Justification by Fake

Just to follow up on last week's sermon...(if you missed it, you can find the sermon on the podcast - link is on http://www.gracelivingstones.com/)
Ths morning while I was reading the scriptures, it occurred to me that the difference between religion and walking with Jesus comes down to how we try and justify ourselves. In Romans 10, the scriptures talk about how a person is made right with God (in other words "saved") by believing the work of God that was done through Christ. This concept is found all throughout the book of Romans. Justification by faith. It is not our faith that makes us right with God, but it is what we put our faith in that makes us right with God. When we put our faith in Christ alone for salvation, identity and hope we are justified before God. In other words, all of our sin is nailed to the cross w/ Jesus and all of His righteosness is given to us. We are changed from sinners to saints.

Religion is just the opposite. Religion is justification by fake. We are trying to make ourselves right by portraying an image of ourselves that is not true to the core of our being. We get our identity from what we do. Religion trains us to be fake. This is why so many people outside of the movement of Jesus see us as inauthentic. It is because when we are trying to get our justification through what we do instead of what Jesus did, it leads us to hypocricy - being someone on the outside that we are not on the inside. Our justification is by faith in Christ alone and when we do this, we're forsaking all attempts at justifying ourselves. We are able to live our lives out of Christ's transforming goodness. This frees us to stop trying to manage our image and allows us to live a life where we are consistent on the inside and outside.

HT