The Gospel Is Better Than Most Realize!

Monday's SS lesson reads:

"Now, it is true we are judged by works—but not in the sense that works save us. If so, then faith is made void (Rom. 4:14). Instead, our works reveal whether we truly have been saved (James 2:18)."
[Sabbath School Quarterly Lesson, Monday, March 15, 2021]

Honestly, I used to be so confused by this. It seemed to me like we needed to have good works, as James said, but it was sort of like icing on the cake, if you know what I mean. I thought that Paul, in some places in his writings, was saying that it was okay to have sin in our lives as long as we believed in Jesus and received His forgiveness.

But we have come to understand that this was not what Paul was saying. While it is true that all of us HAVE sinned, it is not true that we all must therefore STAY in sin. God gives us His grace, which is unmerited favor and unconditional love, because He does desperately love us - no matter what. But this is not enough to save us. We are saved BY grace – that is, because of love, God does not leave us to our own devices, left to experience the effects of sin without any help, but instead sends us messages of truth that will purify us from sin if we will receive these messages intellectually and apply them to our lives spiritually, as Ellen White said in the previous quote. This is what imparted righteousness is. God imparts or gives righteousness to us in messages of truth. But you can see that grace alone does not save us...we need to take these gracious imparted messages of truth, battle to understand them in our minds and hearts like Jacob wrestled with the angel, and then apply them to our lives, and therefore become like Israel. This is what redemption is. (See Ephesians 2:8-9)
And yes, redemption obviously necessitates forgiveness of our past sins, but this occurs only when we have OVERCOME sin. Once we are no longer a danger to ourselves and others, we have righteousness imputed, or ascribed, to us.
Through imputed righteousness, we are accounted righteous because we now actually are righteous. And this is what Paul was saying.
Romans 3:24-26 reads,

"... justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood [or his life], through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were PREVIOUSLY committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." [Romans 3:24-26]

To have faith in Jesus is to trust in his ways...to trust in his life...to follow his example, understanding that it is only through selflessness that we can have eternal life.
The Gospel of Justification by Faith, as we have just seen, is about having our sins taken away once and for all and to live Christ's life from that point on; truly being a changed person who really does follow Christ moment by moment, overcoming each temptation as we meet it. We really can have this experience. The simple truth is that the gospel is better than most realize: The life that God offers to us is not a repeating cycle of sinning and forgiveness; it is Christ's life - a life of pure righteousness by which all the beings of heaven will be able to see that we are a follower of Christ and fit for the heavenly kingdom.

Sabbath School Q1 2021: Isaiah - Week 12
A Branch Davidian Seventh-Day Adventist perspective on the Sabbath School lesson.
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