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The righteous man finds life through faith
Gal3:11 The way to a good, blessed life is faith in Christ. It is God who raised Christ from the dead and it is the living Christ we serve. So living faith begins when we believe that Jesus is alive, that he has conquered sin and death and sits at the right hand of God the Father. That is how we initially activate our faith. Let us look at how this works and let us reason together. Faith began when we heard the message of salvation. Through preaching we came to see our sin and through faith believed that by confessing our sin Jesus is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It is thus how we were born again. As our faith journey continues we become aware of our shortcomings. We may see fear, anger, jealousy, resentment, lust, and other deeds of the flesh. We can accept our shortcomings as simply being human or we can exercise faith to believe that we can mortify the deeds of the flesh and be holy as God is holy. If we can believe that we can be perfect even as our Father is perfect then by confessing scripture we can come against the remnants of fallen man. Then when God delivers us we find life through faith. Parallel to seeing our own shortcoming is seeing sin, sickness, and unbelief in others. Many chose to focus their attention on the plight of the world and dismiss their own wounds. Yet God calls us to reach the lost. We do this by faith as well. Rather than placing more weight on the facts, we place our faith in the Truth and we confess what scripture teaches. When we line up our life with the word of God and we speak to the mountains of sin, sickness, poverty, and lack that exist within us and all around us, we find life through faith. Finding life through faith is the way to receive the Blessing which is the Spirit of God or what Jesus refers to as the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace and joy of the Holy Spirit (Rm10:17). At Pentecost we see how the first one hundred and twenty received the kingdom when the Spirit came on them like a mighty rushing wind. Entering the kingdom and being righteous go hand in hand. Through faith Abraham received the Blessing and he found life through his faith. He did this by being righteous and responding affirmatively to what he heard. By forsaking the world, Abraham went out not knowing wither he was going, and he began the faith journey and became our father and the friend of God. The righteous man finds life through faith not by keeping the Law. By the deeds of the Law no man will be justified. The tendency for most is to start in the hearing of faith and then settle into religion. Those that are led of the Spirit are sons of God. Having begun in the Spirit, stay in the Spirit and you do this by living by faith. Amen |