THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH

When you exercise faith in God, you will be different, See things differently, act differently! and you won't care what people say, You will begin to love and accept all people, begin to understand that the old testament is/was a shadow of the new, begin to see the Answer instead of just lingering on the question and you will also begin to see that God is bigger than any doctrine, creed or denomination and if need be, you will muster courage to walk away from the traditions of men so that you begin to understand what it means to eat the meat and not just feed on baby milk; You will be hurt, bruised and rejected because the Spirit will lead you out to the wilderness so that you He can kill your flesh and then you learn to depend only on what Spirit says; that is you will learn how to call sinners friends, calling those who have been rejected as "unclean" as "clean", call your enemies brethren, be willing to wallow in the mud with the downtrodden of this world, wear a crown of thorns because you are not ashamed to be called the "chief of sinners" and bear their burdens by denying yourself and carrying your cross to follow Him, this is what it means to live by faith. but on the other hand if you choose to live by sight, Then you will become the "good christian" you will not be different because you will be in your "christian comfort zone" you will never see the need to question because you won't be seeing things differently, you will act, talk and speak just like the average religious person and you will always see "those sinners" as scum of the devil, You will equate the bible to the Son of God and thus engage in the idolatry of worshiping the letter and not the Spirit who is the giver and sustainer of life. You "contain" God in your little box of doctrine, creed and denominational beliefs and thus God becomes a genie who can be summoned at will and carry out every command of yours and your denomination or church. You will rather be found dead than to be seen with the "heathen", condemn your enemies as lost and bound for hellfire, separate from God those whom He reconciled to Himself and not lift a finger to help with their heavy loads. You will be happy to be clothed in a robe of purple and to live sumptuously in palaces while the "scum of the earth" admire the crown of gold on your head and wish you could let them in so that they "belong". e.t.c Friends, Christ said He would wage war and many of us in the church think that He will fight someone else but not us, but what if that someone else is us, because we have not obeyed His commandments and kept the faith, something to think about; be blessed.

JUSTIFICATION

Justification is a word that is often used in our christian circles and it is a word that is found in the bible an example being Romans 4:5 which says " But to him who does not work but believes on Him who JUSTIFIES the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness," this shows us that it is Jesus Christ who justifies and not man, but according to my observations, I have realized that we do not believe in Jesus being the only justifier, for we have added many things and conditions for one to be justified which in effect has made these conditions to be our justifier and not the Lord. The book of Romans 4:25 speaks about Him who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our JUSTIFICATION. Our justification is thus based on Him and Him ALONE for if there was another that was needed to justify us before God, then Christ would not be enough and we would still be dead in our sins, but since He was raised for our Justification, then all who were under condemnation in Adam have now been given Justification in Christ and all who call themselves believers will agree with me then that we stand justified not because we have prayed the sinners prayer, or confessed our sins or kept the law but because Jesus Himself has justified us; 1 John 2:1 says " if any man sins, then we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." So let us go forth and proclaim this justification to all people, let us tell the drunkard and the sex worker that they have been justified by their Almighty Redeemer, Christ the Son of God who sits at the right hand of the Power. Amen.