You Are Justified
Becca and Noah, my daughter and her cousin, are 4 months apart in age. One winter, as their Papa was driving them to preschool past the “Lights on the Lake” Christmas display, they got into an argument in the back seat of the car. One pointed out the ‘Wights on the Wake’ display and the other quickly corrected the first and said, ‘It’s not Wights on the Wake. It Yights on the Yake!’ Oh, the trouble the ‘L’ sound causes four-year-old kids!
We have an innate desire to be right so that we will be accepted.
Becca and Noah went back and forth correcting the other’s pronunciation because they could hear the inability to pronounce the words correctly in the other. But they were not recognizing the error of their own ways as they sought to form the L-sound. Each one was seeking to justify themselves.
The fight is to prove oneself right and true and good.
While we can often see the struggle to be right in others, the question really is if we can see it in ourselves.
Do you recognize the ways that you try to justify yourself?
The ways we seek to justify ourselves can be blatant or subtle.
When someone is critical of another, they are seeking to bolster their own status. They are trying to justify themselves.
The Lord used the Freedom in Christ material and my prayers during the Steps to Freedom in Christ to reveal a significant way I was seeking my own justification. I was a pastor in full-time ministry for 25 years and knew without a doubt God had called me into that profession. But I realized that my thinking (initially way beneath the surface) was that if I could help people to follow God, then I must be a good pastor. And since a bad man can’t be a good pastor, then I must at least be a decent man.
I sought to justify myself through pastoral actions. I based my acceptance on whether someone else was walking in faith and repentance before God as a result of my pastoral care and counsel. The problem was that I had no right or ability to control others. Even more so, my acceptability (being made right, justified) was based on shifting sands—the willingness of others to do the hard work of walking in obedience and righteousness. What a losing battle!
These days, some of those pastoral care behaviors look the same outwardly. But my heart is so very different. I know that I am justified by faith in the accomplished work of Jesus and therefore accepted by my Heavenly Father. He is the one who called me into ministry, and I serve Him out of gratitude. My identity as one who is justified and accepted is settled because of what Jesus did.
Romans 5:1, 6-8 (ESV) says, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ… For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
While we were still weak. While we were still defined by our sin, Christ died for us. When we couldn’t justify ourselves, Christ did everything necessary for us to be justified, or in other words, made right with God.
Our world today is arguing over every topic imaginable. The deeper question is who is more right, more justified. The assertion of people is that they are “more in the right” than others. Unless we approach conversations about difficult topics knowing that our justification has been purchased by Jesus Christ, our fleshly tendency will be to seek to prove ourselves right at the expense of others. We might put others down or criticize their viewpoint or opinion in order to justify ourselves.
Dear Saints, whenever you seek to justify yourself, you are not resting in the finished work of Christ. Ask the Lord to reveal to you at least one way in which you seek to justify yourself. Then, replace your reliance on yourself with the truth of what Christ has done and enjoy the peace it brings.