A Word For Living – Justified by Faith

I trust that your days are being filled with exciting opportunities to share your faith with others.

Martin Luther, in what is called his “tower experience” tells of wrestling with the “Justice of God.” For him, justice meant punishment. That theme ran throughout the New Testament and especially in Romans Chapter One.

“But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn’t be sure that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no,rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners. In silence, if I did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got angry at God. I said, “Isn’t it enough that we miserable sinners, lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel and through the Gospel threaten us with his justice and his wrath?” This was how I was raging with wild and disturbed conscience. I constantly badgered St. Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to know what he meant.”

I fear that many of us walk around with those same feelings of frustration. We try to gain some sort of relief by doing “good deeds”. Then we hope that our good outweighs our bad.

Martin Luther discovered that he could not do enough to appease Holy God. He came to realize that God’s justice is appeased only by one entering into a faith relationship with God. The he saw that the believer is “justified by his faith”.

Nothing you and I can do can justify us before God. But, Glory to His Name, we are being justified daily as we walk by faith in Him. I cannot make up for the evil I have done. But since He has already paid the price for that evil, I can live each day with the confidence that I have been justified before Him. Glory! Glory! Glory! 1 John 1:9 is written to the believer, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

I need not fear His justice, because I’ve been justified before Him.