Freely

Someone asked how the Believing God study was going. It's going really well. We are in week 3, and have so far taken about 5 weeks to get there, but once we meet again on Sunday, we'll be going straight through August without any more breaks.

The premise is that we sell ourselves short in our Christian walks because we have "believed in God" but don't go the next step to "believe God" in an active way. There's more to walking in faith than knowing that God is out there, and actually expecting to see Him involved in a big way in our own, real lives.

We are given a 5-statement pledge of faith, which really seem to be core issues of whether we believe God in our daily lives or not:
1 - God is who He says He is
2 - God can do what He says He can do
3 - I am who God says I am
4 - I can do all things through Christ
5 - God's word is alive and active in me
If you are met with a challenge of belief, it's pretty likely you can match one of those with the issue at hand and decide whether to believe what God says or the lie that you've been fed.

Through the study we are given the assignment to read through Romans 4 a total of 20 times within the 10 weeks. It shouldn't be too hard, considering it's only 25 verses, and it's all pretty familiar. I wrote a list of 20 blanks on a scrap of paper so I could date each time I read it for 20 times. I've made it to 4 today.

But while I was reading, I decided to go backwards a little ways to read more of the context, and I tracked back to Romans 3. One of the underlined verses is 23: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Very true. But in the context, it is more than a commentary on sin, it is a commentary on the grace of God. Look:

^"22This righteousness [apart from the law] from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, ²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." (NIV)

There is no difference: all who believe are justified from their sins freely by his grace. We have equal opportunity sin and equal opportunity grace. Praise Jesus!