a relationship, not a process

The Word for today:
Romans 4:16-25

Paul goes to great lengths in Romans chapter 4 to describe the faith that saves:
God will credit righteousness to those who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. (Romans 4:24)

Now look more closely, paying attention to the order of the words:
God will credit righteousness to those who believe in him…

Stop right there! If you were to ask me what saving faith is, the question itself points to a fundamental error, for it is never a question of what saving faith is, but who saving faith is.

I point this out because it's so obvious that we can lose sight of it. But when we think of salvation in terms of what (the work of God) instead of whom (the person of God), we start to slide into an error associated with idolaters, who worship the creature (God's work) rather than the Creator (God himself). (1)

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Stand in the Rain is not in the hair-splitting business. Certainly those of us who say we believe in the cross and the resurrection are proclaiming saving faith.

But we can so focus on the saving work of God--rather than the Savior Himself--that we unconsciously approach the subtle idolatry of medieval believers who attributed spiritual power to slivers of wood that were said to have been part of "the true cross."

But a cross never saved anybody. It was only an altar which held the sacrifice.

And the blood of a sacrifice never saved anybody--until the blood was His. (2)

***

The Bible is the story of salvation. Like any story, it consists of two components--plot and character. Our salvation emanates from the character of God. The plot elements--the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ--are the inevitable after-effects of the saving nature of God.

Thus God was a Savior before he ever saved a soul--he is the Lamb who was killed before the world was made (3)--because salvation is a Person, not a process.

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(1) Romans 1:25; (2) see Hebrews 10:4; (3) Revelation 13:8