I vividly remember my last spanking. My sister and I had been sent to get our dolls at a friend’s house and return for lunch. I popped my head in our door and realized we were late to return so I pushed my sister in first. My father asked, “Who came in first?” I replied, “My sister.” I received two spankings, one for being late and one for lying. I felt I was right in my own heart for she had technically “entered” first but deep inside I knew I was just trying to being in the wrong.
Paul so far in Romans has been defining “righteousness”, being right with God, as a gift that we do not deserve because we have all sinned. That’s pretty general and we can agree in principal. But Paul returns in chapter 10 to Israelite history. They received the Law on Mt. Sinai and tried hard to obey it, establishing lots of rules that defined the general law and made it more obvious, perhaps, for someone to know if they were being obedient. Like me, obeying the law is like saying who technically came in the door first. I point to obedience rather than faith. Obedience can become self-justification, which easily slips into an attitude of entitlement. The righteousness Paul is talking about is based on the humbling of self and admitting our need for God and inability to find him without his help rather than being based on a faulty perception of our track record of obeying rules. Romans 10:9-10 are some favorite verses:
“9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.”
It seems that Paul ties together hearts and lips. Faith is a holistic involvement of our whole being. It is not just some belief we hold privately but must be integrated into our whole life.
Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to shine his flashlight of truth into our lives today and show us any way in which we are trying to justify ourselves when we need to lean in faith on Jesus for forgiveness. Blessings.
On the Way to Wonder 