LayGuy

“This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3:22-23

There are heaps of Christian “bashers” who love using this verse against us who believe. They like using comments like “what if I was the most caring and loving person on this planet but I didn’t believe in your Jesus, would I still go to hell?”To the carnal mind, this logic is logical. You do good, you ought to be rewarded. This is how we as humans define righteous behaviour - you have to do good. You can’t be righteous and still end up in hell. And therefore your religion sucks - they conclude.

I’m going to try keep this short and hopefully expand on it later. What if righteousness means something completely different to what we think it means? In the bible, when people do “good” things to earn salvation, it describes these things as “works leading to death.”

In contrast, when people believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, God credits this as righteous behaviour. Take Abraham’s example with Isaac as a case in point. It’s not what Abraham did or didn’t do, it’s what happened in his mind that was credited to him as “righteousness”.

So what’s my point and how does it relate to the scripture quoted? It states that we have fallen short of the Glory of God. This is despite our best intentions and in many cases, “world-class human morals”.

Now is where I draw your attention to the picture at the top of this post. We are created in the image of God. Only Jesus, Angels and Adam are listed in the bible as a “child” of God. We will become bona fide children at the resurrection.

Most people probably think that mankind has “evolved” - ie we are now more technologically advanced then ever before. This may be the case in many areas. But what about in the area of mind and spirit?

If Adam was made in the image of God, he would have a spiritual connection with God. Remember God walked with them in the garden. He was unique in creation in that he was able to communicate and have a relationship with his Creator.

And secondly, his mind must have been far more powerful. Some scientists like to speculate at the memory required by Adam simply to name all the animals on the planet. We use a small fraction of our brains. Some say it’s like one tenth of one percent of our total capacity.

I was reading a book one day where these autistic twins are described at having incredible brain power. A person dropped a box of matches in front of them and the moment the matches hit the floor, both kids said 38. Puzzled, the person counted the matches and found that there were in fact 38 matches. He asked the boys how they counted the matches so quickly and they replied that they didn’t count them, the simply saw 38.

And then we have the nerve to call these kids disabled! Autistic kids are bombarded by sensory input that you and I simply filter out. But if our mind has the capacity to absorb this input as well as everything else we filter, our experience in life would be vastly different from that which it is now.

So have we fallen short from the glory of God? Like the picture at the top of this entry, even the most well meaning, highest moral standing person ever, is simply a broken vessel when compared to the original creation.

And how does this relate to righteousness? I will have to continue another time.

humanity, fallen, mind,