Justified Through Christ

Romans 4:25

25 He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

Justified
When you do something dumb, wouldn't it be cool if you could rewind the tape of your life so that it never happened? When God justifies us, it's just as if our sin never happened. It's gone. Vanished. Good thing we don't have to work for justification because no amount of work would ever outweigh our mound of sin. Being justified is a gift from God that we get when we believe in Jesus.
- Zondervan Teen Devotional Bible

Justification in this case means to be free from guilt or penalty of sin. So when you repent, God forgives you and does not hold your sin against you.

About 2 or so months ago, the Youth Pastor of Bronx Bethany Church of the Nazarene preached a message on the ministry of reconciliation, forgiveness. He said that forgiveness is restoring the person who sinned against you back to the place where they were before they committed the sin. Basically, if you were my close friend and you hurt me terribly, forgiveness would require me to be your close friend again. The Pastor said that you are not trusting that the person will not hurt you again, but that God's grace is sufficient. I still don't understand what he meant by that. But I think he was ultimately saying that when you forgive someone, you don't treat them in light of what they have done to you. You do what God does and wipe it from memory.

And it sounds outrageous. Even typing this now, I'm questioning this belief because it sounds so ridiculous. But how can we expect perfect forgiveness and perfect mercy when we are not forgiving and merciful? The see-saw has to be balanced. And I have to keep on reminding myself that the spirit of forgiveness is not a quality that you obtain overnight. It takes time. But God's cool with that, He understands our humaness. But He still calls us to do our best. And in truth, the Holy Spirit in us, the God in us, is the one who's doing the work. He is the one forgiving our foes and living the Christian life for us. More on that tomorrow.

Love and Jesus <3