“For by works of the Law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the Law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the Law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the Justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.“
(Romans 3:20-26 ESV)
Have you ever faced a choice that you couldn’t possibly make? You looked at the two options, and your heart cried out: “I want both.” And so you stayed up all night until you found a way to make it happen.
That’s what I see God doing in this passage. Paul writes about God sending Jesus into the world to be our Savior, and he says, God did this “so that He might be just and the Justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
Think about it. God is just; He is holy and good and righteous and right, and there’s no way on earth God would ever for a minute be unjust. He’s just not like that; it completely contradicts His character. And in the same way, God can’t possibly stand by and allow evil to go uncorrected in the universe He created. God made all things very good, and He’s going to see things put back that way or die trying.
But then, what happens to us?
We are not just; in fact, most of the time we’re just the opposite. Oh, we know what “good” and “fair” and “holy” mean, and we may try to live that way, but every day brings us fresh proof that we aren’t. We do wrong, and we say hurtful things, and our very thoughts are twisted. Even on our best days, we are broken people, and we can’t fix ourselves, no matter how hard we try.
A sensible God would wash His hands of us. But not this God. This God, who is the only real God (and thank God for that!) said, “I want both. I want to be just, and to make these people just, too.” And so He came to be our Savior.
That is what Jesus was doing, when He suffered, when He hung on that cross. That is what He was doing when He rose from the dead, triumphant over sin, death, and the devil. He was breaking the power of evil over us; He was remaking us from the heart outward, people born of God’s Spirit. Now everyone who trusts in Jesus is a forgiven, justified child of God; and God has His heart’s desire. He is just—and now, thanks to Jesus, so are we.
We Pray: Father, thank You for justifying us in Your dear Son Jesus! Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Kari Vo.
Originally published in The Lutheran Hour on October 23, 2024
Used by permission from International Lutheran Laymen’s League, all rights
Reflection Questions:
1. Why didn’t God take the easy way out and simply replace us after we fell into evil?
2. Why go to all this trouble to justify, to forgive, to remake us?
3. Tell about a time when you insisted on fixing something you loved, rather than replacing it.