Go To Court!

God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.

HOW DOES LIFE TRANSFORMATION take place? Romans 3:24 says that we are “justified freely by his grace” (NIV).

Justification is a legal term. It is a picture of all our sins being logged into a portfolio or file. (And each of us has a thick file of imperfections, mistakes, and sins! Think of it as your permanent record or, as those in law enforcement call it, your jacket.) Then God sent his Son, Jesus, down to earth to live a sinless life. He had a file folder full of perfect credits; he is righteous. Then on the cross, God took our sins from our file and switched them with Jesus’ righteousness. Jesus paid the penalty for our file folders, for our jackets of imperfection! God now looks down on us from heaven and sees Christ’s righteousness where our sins once were.

Justification is a onetime act that happens when we meet Christ. Having justified us, God begins a process of sanctification. Second Corinthians 3:17-18 tells us: “The Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.”

Jesus is in the process of moving us from the weakness that characterized our lives before conversion toward a position of strength as seen from heaven.^a It is like going to court to get the legal process moving. When you come to Christ and tell him you want his righteousness for your sin, he makes the trade for your “jacket.”

Have you made the trade?