Reflections on Romans 4:3
“What does Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’” (Romans 4:3, NIV)
One modern paraphrase renders this verse to say that because Abraham believed, God “canceled his sins and declared him ‘not guilty.’” When I read that, my heart cried out. I want my sin condition healed! I want God to create in me a new, clean heart that no longer wants to be sinful and selfish. I do not want to be a pardoned sinner!
The Remedy captures what I long for: Abraham trusted God, “and his trust was recognized as righteousness because the distrust caused through Satan’s lies had been removed, and through trust he was endowed with a new heart, right motives and Christlike principles.”
How sad that anyone could believe God would do only a halfway job of healing His creation, that all through eternity we would have to keep arguing with our fallen natures.
A Clean Heart
The Lord will create a clean heart in us (Psalm 51:10). This means we will be free from the inclination to want to sin. The inner man of sin will be removed. In our walk with the Father, we will have crucified these sinful attributes of our characters. This is done by refusing to agree with, accept, or think on selfish, evil things. We starve the man of sin in us to death by refusing to feed him.
Every time we shut down the inclinations, thoughts, or actions to be selfish or sinful, we weaken this part of our nature. We don’t have the emotional or spiritual strength to wage this war alone. This is where the Father promises all the power of His throne to aid even the weakest member of His family who is choosing to wage this war. Any movement or choice in this direction floods our life with power from heaven.
When we begin this war, our ability to recognize and take in this heaven-sent Grace and power will be small. Each day, as we make our will subject to our wishes, along with the growing connection with the Father that comes from spending time with Him, our ability to take in more of His saving, healing power grows, as it does its work of healing and restoring us to the mind of Christ.
Our wishes are His wishes when we have His heart and mind in us. We truly want to do well; we are just running our new life on the old sinful platform in our brains. As we do the good, we change our inclinations, until our knee-jerk reaction is the mind of Christ acting first, not something we have to catch and redo.
Learning to Absorb
When our physical bodies are sick, it is all but impossible to absorb the nutrition from the good, healthy food we eat. One of the most energy-consuming things our bodies do is produce the hydrochloric acid bath the stomach uses to break down our food and release its nutrition. When the body is sick, this creates a downward spiral. We flood our body with good, nutritious food, but most of it passes through unabsorbed, because the body is too weak to make the strong bath needed to break it down.
So it goes in the spiritual life. The Father floods our hearts and minds with His healing Love and Grace, but we do not have the spiritual strength to absorb all He sends. In the beginning, only a little is taken in. Each day that we take time to commune with the Father, spend time in the Word, and meditate on His Love, our ability to absorb grows, and our connection to heaven grows with it. We are able to feast on and absorb greater and greater amounts of the healing nutrients sent straight from the throne of God. This is our spiritual healing journey.
Junk Food for the Mind
You must control your mind; there is so much power for good or evil in our thoughts. Keep your mind away from sinful, evil, selfish subject matter. Learn to feed on the beautiful, healthy, and uplifting. Close your mind to negative subject matter. Turn off the news and the TV. All the material pouring into you from every direction is destroying your connection with the Father and dwarfing your mind.
You would never knowingly let junk food cross your lips if you understood what it does to your body. Even one candy bar’s worth of sugar can weaken your immune response for hours afterward, leaving you open to whatever virus is floating by. Junk food throws open the doors of your body to invaders.
Junk food for the mind does the same. It breaks your connection with the Father and dwarfs your mind, making it harder for the healing power to enter and heal. And feeding your mind and heart on junk is addictive, just as junk food is. Choose to disconnect from the garbage media.
The more time you spend with the Father, the more you will want to be with Him. Your heart and mind will expand. This is your choice.
