He is not righteous who does much, but he who, without work, believes much in Christ. Martin Luther.
Every day a person must ask themselves how is it that they can stand before a holy God. If they don’t ask this question they are kidding themselves. If they find wrong answers to this question then they are condemned to live a lie. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ provides a correct answer to this problem.
The gospel of Jesus Christ provides the necessary infrastructure the necessary preconditions the fundamental bases by which a person can stand before a holy God. Only through the blood of Jesus Christ atoning for sin and the rendering of his active obedience in fulfilling all righteousness-only through these can a person put their faith and trust in Christ and so be accepted in the beloved.
Each day we must go about the business of life with these first principles in our mind. These first principles are the principles of the gospel. We must ask ourselves how can we stand before a holy God? As we carry out our day we find that we transgress we injure we break laws we cross boundaries, we trample upon prohibitions, And above all we offend the integrity of the essence of God who is holy. Not only that each day we fail to do all that we ought to do. We omit all of the love all of the right doing all of the right-thinking all of the right being that we ought to do. These omissions are crippling. The omissions expose how sinful we really are. For all that is required of us all that would be in our power yet, we failed to do. And so Jesus has fulfilled the law fulfills all the things that we have omitted. His obedience is impeccable. Even as we failed to climb the mountain of each day, Jesus has climbed it and climbed it again and again and again. There is no aspect of the ascent that Jesus has not mounted he is obeyed all fulfilled all reached the pinnacle and remained. Jesus himself in his moral purity can stand in the presence of God.
So the real and legitimate question of how can we stand before a holy God must be asked in a new way every day. It is the question of justification. How can we be justified before God? Of course, this brings us back to the necessity of a saviour who can both atone for sin receive just punishment for those acts and yet also have fulfilled all the laws demands bringing us not merely to zero but bringing us even to God.
Although scholars may debate whether or not justification by faith alone is the centre of the apostle Paul’s theology, it cannot be debated that justification must be at the centre of ours. Without justification by faith alone, there is no way for sinners like us to stand before a holy God. We’re in trouble if we neglect the answer, or rely upon false answers. We cannot continue to live with any kind of honesty, transparency, authenticity, or reality without justification by faith alone. Only as we have this true answer, namely reliance upon the atonement and the imputation of the obedient righteousness of Jesus Christ, that we received simply by a pure reliance upon him-only as we do that can we have acceptance with God. Only then can we stand.
