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“Justified
by Faith”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Romans 3:21-31
“Since all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace
as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
Dear Sisters and Brother, the passage we just heard, written by St.
Paul, was to all God’s beloved in Rome.
In one sentence we are told that we are justified by faith, and
in another verse we are told we are justified by God’s grace as a
gift. In Paul’s mind, heart, and soul there is a spiritual equality
between faith and God’s grace as a gift. And that is what I want to
talk about this morning.
There is certainly a common way of thinking about the relationship
between faith and salvation. When
we think about all of us having sinned and fallen short of bringing God
glory; along with remembering that the way in which God the Father
applied His love for us, was sending His only begotten Son; we start
thinking about our salvation in this context.
It goes something like this: We cannot be saved by perfect obedience to
the Ten Commandments, and other Hebrew Bible laws.
But we believe God did send His Son who died on the cross to pay
for our sins. Therefore God decided that the most simple and profound
way we may earn our salvation is to believe in Jesus Christ.
In this way of thinking, we are still seeing our salvation as something
we earn. And there will be
times when we will question whether our faith is good enough to save us.
Soon after I was graduated from college, I rented a room, in a house,
from two retired ladies who were members of the Presbyterian church in
which I was baptized. One
was Helen.
Helen had taught 3rd grade in Atlanta, Ga. for thirty years.
She was teaching Sunday School.
Every evening we had devotionals, reading the Bible together and
saying prayers. To me she
was a beautiful example of what it is to be a Christian.
About 8 years later, I learned that she had cancer, and was in a nursing
home. I drove from
Louisiana to North Carolina to see her.
While we were talking, she said to me, “I hope I have enough
good faith to get myself into heaven.”
And I said to her, “Helen, Jesus has enough faith for both of
you.” Wow, did she have a
smile on her face when she heard that.
We are justified by faith. We
are justified by the gift of God’s grace.
The gift of grace that we are given is the faith of Jesus Christ.
Any gift of grace from God has two parts.
God comes to us and does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
In the second chapter of Mark, Jesus had entered someone’s house.
The house was packed full, with hundreds of people all around the
outside of the house. Four
men were bringing a paralyzed person to be healed by Jesus.
When they realized that they could not make it in through the
doors, they found a way to climb on the roof and lower the man down on a
mat in front of Jesus. When
Jesus saw the faith of these four men, he then told the paralyzed man
that his sins were forgiven, and then he was healed. The paralyzed man
was blessed because of another person’s faith.
And this is somewhat parallel to our relationship with God.
We are justified by faith. Because
faith is a gift of grace, we are ultimately justified by the faith of
Jesus Christ.
Of course we do have faith. As
we hear about the good news of the gifts of grace God has given in Jesus
Christ, we often say within ourselves “Yes, I believe this.
It is wonderful, amazing news.” This blesses us, and we do not
have to justify ourselves with God.
With the very faith of Christ being a gift of grace to us, when we are
involved in times where we are not even sure what to believe, we may
pray and ask for the faith of Christ to be shared with us.
Let us pray…
Amen.
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