Only Our Crimes Brought to God

How can a person be right with God, when our own so-called goodness is an offense against His holiness and justice?

The Apostle Paul repudiated his own law-keeping, and trusted only in the righteousness of Christ by faith in Him.

When we understand how God has provided Christ as the Lamb of sacrifice in our place, to take away our sin, and our righteous standing before God is only because of Christ's offering, and none of our own labor or goodness, then all the glory for our salvation goes to God alone!

We are glad to be left with nothing to boast about in ourselves!

In Romans 4, Paul uses the examples of Abraham and King David to prove that salvation is not of our own works, but only the free gift of God to us, received by faith in Jesus.

Abraham was respected as a righteous patriarch, and yet Paul quotes what God said about Abraham - that he believed in God's promises, and righteousness was imputed to him.

Instead of God justifying an obedient, good Abraham, Paul treats Abraham as ungodly when he was declared righteous! His obedience to God came after, not before, God declared him righteous, and that was only by faith, and not by any good works of Abraham at all!

Worse still is the case of King David. Instead of appealing to David's great works, or psalm writing, Paul reminds the reader that David was a sinner, a murderer and an adulterer!

Yet David described how God would not impute his sin against him! He was righteous, because God took away his sin!

We are not saved by bringing our good deeds to God.

We are saved by bringing our sin to God, which He takes away, and refuses to treat as ours anymore!

God lays our sins on Jesus instead.