God Is Pleased By Our Faith In Him - Not By Our Works

Reading God’s Word with Purpose

Romans 4

What spoke to me?
Romans 4: 3-5, 23-24 “What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.”(NIV‬‬)

Why did these verses speak to me?
I was raised that you should work hard to get what you need and you should not expect things to just be handed to you. The harder you work, the more you get and the more you deserve to get for your effort. This is true and a great way to be taught and raised, but this is not true when it comes to our salvation and our righteous standing before the Lord. That is what this whole chapter spoke to me about…how the “I have to work hard to earn this right standing with God” mentality is not true. When I first became a Christian, I feel, that is what I truly believed - that I had to do enough and be enough to “please” God and keep in His good graces. But this chapter in Romans tells us really just the opposite. It says that even though Abraham had done so much and really had reason to boast about it, when you compare whatever he had done to the majesty of God, it was in comparison nothing. It states that what did make all the difference in the world, what did make Abraham righteous before the Lord, was his faith and belief in Him. When we “work” for something, we feel we have earned what we get in return and in some ways feel we are “due” whatever pay we receive. But salvation is not something we can work for….it is truly a free gift from God - not earned - not owed to us because of what we have done - not given with stipulation and conditions based on our performance - but absolutely free. The reality is, we could never do enough, we could never be good enough to deserve anything from God - that is why it had to simply be a free gift from Him.

How will this truth change the way I live my life?
Absolutely free is not the norm in our world. We learn early in life, there is usually a catch when something claims to be free. Because of this fact, sometimes I find I still have the tendency to think that I must do things for God because I feel I have to in order to somehow earn the right to be saved and keep Him satisfied with me. I think that was my mindset when I first became a Christian. I felt like I had to do anything and everything the church asked me to do or God would be mad or disappointed in me. Silly, now that I really think about it, but it was like a big score board I was keeping…like I was saying, “OK God, I know I really messed up this week so I am going to earn some extra points back by helping to do something at church this weekend or by teaching this class or by reading my Bible an extra long time every night this week.” I guess we tend to look at God the same as we would one of our other relationships and think when we mess up, we have to make it up to Him and appease Him, the same way we would if we didn’t do something right in our other relationship. The truth is, we can not earn anything when it comes to God and He will never be indebted to us for anything. God wants our heart. He wants us to obey Him and do things for Him because we “want” to out of our love for Him and appreciation of all He has done for us, not because we feel we “have” to in order to somehow be good enough to deserve salvation.

My Prayer
Thank you God that we don’t have to be perfect to be seen as righteous by you and that you don’t want us to try to “earn” anything - You only require that we truly believe in You and have faith in You alone. Thank you that this is your requirement for us to be righteous in your eyes, and that this requirement, is something I can do. Amen