
so that you could be reconciled to God. By this death of Jesus Christ––you are
saved, and this not by what you do, rather by what He did. Who then are the
ones that by the death of Jesus are reconciled to God? Is it everyone, past,
present, and future? NO! God chose who saved before the foundation of the
world, and before the foundation of the world that He would save some by means
of the death of His Son Jesus Christ. Oh1 some cry out! This is horrible, some
saved, and some are not? Yes! After all, all have sinned and come short of the
Glory of God (Romans 3:23), therefore to be saved is not your choice, and it is
God’s. You can choose to live by the faith God has given to you, and by the
power of the Holy Spirit, or not: your choice. Salvation does not come through
any means that you do, it is God, all God, and this by God becoming incarnate
to die so that by His blood you are reconciled. So, then, why not lived as God
as determined you to be? Paul writes: “He who did not spare His own Son, but
delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all
things” (Romans 8:32). Who is the “all?” It is you brother and sister, for
it to Christians that Paul is writing and not to the world at large. God
delivered Jesus up to death to be your propitiation and by that propitiation,
you are justified, and by faith is your justification assured when you exercise
that faith. Not because you can earn justification or gain anything from God
that He has not already promised: He gives freely, that means ‘free” without
any other reason than the reason within Himself. God once again through the
inspiration to Paul explains why you need propitiation: “And not only that,
but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we now
have received the reconciliation. Therefore, just as through one man sin
entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men,
because all sinned” (Romans 5: 11–12). Join with Paul, rejoice, you are
justified! The why necessary for the death of Jesus, why God came, incarnate to
do what no other creature could do, or be allowed to not do because they
changed their minds, as with Lucifer, Satan. It was necessary for by Adam’s
sin, sin spread to all men, and death to all men, therefore this original sin
that separated men from God, or even desiring to know God needed to be
propitiated and this God did by His Son Jesus Christ. Paul then answered an
unasked question in regards to those people before the flood, for they did not
have the law and the law pointed to us sin: “(for until the law sin was in
the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. nevertheless death
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who sinned according to the
likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come” (Romans
5:13–14). Man cannot escape by saying that they are not under law, or
ignore the law of God. Man is guilty, sinful, and this sin is the same sin by
Adam: pride, forgetting who created them, and by ignoring the fact that God
does exist and has imparted to man, even before the law what man was to do in
regards to living according to His unwritten law. Man has within himself
morality, a moral compass, and this may or may not be morality that adjudicates
as it should, or make man to live according to the law of God, rather this
morality is known, exercised, and is something outside of self. Why be moral?
Well, for some it is simple so that there is order in society. Why? From where
did that moral idea come? While many men do not want God, or form a god to fit
their presupposition, or ideas, or morals, the attributes of moral living never
departed from man no matter how distorted their morality may be. You are
condemned by God who imparted to man attributes of morality and right living so
that man would live forever in peace, eternal. Yet, man by means of this
spreading sin caused by the first man Adam who had no unction outside of
himself to sin, sinned, and sinned not only against his progeny, but more so
sinned against God whom he knew and from where he had come. Only God could
reconcile man for it is this sin against Him that man could not resolve, not in
any sense of philanthropy, or some religious exercise, nothing could man do
outside of the one who was so offended by His creation. God had and has every
right over His creation, to allow life or death, and yet as we will soon find
out that God while has every right to destroy His creation has an attribute
that only He can give. The next blog will discuss that attribute. Until then,
live as God has elected you to be, an ambassador for Christ, redeemed,
reconciled by the blood of Jesus Christ, this do in all you do and say.
Sing to God, sing praises to His name;
Extol Him who
rides on the clouds,
By His name Yah, and rejoice before Him.
Psalm 68:4
God shall bless: fear Him
Richard L. Crumb
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