Eternity Daily Bible Study - No. 499 Series: Romans 1-8 "A Righteousness That Is By Faith" Verses: Romans 1:17 Topic: The Righteous Shall Live By Faith Date: 15th August 2005 Romans 1:17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, "The just shall live by faith." God imputes righteousness to us not when we achieve - but when we believe. That is the crux of Paul's gospel. The Christian lives by faith and afterwards, as a consequence, does good works. (Ephesians 2:8-10) The Christian does not live by achieving. Achieving is secondary; even being right is secondary, trusting God is primal and essential. To illustrate this let's pick up where we left off in the last Eternity Bible Study and look at Christian decision-making by faith. The last Eternity-DBS (on Iran Nukes) was rather depressing in concluding on the note that in some of life's most critical decisions we are left "walking by faith" without a nice, neat assured answer jumping out at us from the pages of Scripture. "In the end we are left with a large pile of intelligence data and analysis, and a "gut feeling" about what will happen that we hope is from the Lord. We have to trust that wisdom will come from God in our darkest hour. Many have found that to be so, but we still left walking by faith." In so many key decisions in life there is no easy answer. Should young Bill marry Joanne or Mary or Sue? (As long as the partner is a single Christian of the opposite gender it is OK biblically) But one of these choices might be so much better than another! Joanne may be a splendid wife for a missionary whereas Sue is a fine Christian but not at all cross-cultural or able to cope with change and Mary has a secret mental disorder that makes her witty but unstable. This is not easy to discern at the time. So may big decisions have no clear and direct guidance in the Bible - including decisions about marriages, houses, lands, cars - which college, which missionary society, which investment to make, which course to pursue. In the end such decisions are made "by faith" - that is out of our relationship with God. Walking by faith liberates us from having to be right in order to be righteous. Let me explain. Most of our anguish over decisions is due to a strong desire to "make the right choice" and this can be overpoweringly intense. We feel that we have sinned in some way if we make a wrong choice - even over something like which college to go to or which car to buy. We feel our choices are very, very important and they take on an almost existential significance. However when we walk by faith we leave our choices in God's hands and providing they are not immoral choices then we have not sinned. Faith, in contrast to law, gives us room to fail. Abraham, the father of those who are of faith made some dubious choices (see the second half of Genesis 12) and poor decisions (see Genesis 20) but was still declared righteous in the eyes of God. The Christian life is not from law to law, but from faith to faith. It is not a continual searching for exactly the right rule for each of life's circumstances but rather it is a searching for God in each of life's circumstances. If Bill marries Mary and ends up with a mentally ill wife and cannot go to the mission field is his life and destiny forfeit? Will Bill end up getting little reward in Heaven because he made a wrong choice and ended up with God's "second best plan for his life"? NOT AT ALL.!!! Bill can still earn a huge reward in heaven by tenderly caring for Mary in her illness and showing love and patience and kindness. Bill may even end up being a more saintly person than if he had gone to the mission field. Living from "law to law", by principles and edicts and decisions becomes a prison - even for the most obsessive-compulsive perfectionists. If you are constantly terrified of making a wrong choice for fear that it will put you on "the also-ran list of spiritual failures" then you have a view of God that is all about judgment and performance. Such a person lacks a grasp of the life of grace and love and being at peace and at rest before God in worship. Living "from faith to faith" is living a life of calm trust in the love and acceptance of God. It means that you, like Abraham, can make awful mistakes and poor decisions and still bounce back. You are safe! Living by faith and "being led by the Spirit" are somewhat synonymous in that they both involve being directly led by God. Both involve us in trusting our Spirit-filled Christian conscience - as it is informed by the Word of God. The life of living by faith is free but it is not perfect. The disciples, in the gospels, were learners not experts. The life of faith is a life of receiving God into us and of learning about Him and His ways. It is NOT a life of knowing about God then "doing it" up to a certain required level of spiritual performance. In fact the life of faith NEVER "gets it completely right". As soon as you learn to trust and obey God at one level, He moves things up a notch - like a video game with infinite skill levels. The life of faith is continually unfolding and is about progress and pilgrimage and is a journey. It is not about ticking spiritual achievements off a well-defined and easily understood heavenly checklist. "The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith" - in other words you get the revelation of God's righteousness, as you trust Him more and more. Righteousness is not achieved through the "checklist" or even understood through the law, it is revealed to the conscience of the trusting and obedient disciple by Christ within him (or her). God imputes righteousness to us not when we achieve - but when we believe because He values our connection to Him more than our independent performance for Him. If we are connected to God by faith then He can work in us and make us perfect in time, and grow us even in eternity. As long as have the faith connection there is hope we can be inwardly transformed through the Spirit. Without that faith connection even the best spiritual performance is "dead" and there is no hope of further inward transformation. Which is why true righteousness requires faith and is always from faith, to faith. . Blessings In Christ, John Edmiston (johned@aibi.ph) __________________________________________________________________ REFER OTHERS: If this devotional is a blessing to you, maybe you have a friend or family member that would like to start receiving this daily bible study. You can forward this to them, and they can use the following link to subscribe. http://www.aibi.ph/eternity/ or they can just send a blank email to: eternity-dbs-subscribe@strategicnetwork.org BLOG: If you missed a day or would like to read the bible studies online you can catch up using the new Eternity Daily Bible Study Blog at: http://aibi.gospelcom.net/eternity/wordpress/ EBOOKS & ARCHIVES : http://www.aibi.ph/eternity/ - includes free ebooks containing each series of Eternity-DBS bible studies. 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