Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

I would propose that a healthy starting point would be for us to first acknowledge we all function in life based on a set of beliefs.

Michael Polanyi (scientist and philosopher, Personal Knowledge) argued that every human action of understanding functions on two levels--

• ”focal awareness” (our direct attention on the subject) and

• “subsidiary awareness” (where we apply a fundamental set of subconscious assumptions regarding the subject).

According to Polanyi, we all carry with us a massive amount of assumptions about reality that have been adopted (many of them subconsciously) in relation to our physical experience, trusted figures of authority, and our identified communities. When we are faced with any topic, this knowledge functions as a type of “pre-understanding” that inevitably influences both what we see and how we see it.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

And nowhere do we see that more than with the most important miracle in the entire Bible: the resurrection of Jesus. If you’re going to look for a reason for the Christian faith, then the resurrection is the best place to start.

You might have all kinds of questions about things like the creation account in Genesis, or Noah’s flood, or more existential questions like why God allows suffering in the world. All of those are important questions. All of those are worth asking and exploring.

But I would argue that the way you approach those question depends on the way you answer the question of the resurrection. Did Jesus, the historical Jewish carpenter from Nazareth, die on a cross and rise from the dead three days later? If your answer to that is yes, then you have the foundation of a loving and sacrificial God that functions as the lens by which you’re able to explore so many of these other real and important questions.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

So, how does Christianity reconcile the presence of evil and suffering with the existence of a good and all-powerful God? I’m going to state the answer simply and then philosophically (since I know we’re all wired differently, and those of us wanting the simple answer need to hear that first). Although, you’ll see that the simply response begs the question for the more thorough, philosophical response.

First, the answer simply: Just because you don’t know an answer doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer. If both a good and loving God exists as well as evil exists, then that God must have a morally sufficient reason for allowing that evil (and you might not always see or understand what that reason is).

Okay, now to several of you, that might just sound like a slightly wordier version of, “God has a plan.” And you’re not wrong! Which is why we also need the philosophical answer to help flesh this out…

First, we need to define what it means that God is all-powerful. I would put it this way: The God of the Bible can do whatever is logically possible and does not contradict his divine nature. What do I mean by that?

Logically possible—God can’t make a squared circle (because he created each shape as distinct)

Within his nature—God can’t sin (because sin and evil is defined in contrast to the character of God, if God were to embrace something sinful, it would by definition no longer be sinful. He cannot do something that is not in his nature (just like we can’t… humans can’t be dogs. We can’t fly. It’s against our nature).

Second, with that definition God as all-powerful in place, we need to acknowledge that no one can be held morally accountable for failing to do what they couldn’t do or for doing what they couldn’t fail to do. In other words, no one is morally accountable unless they act freely.

Third, regardless of how you understand the world came into existence, when God there in creation, he had to choose between including in it either one or the other of two good, but mutually contradictory, things. And because the two goods are mutually contradictory, God couldn’t include both, because God cannot actualize a contradiction, given our definition of what it means for him to be all-powerful. Now, what were those two options:

a. Option 1: Remove all evil

b. Option 2: Create non-glorified human beings in his image. Or, to put it another way: create people specifically the way he created us (with distinctions, abilities, and autonomy)

If God had chosen to remove evil, he would have done something very good. Yet, the option God chose (e.g., creating us the way we are) is a value of such magnitude that it is at least as valuable as removing evil, which means God has done nothing wrong in his choice.

“A good God will eliminate evil as far as he can without either losing a greater good or bringing about a greater evil.”

—Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (author and has been a distinguished professor of philosophy at University of Notre Dame and Calvin College)

And that’s the argument of the Bible: God chose to put a value of the highest order into our world, and did not do what he couldn’t do (i.e., actualize a contradiction by simultaneously removing evil) which fulfills his moral obligation. He is a good God.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

But we can’t finish our time this evening with just that conclusion. Because, like I said at the beginning, even though the question, “Why would God allow evil and suffering in the world?” sounds like a rational objection, for most of us it’s ultimately an emotional one. So, us justifying the possibility of God existing and all the world experiencing evil and suffering isn’t enough. We need to finish our time together addressing our hearts.

The Christian worldview neither minimizes the devastating reality of suffering nor discounts it as entirely purposeless. The late Tim Keller, who was a pastor in New York and ministered there until his death from pancreatic cancer a few years ago, wrote an excellent book called Walking with God through Pain and Suffering. In one of the chapter, he offers a summary for how Christianity approaches suffering in a way altogether unique from any other world religion:

“Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine.”

