Standing in the Faith Romans 3:21-26 cont.

[HKHaugan]

Standing in Faith Romans 3:21-26 cont.

A saddened and frustrated architect looks at a collapsed building he had designed, goes back to his drawing board, surveys every detail of his blueprints and, in anger, sweeps his arm across the tables scattering the blueprints across the floor. What went wrong? Where are the flaws? Was it his design? No one is perfect but he had checked every drawing and had his subordinates recheck them. He begins to survey every step of the construction from the engineering to the laborers hired. After two months he finds the reason, a sub-contractor’s changing the concrete quality thus weakening the entire foundation, all for the promise of making an extra buck. A few moments of temptation to cut corners, greedily change the consistency of the material and cover the condition with a few dollars to a building inspector. Fortunately there was no one in the building but the time and loss plus the rippling effect on the community caused considerable damage economically and socially.

But there’s more to the story. Some of the concrete workers saw what was going on but, fearing the loss of their job, said nothing. Another group of workers who were watching the pouring of the concrete thought that it looked different but also said nothing. They were indifferent and thought to themselves, “It's not my problem.” Others observed the incident but didn't want to get involved; they just wanted to get the job over so they could go home, have a beer and watch TV. A couple of labor supervisors were busy reprimanding some of the workers when they should have been present at the pouring, a disciplinary thing that could have been done at another time. A young assistant engineer, brand new on the job, just learning the process, was asked to take the place of the supervising engineer who took the day off. The architect himself trusted that the job would be done to his specifications and never visited the site. To cap it all off no one had checked into the performance record of the contractors, opting instead to take the lowest bids on the job.

Translate this story into the spiritual dimension and we have a parallel to Paul’s assessment of sinful humanity in Romans 3:10-12, “As it is written:
"There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good, not even one."

Now that’s the bad news. However, here's the good news:

“But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus (Ro.3:21-26).”

When you lose the vertical dimension there is no way to be right in the horizontal. This is why the Cross of Jesus brings humanity to face the truth that unless we live first in spiritual reality we are lost in the horizontal. Put another way, if we don’t live by the Spirit of God whom we can’t see and who made what we can see then the world is just an immoral free for all. If there was ever a time in history to make that truth come alive, it’s now. God’s recovery plan is simple, faith in His Son Jesus who can make the mind logical about the unseen. Through trusting Him the heart is transformed and our spirit motivated by faith to bring the invisible relational dimension to bear on every physical behavior.

God sent His Son Jesus to be a sacrifice on the world's playing field, to be His perfect self giving His life for others. His death on the Cross was His vertical belief, trust and faith in His Father's will to show that sin is defeated in the horizontal world of people, their circumstances, issues and events. His faith is what made His belief and trust as the way, the truth and the life for us. What this means is that eternal life is happening every time we act in faith because with faith comes resurrection, our being lifted out of the death sin brings in everything with which we are confronted in every next moment. When we face tribulation, trouble and trials in this world, it is by faith that we rise above them. This makes every next moment a contemporary opportunity to share the Lord right where we are. Since we are in the world we are the messengers, the apostles, the missionaries and the reconcilers of the world to God through faith. This is when we are right, our life is right and we are justified before God and the world---real witnesses to the living resurrected truth. This is when the mirror is not our enemy but our friend. It reflects our thanksgiving and praise when we more and more become our faith, a faith growing to be like Jesus' faith.

To wear the Cross is to show our belief.
To bear the Cross is to show our trust.
To share the Cross is to show our faith.

Let's return to the collapsed building. The perfect scenario would be that all the people involved from architect to laborer were believers. Their motivation would be to serve the Lord in their job. The building would never have collapsed. But we live in a fallen world. Believers are in the minority. And, all of us are sinners. Believers or not we all have attitude issues, doubts and problems. But, there are those among us who believe we have been forgiven. With forgiveness comes a changed heart which builds in us the desire to serve the Lord as He has called for in His Word. That Word tells us, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working to the Lord, not for men (Col.3:23).” You see what that means?  If even just one believer would have spoken up, taken a stand, a persistent faithful stand, that building would not have collapsed, truth would have won justice for the entire project and God would have gotten the glory.

Faith,---it justifies us because the real work accomplished is done by the Holy Spirit who gives us the power to discern, be grounded in the Word, to trust the Lord and then act in faith as we come into every next moment.