Right-ness

We are all obsessed with being right, with having the right answer, with being proved right in our dispute with someone else. But what does it mean to be right before God?

In 2 Peter 1 he starts this letter with a reminder that “To those who through the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours.”

To be righteous is to be in a right standing before God, to be able to face God without being in your sin. God is holy and as such cannot even stand to look upon sin, and one day he will judge all sin, all rebellion, all rejection of his kingship. Now therein lies the problem because our rejection of God’s way of living means that we stand guilty before God. We don't in and of ourselves stand right before God, in fact we stand under just judgement and condemnation.

But says Peter the believer can stand right before God, and the basis of the believers right standing before God is “through the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ” and it comes by faith. By faith in Jesus as the Messiah, God’s promised one, and Saviour, the one who dies in our place, saving us from the consequences of our sin, they and we can stand before God in a right relationship with him, viewed by him as his perfect children.

Do you see why faith is so fundamental? Because without faith in Jesus we have no chance of pleasing God, without faith in Jesus we are utterly bereft of any hope of ever escaping God’s righteous judgement for our refusal to acknowledge him as God and King.

But in Jesus, through faith we can be right!

Can Christianity be moderately important?

I guess we prioritise lots of things in life, some are the most important things some are less so and some are moderately so. Where does Christianity rank?

Christianity is either true and the most important thing in the world, or it is rubbish and should be totally rejected, the one thing it cannot be is moderately important. The message of Christianity is actually astounding, it is unlike any other news you will here; that God sent his Son to die in our place so that we could be with him face to face without fear of judgement, that having died in our place God raised him from the dead as a sign that death is defeated. That is a phenomenal statement, and it either has to be true and the most important thing you ever hear or it has to be dismissed as rubbish.

At the end of Luke 5:1-11 as Simon, James and John have met Jesus they show us that actually they believed it was THE MOST IMPORTANT thing they had ever heard as "they left everything and followed him." Why? Because they recognised in Jesus someone who could remove their fear of judgement from God for rebelling against him. Simon goes from terrified to leaving everything because of the wonder of such great news.

Can you be a nominal Christian? The Bible says not. Can you be a lukewarm Christian? The Bible says look out if you become lukewarm. Why? Because the gospel, the good news of what Jesus has done is so amazing that it should be the dominant feature of your life. It is not news you can respond to moderately it is news of eternal consequence that is life changing.