—Tim Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

This sense of purpose in the midst of suffering begins with the gospel of Jesus: God the Father sending his Son to suffer in our place is the boldest statement made in the argument concerning the problem of evil.

Though God may not always choose to explain the why for your suffering, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus on your behalf, he has ultimately demonstrated that he cares.

In the gospel, God demonstrates that his love for us as beings created in his image is a superior good over removing evil. He doesn’t minimize our suffering, and he doesn’t leave us to endure it alone. Alvin Plantinga, in A Christian Life Partly Lived, articulates this so well:

“It would be easy to see God as remote and detached, permitting all these evils, himself untouched, in order to achieve ends that are no doubt exalted but have little to do with us, and a little power to assuage our griefs. It would be easy to see him as cold and unfeeling—or if loving, then such that his love for us has little to do with our perception of our own welfare. But God, as Christians see him, is neither remote nor detached. His aims and goals may be beyond our ken and may require our suffering, but he is himself prepared to accept much greater suffering in the pursuit of those ends.”

—Alvin Plantinga, A Christian Life Partly Lived

Or, as the 20th century Methodist theologian and missionary, E. Stanley Jones puts it,

The cross is God sensitive to human sin and sorrow, so sensitive that it becomes his very own.”

—E. Stanley Jones (Methodist theologian and missionary, 1884-1973)

The Christian worldview presents a God who is big enough to conquer evil, good enough to want to,  sacrificial enough to take our place, intelligent enough to have a plan for our ultimate flourishing, and loving enough to continue walking with us each new day.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

Either way, our lives function based on believing certain foundational truths that give our lives value and meaning (i.e., again, even the claim to not hold any foundational truth claims is itself a foundational truth claim). We can’t escape believing in something as an absolute truth in an effort to be free and autonomous people, which means that true freedom is not as much about removing all exclusive truth claims in our lives as it is finding the right ones.

ILLUSTRATION: (Stanley from The Office episode where he has a heart attack) someone with diabetes limiting their diet and taking insulin so they can ultimately live a longer and more fulfilling life; an athlete disciplining themselves to exercise, sleep, and eat well in order to ultimate perform more successfully in their sport (me using a foam roller)

If there are beliefs that fit the reality of our world, making rational and emotional sense, then why wouldn’t we want to believe in them and orient our lives around them in order to experience a more liberating and flourishing life in the world in which those truths operate?

ILLUSTRATION: If your car takes gasoline, you are more than free to put diesel in it if you choose to. However, I could argue that if you do choose to use diesel, you’ll ultimately be much less free in the end when your car breaks down and can’t take you anywhere.

Because the God of the Bible is defined as One who has created the world, then receiving and giving love to him, disciplining ourselves to follow him, would align ourselves to move along the natural grain of the world instead of exhaustingly fighting against it.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

How can we place our faith in a supernatural, invisible God as an absolute truth without it making us intolerant and judgmental of those different than us? For the Christian, the person and work of Jesus gives us the answer.

It can be difficult to believe in an invisible God as ultimately true (and it’s okay for those of us who are committed Christians to acknowledge that). With every religion and worldview offering their own explanation, it can feel as if we are all the blind men touching the elephant. If that were the case, it would be impossible for us to know for sure, and our uncertainty would be an impossible foundation for us to build a flourishing life upon.

But the God of Christianity has not left us blind by keeping himself invisible:

Colossians 1:15–20 ESV 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

God has revealed who he is in the person of Jesus, giving us a visible source of truth. If you are a non-Christian or a skeptic, you will not understand the claims of the Bible or be able to determine their validity simply by analyzing its doctrine or even by observing it’s followers.

Christianity has been made visible in a person, and so the foundational key to understanding and processing Christianity is to examine the life of Jesus and if he is who he says he is. And, like we started the evening, it was Jesus who made the claim of exclusivity:

John 14:6–7 ESV 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

When you look at Jesus’ life in the gospels, this exclusive claim as being the only way to the Father didn’t remove his capacity for tolerance. Jesus is described as eating with “tax collectors and sinners” and as loving the “least of these.” His Apostles, like Paul (who wrote must of the New Testament), when he visits Athens in Acts 17, takes time to listen and understand the Athenians’ religious beliefs and thoughtfully dialogue with them instead of belittling them.

