The Just Shall Live by Faith
We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And it is by our faith that we must live.
✅ The Gospel reveals God’s righteousness
Paul wrote, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
(Romans 1:16-17)
The Gospel reveals God’s righteousness. The Gospel also reveals our unrighteousness, our sin, and our need for God to save us.
Only the Gospel has power to make a person righteous before God!
Our good works can never make us righteous, nor can our good works save us.
Only the good work of Jesus Christ who died for our sins at the cross can save a person.
✅ Our righteous works are like filthy rags
“But we are all like an unclean thing,
And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;
We all fade as a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind,
Have taken us away.”
(Isaiah 64:6)
The Hebrew words that God uses to describe “filthy rags” are literally “menstruation” and “garment.”
This was a grotesque and picturesque way for the Jews to see that – just as a woman’s used, bloody menstrual garment was filthy and would render a Jewish person unclean, this is a picture of what your entire life’s righteous works are like, in the sight of a RIGHTEOUS AND HOLY GOD!
In other words – all things you and I think we can do, in order to make ourselves RIGHTEOUS – or acceptable to God – are an abomination to God!
Because the only work that God will ever accept to make us RIGHTEOUS before God, is the crucifixion of His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ!
Everything else we may do to make ourselves righteous is an offense to God, who sacrificed His Son on our behalf!
✅ The good news of righteousness
Here’s some good news: Jesus is perfect.
Jesus fulfilled the Law because we could not.
Then being the only pure and perfect sacrifice for our sins, Jesus died on the cross – as the final and only Sin Offering that God will ever accept.
Jesus fulfilled God’s Law because we couldn’t!
And as Paul writes here, there is “power” in the Gospel to make us righteous before God!
And all we need to do, to be accepted by God, through the Gospel – is to put our “faith” in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ and Him crucified make us righteous. We cannot make ourselves righteous in God’s sight.
So the Gospel of Jesus Christ reveals the righteousness of God – and this righteousness that God can credit to your account is:
- “Revealed” by God to you
- And is accessible by you by “faith”
- This “righteousness” is based on “faith” not on your good works!
✅ The just shall live by faith
“The just shall live by faith” is quoted from Habakkuk 2:4 which states
“Behold the proud,
His soul is not upright in him;
But the just shall live by his faith.”
Our salvation is by “faith.”
And our living – must also be by “faith.”
❓ QUESTION — Have you received salvation through Jesus Christ by faith? ❓