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The grace of
being justified by faith
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[Romans 4:25]
He was delivered over to death
for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
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God created human beings to be
righteous and without sin.
Adam,
who was sinless and righteous, enjoyed the blessing of being able to meet God
at
any
time.
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But Adam broke God's command and
sinned.
At
that moment, because of the sin that came into Adam, the righteousness that
was in Adam disappeared. Adam, who was a righteous man, became a sinner.
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Everyone born
after Adam was born as a sinner with sin.
The world in
which humans live has become a world where the righteous do not exist.
Romans 3:10 confirms that fact.
[Romans
3:10] ¡°As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one;¡°
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To say that
there is no one righteous means that everyone in this world is a sinner.
No one who has
sinned will come to the glory of God.
Romans 3:23 tells us that.
[Romans
3:23] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
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As a sinner, you cannot meet
God.
You cannot enter heaven as a
sinner.
So
people started trying to get back to being righteous.
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They tried to create their own
sinless state.
In particular, the Jews believed
that if they kept all the laws they had set,
their sins would disappear and
they would be justified.
So
they did their best to live according to what was written in the Law.
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However, human beings who
are sinners cannot keep the law 100%.
No one can be recognized
as righteous by God by keeping all the laws.
Romans 3:20 tells us
exactly that.
[Romans
3:20] Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing
the law; rather, through
the law we become conscious of sin.
In
other words, human strength can never restore the righteousness of the first
man, Adam.
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However, there are people
in the Old Testament who were considered righteous by God.
He tells Abraham, the
father of faith, that God counted him righteous.
Let's read Genesis 15:6
together.
[Genesis 15:6] Abram
believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
It is clearly
written that God considered Abraham righteous.
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It also explains
why God considered Abraham righteous.
He does not say
that God was justified by Abraham because he kept the law.
They say it was
because Abraham believed in Jehovah God.
Let's see what kind
of faith Abraham had.
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Abraham and Sarah had no
children.
God made a promise to Abraham
when he showed him the stars in the sky.
"Look at the sky. If you
can count them, count the stars.
Your descendants will be as
numerous as the stars."
Even
though he had no children, Abraham believed God's promise.
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God's promise was
not fulfilled even when Abraham was 99 years old.
And his wife Sarah
could no longer have children by human means.
But Abraham's faith
in God's promises did not weaken.
He
believed that God had the power to fulfill his own promises.
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God already knew that this great
faith was at the heart of Abraham. Seeing that faith,
God made Abraham righteous.
It was his faith in God that
nothing was impossible for Abraham to be recognized by God as righteous.
According to Abraham's faith, when he was 100 years old, he gave his son
Isaac,
and
made him a great nation as his descendants.
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[Genesis 15:6] Abram
believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
These
words that God ¡°counted as his righteousness¡± to Abraham
It's not just for Abraham. This is a word for us.
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We believe that Jesus died on
the cross for our sins.
We believe that God raised Jesus
from the dead.
Those who have this faith will
be justified just as God justified Abraham.
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The moment we have this faith,
we move from the place of sinners to the place of the righteous. Those who
have this faith have received the grace of being recognized as righteous by
God.
We who have received this grace
should always have a grateful heart to God.
You
must become people of faith who walk with the Holy Spirit in order to live a
life that glorifies the God who has given you grace.
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(This
is the sample conclusion provided by CTM. Please feel free to change the
conclusion to best suit the listeners of your sermon.)
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