Third Day

“…for in thy sight shall no man living be justified” (Psalm 143:2).

Our Lord suffered in His death for our disobedience. In His life His obedience to the law was perfect. Since the Law was perfect (revealing the heart and mind of God), it says that any who break it is condemned to death. Jesus Christ is and was the only One who ever obeyed all points of the law perfectly and obediently. All that is required of us to be justified, therefore, is to acknowledge our sin and helplessness. We are to repent of our life of self-assertion and self-righteousness, and to put our whole trust and confidence in the finished work of Christ to save us.

Faith in Jesus Christ is more than intellectual consent only, but personal commitment. We believe “into” Christ Jesus. It is through faith we are justified. The law kills but faith in Christ makes alive. “For it is through the law I die to the law, so that I might live to God” (Gal. 2:19). The law slays but Christ saves. So we have no good works we can do to earn justification. Because the works we do, under the law, only condemn us to death; while faith in Christ bypasses the law of condemnation for us but trusts in Christ who died according to the law for us, who did not bypass the law but died our death’s penalty.

Salvation is an act of committal, not just assenting to the fact that Jesus Christ lived and died, but running to Him for refuge and calling unto Him for His mercy. Justification is not only a legal fact when we are saved in Christ, whereby we are declared righteous by a holy God; it is also a transforming experience through a living identification with Christ.  By union with Christ we are radically transformed; we can no longer go back to our old life, for in Christ we are “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). We are saved by the faith of Christ: past, present, and future.

On the cross the Lord Jesus only said out loud seven brief things. The Romans had flayed His back until it was ribboned and torn, and was seen by every eye that passed by. Severely dehydrated, His entire body weight hanging on three nails that held Him to the wood, the Lord of love had to push himself upward to be able to talk, and then only briefly before releasing and settling downward.

Understandably, then, everything Jesus spoke from the cross was important. And as He lifted himself up each time I am convinced that He prayed through the verses of Psalm 22. As He weighed back downward, wrestling on those nails, He continued to pray silently through Psalms 22. Oh! How that pangs my heart. Yet, oh, how, it rejoices my soul! His first prayer from Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The last prayer was from Psalm 31:5, “Father into thy hands I commit my spirit.”

Jesus prayed the Psalms. The final act of His earthly life was to pray the words of a psalm, the Word of the Bible. Friends, if the Lord Jesus prayed the psalms and the Bible, and the early church prayed the psalms should we not do as well? There is power in praying the Bible.

There is no human marriage after death. The shadow of the covenant made before God turns into reality in the moment of death. It is the reality of marriage to Christ–the marriage of His glorified Church. Nothing is lost. The music of marriage is transposed into something much higher.

Those who have departed this world are closer to each other in love than they were on earth. They “shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43). They are perfect which points to the glory of Christ.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer before he was hanged at dawn on April 9, 1945. He was a young pastor in Germany. He opposed Hitler and Nazism, and because of this he was arrested and assassinated. While in prison he wrote these words from the military section of the prison at Tegel, Berlin. He called it “A Wedding Sermon from a Prison Cell.”

Marriage is more than your love for each other…in your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal–it is status, and office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sights of God and man.

Marriage is more than your love for each other. Much more! The meaning of marriage is the display of the convent-keeping love between Christ and those who have been born from above. Romance, sex, and childbearing are temporary gifts of God. They are not part of the next life. And they are not even guaranteed for this life. May marriage be recognized “for the praise of his glory.” May we realize that marriage is more than about us but about Him.  Amen.

Real faith is belief with legs on it. You don’t just say, “God’s going to take care of it.” But true faith puts into action that which is pleasing to God, that which says in action “I’m trusting God.”

James, the half-brother of the Lord Jesus, tells us that when we believe God then we do something about it. Now works do not save us but a faith that does save will be seen in your life for it will change your way of living. Faith shows up by saying, “I’m trusting God for daily bread.” Faith also says, “And I’m going to go out and look for a job.”

Faith acts, faith does something. You have children and you do not want your children to get caught up in the web of Satan. So what do you do? You get busy. You pray, you train, you love, you get them into Sunday School, and you pray, love, and do it all over again. The Word of God gives the faith you need to proceed.

True faith does something. The Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” That training up in the Lord is so important. Don’t train them in the way of the world but in the ways of the Word. Believe God!  Do something about it.

For every Gospel action, there is an opposite and devious demonic reaction. All through the book of Acts there is God’s blessing upon the people, then there is Satan’s blasting upon the very people God has used.

When the Spirit of God moved into the believer’s lives on the day of Pentecost, thousands were converted, baptized, and enfolded into the body of Christ. But Satan did not roll over. He reloaded. And he attacked with viciousness.

We must understand that for every good action done in Jesus’ name there will be Satan’s sifting in our lives. He comes to destroy but God allows to build. Remember we are brothers and sisters in the Lord. We need each other like never before.

Keep your hearts and eyes upon the Lord. Do not murmur against others. For when you and I do we will find ourselves in the very lap of Satan. And as you know that is not a great place to be.