The Saving Justice Of GOD!

Hi! and good happy Tuesday to all of us; and, it's just 73 days to go before Christmas, GUYS.  Our today's "daily bread":

 

THE GOOD NEWS (13 October 2015)

"For I am not ashamed at all of this Good News;  it is GOD's power saving those who believe, first the Jews, and then the Greeks.  This Good News shows us the saving justice of GOD; a justice that saves exclusively by faith, as the Scripture says:  The upright one shall live by faith." - Romans 1:16-17 

 

(HE who is proclaimed Savior by Paul is a crucified Jew, an unknown carpenter.  How often they laughed at Paul when he spoke about this dead man who had risen from the tomb to be the Judge of humankind!

 

The miracles that accompany the preaching of the Gospel are signs of GOD's powerful action in transforming people and history in every place where the Gospel is preached and inspires those who hear it.

 

The word justice used by Paul also signifies uprightness.  On the other hand, when he speaks of the justice of GOD usually he is not saying that GOD is just:  HIS justice denotes an intervention to keep order in the world.  In a special way the justice of GOD has humans to become just, that is, upright before HIS eyes.  It is a matter of understanding that the words justice and just had a wide meaning in the Christian vocabulary and now simply designate all that is good:  being just speaks of a life as GOD would have it.  The just person is rather like a saint, in the way we understand it today, or putting it more modestly, she is as she should be in GOD's eyes.

 

For that reason we shall at times translate GOD justifies us by:  GOD makes us just and holy, or: GOD gifts us with true righteousness.

 

The Jews, like most humans, thought that people become righteous by their own efforts.  Paul retorts that the righteousness GOD wants is something much greater and beyond what human efforts can achieve.  We are upright and friends of GOD when HE allows us to approach HIM after making us holy by HIS grace.

 

The apostles preached the Gospel to two classes of persons:

       - the Jews, prepared by GOD to receive the Savior,

       - the Greeks [or people who spoke the Greek language].  In fact, the Jews considered Greek all those who were subjects of the Roman Empire.  These people did not know the Word of GOD, nor did they have any hope in HIM.

 

Paul shows that all people need the Gospel.  Because the world lives in sin, and all of us to a greater or lesser degree are responsible for existing evil, we must believe in the Gospel if we want to be saved.)