July 21. Romans 3. Yvette Lucy

Righteousness through Faith

Righteousness is given through faith and Jesus Christ to whom all believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Those words resonate with me the most because prior to reading and understanding the Bible, I was confused on if being a good person was going to get me to heaven. I thought being good was the way in. But faith is the only way to righteousness. We only get the opportunity because Jesus practiced forbearance on us- the delaying of rightful judgement, which really shows us a true demonstration of righteousness and faithfulness.

Faithfulness is brought up earlier in the chapter. If we were to hold a mirror and compare our faithfulness to God vs. God's faithfulness to us, ours wouldn't even been visible to the eye. Same for our righteousness. Why? Because we are sinners full of evil not deserving of God’s love yet everyday we get to experience God’s glorious works!

Paul hammers in why who we are isn't as important as we may think. In God's eyes, it doesn't matter if we are Jew, Gentile, black, white or other, circumcised or not, a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. It doesn't matter what we know or who we know, we are all together, with one faith and most of all one God! And we all need God or else we'll go back to being under the power of sin. We have to remind ourselves time and time again,  of where we've come from (spiritually, physically, mentally) and what brought us here today. Because we were given so much for so little! Faith is what is asked for!

In the end, we'll all be held accountable to God and when it's all said and done, we want to be known to God by our faithfulness.