INDEX
INDEX
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God cannot allow his grace to override his justice. |
God cannot allow his grace to override his justice. The rule of law must be upheld. God must have valid grounds to forgive sinners and to accept them as righteous. Those grounds are also completely outside of us: "being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24). Christ's living and dying are the sole grounds of God's being able to judge us and treat us as righteous. This is being "justified by Christ" (Galatians 2:1). The Gospel proclaims that sinners are saved by the objective, concrete acts of God in history. This is an action that is so far outside the sinner that it happened two thousand years ago. This is Christianity. It is the only truly historical religion. All other religions teach that salvation is found in some process within the worshiper, and consequently the worshiper's supreme preoccupation is with his internal experience. Christianity alone proclaims a salvation which is found in an event outside the believer. This truth, of course, is a great offense to human pride. Consider the children of Israel in the wilderness. Many were bitten by serpents and were facing certain death. Moses put a likeness of a deadly serpent on a pole and invited the dying to look and live. Whoever had heard of such a thing as this? The poison was inside, and how could something completely outside bring them any help? To us who are poisoned to death by that old serpent the devil, Jesus declares: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up" (John 3:14). The basis of salvation is not a subjective process. If the way of salvation were simply a matter of inviting Christ into the heart or being born again by the Spirit, then Christ need not have come here to suffer and die. But no amount of sanctification or inward holiness can bridge the gulf that sin has made and put us into right relationship with God. Fellowship with God cannot rest on an internal process of being made holy. Perfection is not something that God requires at the end of the process. He demands perfection and absolute holiness before any right relationship can begin and which is only found in his son, Jesus Christ. "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one the believeth" Romans 10:4 |