The testimony of the Bible is that this exclusive claim provides a pathway for loving others. And the greatest example of compassion within Christianity is the gospel itself:

19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

—Colossians 1:19-20

God did not meet our discarding of his value by discarding us. Instead, he sent Jesus to suffer for us.

The God of the Bible actually calls us to a much deeper and holistic form of tolerance than anything our culture emphasizes today. Within the Christian worldview, tolerance is more than indifference or acceptance regarding the differences in other people’s beliefs. Instead, the gospel of Jesus demonstrates that we should place a priority on loving and respecting those people who disagree with us on those very beliefs.

Since the Christian’s identity is meant to be received from God rather than achieved in our own power or performance, we should never be in a place where we feel superior to someone who believes or lives differently than us. In this way, I believe Christianity offers a way to practice true tolerance well in our complex and diverse world.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

Joy and happiness becomes entirely dependent on our ability to create it, and that places this intense focus on things like success, achievement, and love (things that if we have them, then we may feel internally fulfilled, but if they falter or disappear, then those very same things destroy us).

Because this pressure is primarily on us as individuals rather than being shared with the broader community, all the communal aspects of society begin to suffer. Robert Bellah points to the individualistic pursuit of self as the catalyst for growing economic inequality. It also breaks down the institutions of marriage and family and creates an increasing amount of competing cultural ideologies. And, when you think about it, that makes sense: we stop using “our” type language to prioritize saying “mine.”

But the challenge with a modern approach to identity is even more fundamental than that because our internal desires aren’t consistent and they often contradict one another.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

Can we combine the best aspects of both? That’s what I believe is offered in the Christian approach to determining our sense of self and our sense of worth. And why is that? Simply put: a deep rooted belief in the person and work of Jesus focuses on our need for an identity that is received rather than one that is achieved. The apostle Paul summarizes this well in 1 Corinthians 4:3-4:

1 Corinthians 4:3–4 ESV 3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. 4 For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.

Tim Keller, in his book, Making Sense of God, explores this option for receiving an identity from God. He says,

"What if we were created by a personal God and given a personal mission and calling? Then neither does the individual take precedence over the group (which can lead to social fragmentation), nor does the community take precedence over the individual (which can lead to oppression). What matters is not what society says about me, nor what I think of myself, but what God does." –Tim Keller, Making Sense of God

And, what does God say about us? There’s a variety of passages in the Bible we could explore, but for the sake of time, I only want to bring us to Romans 3:23-27 for now. After talking about the ways we fall short of God and his character, the Apostle Paul says that God declares those who have placed their faith in Jesus are adopted sons and daughters, as co-heirs with Christ.

We are now declared as being as righteous as Jesus (because His righteousness was given to us through His sacrificial death and resurrection).

Romans 3:23–27 ESV 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

27 Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.

*ILLUSTRATION: Understand the Christian doctrine of justification means to be declared righteous, not made righteous; This is why Christians should be equally confident and humble people; we are righteous, but not because of anything we’ve done; we have been given an out of every temptation, yet we still struggle with sin; Peter can call us “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, while Paul simultaneously calls himself the “chief of all sinners”.

The Christian approach to our identity avoids the pitfalls of the traditional and modern approaches by offering a path towards simultaneously embodying both humility and confidence (and those two traits are mutually exclusive when they’re left to our own achievement).

If your identity is based off of only what’s within you and what you can do, then it can make you confident but not humble when you are doing well and looking down on those doing worse than you--or it can make you humble but not confident when you are failing.

But, if our identity is something that is received rather than achieved, then we take on the characteristics and stability of the source we’re drawing from (and in Christian thought that’t the person and work of Jesus). Our self-esteem is now linked to the one affirming us rather than the affirmation of ourselves.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

The claim of Christianity is that the invisible has become visible—the unprovable now has physical evidence—what felt like myth has stepped into human history. Our passage this morning is dealing with what we call the “incarnation”—that the Son of God who is God was born as fully man while still being fully God. Christ has always existed, and yet there was a time when he was born. He is now forever both God and man.

Some of you might love thinking through theology like that. For some of you, it might feel hard to understand and you just want to get to what’s practical. But I think the incarnation of Christ is one of the most practical theological truths in the entire Bible.

