Good morning, Zane…and those following.
Hope all is well with you, your flagging job, vehicle solutions, and with your development as a young man who wants to be a follower of Christ in the context of a dark and confused culture.
Speaking of our dark and confused culture, I think nothing could be more revolutionary as well as urgently needed by everyone everywhere than our reading today in Romans 3. Wow! What a profound and wonderful presentation of the heart and core of the Biblical Gospel! This is no small insignificant impartation from God to all mankind! Please do not allow Romans 3 to be something like water on a duck’s back.
I need to get off soon to help out with a bunch of preliminary details for Saturday’s big wedding event.
Blessings on your day. Love and prayers. Tua/Ray
PS: Perhaps I should give a little background on how I have been titled “Tua” within our family. It goes back to when we were residing in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands where our granddaughter who is about to be married was born. One of the main language groups there was Roviana, and the word for “grandfather” in that language (if I remember correctly) was “tua.” That title seems to have stuck. All my grandkids have come to refer to me as “Tua.”.
I believe it is possible to add some clarification and expanded meaning to these words from Paul by exchanging the word “law” for “religion,” and the word “faith” for “reality”. It becomes even more meaningful to define “religion” as man-made, or WHAT MAN DOES TO REACH GOD and “faith” (or “salvation” or “relationship”) as God-made, or WHAT GOD DOES TO REACH MAN. Defining these terms in this way helps to explain why I have a general disrespect for religion—why I frequently tell people, “You need ‘religion’ about like a fish needs a bicycle! (…or something similar.) But you do NEED relationship (faith, real connection) with your Maker!” It is easy to recognize the popular pretense of people who like to create the illusion that these concepts are one and the same—that their religious boasting is a description of REAL BIBLICAL FAITH. But they’re just not the same—too often not even close.
Verse 22 states: “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” In the margin of my Bible I made a comment some time ago connected to the word “believe”—I wrote, “This is the hinge.” Indeed it is that—the hinge on which the whole matter of destiny turns. This FAITH is ESSENTIAL. “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6). It is not something that man can generate by an effort of his will. BIBLICAL FAITH is actually something only God can IMPART as the condition of BELIEF is met. We do the essential BELIEVING and God does the essential IMPARTING.
Paul clarifies it very well in Ephesians 2:8-10. Let’s read it again carefully. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”