Deeper Life #247

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

—Romans 3:24

JUST AS THE SYROPHOENICIAN CAME to our Lord at the end of a busy day, you will find that healthy-minded folks often come to you when you are worn out. They will want to ask you all kinds of questions.

They did of the apostle Paul. They asked, “What will this babbler say? What is he talking about? He is evidently talking about some new religion.” Paul preached to them Jesus Christ and His marvelous resurrection from the dead. But some of them ridiculed him. When Paul wrote his Epistle to the Corinthians, he said, “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:23).

Every worker for God has surely come across the type of person who makes him feel foolish. Such a person’s external life is quite upright and sterling, and he puts questions to you that bring you to a complete standstill. You cannot answer such a person, and thus he succeeds in making you feel amazingly foolish.

For instance, you preach that Jesus Christ lived and died and rose again to save us from our sins and put us right with God. But some people will tell you quite honestly that they have no sin of which they are conscious. And you cannot point to a spot in their whole lives. So they say, “What is the good in Jesus Christ dying for me? I am all right; I do exactly what I ought to do. I am not a thief. I am not a sinner. Why did Jesus Christ want to die for me?”

That line of reasoning, when you are not used to it, produces a sense of unutterable foolishness on your part. But you must continue to tell those people the truth.

Prayer Thought: I confess, Lord, that all of us are sinners. Only through grace and mercy do we have hope of redemption.

SUGGESTED READING: ²⁴Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: ²⁵Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; ²⁶To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. ²⁷Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. ²⁸Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. ²⁹Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: ³⁰Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith. ³¹Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.

—Romans 3:24–31