How do you justify yourself? How do you justify your words? How do you justify your actions? How do you justify your behavior? Do you realize there is no way you can justify yourself before God?
We often make attempts to explain our actions, our behavior, and our words. We put the blame on someone else or something bad that happened to us or state we were unfairly treated. In the end, those are lame excuses.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we are held to a higher standard. Oh, we don’t like to think so. We make every attempt to state we are human, and we are faulty, which is true. We will state the oft quoted remark that we all are sinners. But that provides no reason for our lack of trying to follow Jesus properly.
We will fall short. Not one of us can follow Him perfectly. Not one of us can meet God’s expectations to the letter. That is why Jesus came to be a perfect sacrifice for us. But as the Apostle Paul states in Romans 6:1-2 we are not to continue sinning with the thought that God’s grace will cover our misbehavior and His grace will increase. Quite honestly, that is testing God, which Jesus, Himself, stated we are not to do in Matthew 4:7.
Can we make improvements on our own? To some degree, yes. Yet we need the Holy Spirit to make changes deep inside us, down in our hearts, deep in our souls. Those come by prayer and a willingness to give up ourselves. We see this truth being written throughout the New Testament.
We are to live our lives less by the letter of the law and more by the spirit of the law. The Holy Spirit is the One who can and will make the changes deep inside us so we can do so. Thankfully, in God’s wondrous forethought and through His grace, we were given the Holy Spirit to be our companion and guide.
We fall short of God’s glory. We are incapable of being perfect. We are not to beat ourselves up for that. Yet we are also not to take advantage of that knowledge and continue to purposely fall short without making every effort to do better and calling on the Holy Spirit to make the needed changes within us. Praise be to God we are justified through His Son, Jesus Christ.
I pray we all reach out to God in prayer. I pray we ask Him to make changes in our lives through His Spirit. I pray each one of us recognize we are justified by Jesus. Desire to make changes in your life. Be willing to give yourself to God. Know you are justified by Jesus.
Romans 3:22-24 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
Marty Pressey 