I spent way too long looking for my keys this morning. That's usually aggravating to me -- losing stuff. I ended up finding it in a place I had looked previously, I had just not dug down deep enough to find them. Sometimes, even in the midst of frustration, I try to put what I'm experiencing and the emotions I'm feeling into perspective. There's no reason why some temporary feeling should dictate how I feel all day or "ruin my morning" or anything like that. In "the heat of the battle," so to speak, it's easier to say this than to actually do it. Emotions are tough to deal with sometimes. Perhaps it is our will that wins the day when we decide what to do and then do it. I'm reminded of exercise and how when I'm jogging I have to sometimes keep going even when my body protests. It's like fasting, too, when our head tells our stomach who's in charge.
Romans chapter 4 doesn't deal with this stuff, but instead focuses on faith. Abraham believed God for a child -- even in the face of the facts (that he was nearly 100 years old). Not only did the "impossible" thing happen, but God credited that faith as righteousness. This is really good news for us. "Why?" you say (playing the 'he's a patriarch' card)? Because Abraham was a coward and a liar. While travelling with his wife he told another king that she was his sister, so the king wouldn't kill him to take his wife. What a cowardly thing to do! This is failure and numb-skull foolishness. Yet it levels the playing field, so to speak, because we can now relate to Abraham as a "fellow idiot" along the journey of life. If he could believe God's promise and be credited as righteous, so we too can believe God's promise (the forgiveness one based upon the sacrificial and substitutional death of Jesus) and be credited as righteous.
That's cool.
"He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification."
Posted by Doug Van Pelt at December 7, 2005 09:04 AM