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When a wheel on your car is out of balance, it causes your car to vibrate more and more as your speed increases, also increasing the likelihood of damage to your car. Most people adjust to this state of being out of balance by slowing down. If the balance is bad enough, it’s almost impossible to drive the car at all! The obvious solution is to go get the tire balanced, but if there are financial (you can’t afford it) or time constraints (you’re in the middle of nowhere on a trip or just too busy with your life to take the time needed), then you just have to drive slowly, or not at all. Herein lies the reason that most people’s lives are going nowhere fast. They’re out of balance! They haven’t gotten the problem fixed. If they maintain their speed in life, things go wildly wrong; so they learn to slow down, perhaps even stop moving at all.
Who (Jesus) was delivered for our offenses, and was raised (again not in the text) for our justification. Romans 4:25
What does this verse have to do with a wheel on your car being out of balance? The word “justification” means literally “to be brought into balance.” Think of the scales of justice. The whole concept of civil and criminal justice is to bring and keep the interactions and relationships of mankind in balance. When the scale is tipped to one side by the committing of a crime, it needs to be balanced by a fitting punishment. For example: You stole from your neighbor? You need to pay him back (physical balance) and spend 10 days in jail (to bring your attitude into balance).
Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Romans 3:24
What brings our lives into balance not only exists, but also plays itself out in our lives in Christ. What is in Christ that brings us into balance is called redemption. Redemption (Greek apolutrosis) means a forgiving or releasing from a debt (lutrosis), with the added prefix (apo) meaning down or away from. In Christ we are not only released from any debt to God, but are also set free to totally ignore and forget about the debt ever existing and to adventure forth in life with no further thought or remembrance of the debt! We are not even to carry around in our minds the fact that we ever owed anything to God! This redemption comes about by God’s generous desire to provide the gift(s) necessary for us to live glorious lives. This is the truth of what Romans 3:24 tells us. Now how do we walk into the glorious reality of this perfectly balanced life?
Until the redemption that is in Christ Jesus becomes a living reality in your life, your life will be out of balance. You will go no faster than the balance of your life allows you. The more balanced, the faster you can travel in life, boldly without fear or hesitation; the more permanent will be your spiritual growth, with its attendant blessings. The less balanced, the slower you’ll travel, hesitantly, fearfully, guiltily; you’ll always seem to circle around to making the same mistakes over and over and over.
If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I John 1:9
I’m going to assume that Christ is in your life. If you don’t yet have Christ in your life, then receive the spirit of Christ Jesus into your life! Look at the death and resurrection of Jesus in the Bible, accomplished for you. Look at his subsequent ascension and glorification (seated at the right hand of God), and the sending of his spirit into the world. Yours for the asking. Do you want it? Then take it!
Per the verse above, acknowledgement of the sin (the thing which brings us out of balance) is necessary to be freed (forgiven) from its effect in our lives. Upon our acknowledgement of sin, God will always and with perfect balance free us from any debt/consequence of that error, the chief of which is our life being out of balance (un-righteousness). Righteousness is the state of having been justified, brought into balance (both words come from same Greek root). A righteous life is a perfectly balanced life.
Therefore by the deeds (doings) of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight; for by the law is the knowledge (epignosko – intimate experiential knowing) of sin. Romans 3:20
Our lives will never, can never, be brought into balance by any of our doings (including our reasoning, thinking, arguing, self-justifying). The balance of our lives is an inward thing, an inner reality. Either our lives are in balance or they are not, and nothing we do to try and bring ourselves into balance by our own efforts will ever succeed. Just give up. Just die to your own efforts. Go, get Christ. Once you have him, stay in him as much as possible.
But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ (his faith) unto all and upon all them who believe (our faith); for there is no difference; (between Jew and Gentile) for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans 3:21-23
What Jesus gained by his faith during his life on earth becomes ours by our faith in what he accomplished and was given. What he has to give is his perfectly balanced (righteous) life, which can only be appropriated unto ourselves by believing unto him.
But of Him are we in Christ Jesus, who from (apo) God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.
I Corinthians 1:30
As we get used to the sense of spiritual balance in our minds and hearts, we will quickly learn to avoid the things which take us out of that balance. Drama, anger, depression, lust, envy – these are some of the things which cause imbalance. The only reason you live with them is because you don’t know what a balanced life feels like, thinks like, lives like. As you become more and more conscious of the balance which is found in the life of Christ within you, your intolerance of that which causes imbalance will come into important play in your decision making, your reactions to situations and people.
God did it for us, freely. He gives us the perfectly balanced life of Christ to dwell within our beings and become our own perfectly balanced life. And in that balance we can explore with confidence the glory which God has called us to, fully expressing the glory of God – the Christ within.
And if Christ be in you, (though) the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness. Romans 8:10
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Related Studies
If you enjoyed how this study challenged your thinking and opened up your understanding of Christ, click on one of the related studies below:
Justified, what it means
The Need To Be Right.
The Gift of God’s Righteousness
On Becoming Perfect
The Faith of Christ has Come!
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