Tuesday, September 29, 2015
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!
When I began learning the Biblical languages, I was shown pages full of meaningless weird shapes. No doubt to most of you the Greek word "logizetai" appears meaningless. Thankfully, it isn't to God. The word means "it counts." It is the word used in our text.
When I played games as a youngster, there were endless arguments over whether something counted or not. Often the issue was not what had actually happened. The argument was over who got credit for what. "It doesn't count," one team argued. "Yes it does," the other shouted.
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. But our text informs us of another rule. A rule that isn't in the original rulebook. 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 in itself is such a good work that it undoes all our previous evil. The point of our text is that there is another rule -- one 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! Our salvation has nothing to do with what we actually did. It is purely a matter of how God sees it -- and He always looks at it from the perspective of Christ, so that we get the credit.
