Saturday, September 9, 2006
Romans 4:4-5 Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.
IT DOES TOO COUNT
By the time a person is in High School, for most reading is so second nature that you do not even see individual symbols on a page, but you instantly see the idea which that combination of symbols stands for. But when you are young you look at a page and see only a jumble of meaningless weird shapes. I was given a chance to see a meaningless sheet full of jumbled meaningless symbols when I started learning the biblical languages. No doubt to many of you the Greek word "logizetai" will appear meaningless, thankfully it isn't to God. The word means "it counts." And is the word used in our text.
Oh, the endless hours spend in argument when I was young over whether it counts or not. The funny thing about these situations is that often there is no argument over what actually happened. It is simply a matter of how we view the action that just took place. And seldom in this type of argument do we care at all whether we actually did such and such an act, we simply want to make sure we get the positive credit, but not the negative. "No it doesn't count," one team argues. "Yes it does," the other shouts.
So too when we stand before the Lord. There is no argument over what actually happened. There is no doubt that we have broken His holy Law. And according to the rules we ought to go straight to hell. "Do not pass heaven." "Do not get anything that is good." But our text informs us of another rule. A rule that isn't in the original rule book, but the Lord has written in big bold black permanent marker across the board game of our life: Jesus' death counts for you.
The point of our text is not that faith itself is such a good work that it undoes all our previous evil. The point of our text is that there is another rule, which does count before God, and faith appeals to this rule. The new rule states that as long as we stand behind Christ our sins do not count, but Christ's righteousness does count. The new rule states that God can not rule any way but in our favor since Christ counts for us.
What a completely amazing thing that our salvation has nothing to do with what we actually did, that it is purely a matter of how He sees it, and God always looks at it from the perspective of Christ, so that we get the credit.