If God became flesh and dwelt among us, then all your questions about God, all your questions about life after death, about whether or not there’s some grand design, if you have a higher purpose or calling, what should motivate your approach to your work, your family, and your friends—according to the Bible, all those questions can find real and tangible answers in Jesus, the Word of God.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

As Paul continues to elaborate on the good news of the cross, he doesn’t just connect it to our weakness and inability; he ties it to our actual sin. Let’s re-read verses 7-8.

Romans 5:7–8 ESV

7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Here we get a look at Jesus’ sacrifice from a human level. It’s not often that somebody dies for someone else. Like Paul says in verse 7, people might be willing to die for a good person. But that’s not what happened with the cross. Jesus didn’t die for people that deserved it. He died for sinners.

The fact that he uses the same phrase to talk about “while we were still weak” in verse 6 and “while we were still sinners” in verse 7 tells us he’s elaborating on the same thing, moving deeper into unpacking our need for the cross. We’re not just helpless people that need saving; we’re rebellious people that need changing, which tells us something about God’s motivation here.

Verse 8 gives us the foundation: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus died because of the love of God. And if the whole “Jesus, God sending his Son, Trinity” conversation is confusing to you,  Paul elaborates in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself on the cross. Jesus is fully man and fully God. As one commentator put it, “Christ’s action is God’s action. Christ’s love is God’s love.”

But in Romans 5:8, once again, the timing matters. God showed his love for us in that—meaning, the next thing he’s about to say is the way that God showed his love for us—God showed his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God’s love for us is something we have never earned nor deserved. That’s both freeing and humbling. Freeing because you don’t have to impress the Creator God of the universe for him to love you.

ILLUSTRATION: Macie and I are re-watching the tv show Frasier right now, and we just finished an episode where a doctor starts another show at Frasier’s radio station. Everything Frasier does, this guy can do better. Plus, everyone keeps commenting on just how handsome he is. Like he does most episodes, Frasier makes a fool of himself going out of his way to do everything he can to prove he can measure up to this other man.

And that’s just a guy! Imagine trying to do that to the God of the universe. Perfect in every way. If you think you need to show God how good you are in order for him to love you, you’ll live both exhausted and defeated believing that Christianity is built around shame and effort rather than peace and rest. You don’t have to earn God’s love, and that’s a freeing thing.

But you also can’t earn God’s love, and that’s a humbling thing. Plenty of people stay away from following the God of the Bible because they’ve bought the lie that they need to earn their salvation. But on the other side of the coin, there are plenty of us as Christians who think we’re somehow earning more and more of God’s favor as we perform better and better as good people in our own eyes.

That’s not the gospel either. We aren’t saved by God’s grace only to be perfected by our own effort. It’s not Jesus’ work and then my own. It’s Jesus working for me, then Jesus working through me. The gospel fuels every part of the Christian life.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

But if that feels daunting, I want to close this morning by encouraging you: the invitation of the gospel is not “Come and find Jesus”; it’s “Come and see Jesus.” He’s not waiting for you to figure things out on your own. He’s actually drawing you to himself to believe. Let’s read one more time in verses 46-51.

John 1:46–51 ESV

46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” 50 Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” 51 And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Up to this point, every person invited to come and see Jesus has just gone and started following Jesus. But maybe that’s not what your experience has been like. Maybe you’re more like Nathanael. When he hears that Philip’s met the guy who Moses and the prophets all wrote about, Jesus of Nazareth, Nathanael’s first reply is skeptical: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Once again, if you’re a Christian here this morning, be encouraged by Philip’s response. He doesn’t try to have a perfect answer; he’s proclaimed the truth about Jesus, he’s connected Jesus to Scripture, and now he invites Nathanael to come check him out for himself. That’s our role in evangelism.

But if you’re more like Nathanael this morning, I want to encourage you as well: neither Jesus nor Philip, his follower, are turned away by Nathanael’s skepticism. Actually, him bringing it out in the open allows him to process it. Can anything good come out of a place like Nazareth? Well, Nathanael meets Jesus, and Jesus tells him something about himself. First, about who he is, and then about what he’s been doing. And that freaks Nathanael out a little. So much so that he replies in verse 49, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the king of Israel!”

You see, the invitation of the gospel isn’t to fully figure out your life or to fully figure out Jesus and then come to him. No, God is drawing you to himself this morning with Psalm 34:8: “taste and see that the LORD is good!” Jesus met Nathanael’s doubts and gave him what he needed (including the spiritual new birth that actually gives us eyes to see Jesus for who he is that John talked about back in verse 13).

