Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, Romans 5:1 NRSV
A few high school classes continue to help me in everyday life, bookkeeping, sales, and typing. Bookkeeping gave me an understanding of managing money. Sales taught me how to talk to others and determine what is important to them. But the most practical skill was typing. I recall sitting in class before a massive blue IBM Selectric, learning the QWERTY keyboard and typing endlessly, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” It was there I became aware of the concept of justification.
By default, everything is left justified; when you hit the return, you always start in the same place. For example, looking at this paragraph, you can see how the words perfectly align on the left. The ways of the world are left justified; we have laws, norms, and rules that endeavor to keep things neat and orderly.
There is also something called right justified, where the text ends in the same place, but the start of each line is ragged. For our purposes, we can think of that ugliness as sin. But, like sin, righty justification serves no purpose.
When we accept Christ, something extraordinary happens; we become fully justified by our faith. Gone are the ragged edges on either side; the text on our page is perfectly balanced. For this to happen, spaces are added between words and sometimes between letters. God is in those spaces. Though we continue to live in a left-justified world with right-justified sin, through Jesus’ sacrifice, we can find peace.
Father, we thank you for the justification that comes through your Son, Jesus Christ. May we open our hearts to the Holy Spirit today and allow it to clean up the ragged edges, adding spaces where needed so that we can enjoy your peace. Amen.
Blessings,
Pastor Tim
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