But then after Nathanael believed, Jesus continued to draw him to himself throughout the rest of his life. In verses 50 and 51, Jesus essentially tells Nathanael, “You believe in me just because of those things I told you about yourself? You haven’t seen anything yet.” Because Christ is the fulfillment of Scripture, he uses the imagery of Jacob’s dream of a ladder between heaven and earth way back from Genesis 28 to say that there is now a connection point between us and God, and it is Christ, the Son of man.

Whether you’re struggling to believe in Jesus, or currently following Jesus, he wants to continue to draw you to himself, teach you more about who you are in light of who he is, and how what he’s done can give new meaning, joy, and direction to all that we do. He just invites us to come and see.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

And when Jesus provides for the man’s need, it connects the dots and leads him to the final type of belief: Believing in Jesus, not just because of what he can do or what we need him to do, or because of what he’s done—but because of who he is. Look with me one more time, now at verses 53-54.

John 4:53–54 ESV

53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. 54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.

We don’t always know why things happen in this world, whether it’s something bad or something good. But this man got the benefit of seeing his son healed and seeing how it was directly connected to the work of Jesus.

And it’s at this point that he doesn’t just believe in the work of Jesus; he believes in who he is. He is the healer. He is trustworthy. He is worth following. If he just believed in Jesus for what he could do, he would tell his family, and they would be grateful. But because he believes in the person of Jesus, he shares about who he is, and the rest of his family believes in him too.

I love my one-year-old daughter. I could tell you stories about Nora and the crazy personality that’s already coming out of her, and I certainly do. But one of my favorite things is just picking her up, and introducing people to her.

For much of the first year of our church, you would see me holding Nora when I gave the welcome at the beginning of our service or her strapped to Macie as she was leading us in worship. I love to show her off—not because of what Nora can do, but because of what she means to me.

That’s the difference between depending on what Jesus does versus delighting in who he is. When the man believed Jesus could heal his son, he went to ask him. When he believed Jesus would heal his son, he acted on that faith and returned home. But now that he believes Jesus is the Messiah, he shares about him with his family.

Because this type of belief centers around the person of Jesus, you start to understand the gospel as Jesus being the center of your life. And we can test to what degree that’s true for us by how we share with others about him.

Each of us this morning are living in one of these types of belief: we might have disbelief that Jesus is the Messiah, or be disingenuous toward him with the focus of benefitting ourselves. We might see our need and feel desperate or we might walk by faith living in dependance.

But just like the royal official here at the end of John 4, Jesus can meet us where we’re at and draw us closer to him as we get to know more of what he’s done and who he is. As you doubt your doubts, see your spiritual need, remove the focus from yourself, and live in dependance on him, God won’t just strengthen your belief in him; he’ll grow your delight in him. And that changes every part of our life.

Selected paragraphs from Rob’s original manuscript, not a word-for-word transcript of this video. You can read the full manuscript on the original sermon page where available.

When we think of the word “sinner” our mind often goes to comparison. “Well, I’m not that much of a sinner because I don’t do this or I’m not as bad as that.” Hitler? Big Ole sinner. But Rob? Not as much.

I don’t think comparison is a bad thing here, but I think we have the direction of our comparison wrong. Sin is about the way we rebel against God’s rule before it’s about how it affects the people and the world around us. So, if you want to know how big of a sinner you are, you shouldn’t be looking at your neighbor; you should be looking at your Creator.

And Scripture tells us God is perfectly holy in all he is and perfectly righteous in all he does. How do you compare to that? Just two chapters earlier in Romans 3:23, Paul tells us “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” When our standard is the God of the universe, then we realize we are more sinful than we could ever have imagined.

But that same God knows all the ways you sin in your thoughts, feelings, and actions. He knows your sin better than you do, and that sin is against him! And yet, while you were still a sinner, Christ died for you. We are sinners, but Christ is righteous for us.

And when we acknowledge our sin against God and turn away from trying to rule our own lives and relying on our own ability and instead trust what Christ accomplished for us, then his righteousness becomes ours. It’s not achieved by us. The theological term is that his righteousness is imputed to us. It’s transferred to us. He takes on the penalty of our sin, and we take on the blessing of his holiness.