How do I get right with God? (2 Sam 24, 1 Chr 21, Rom 4)

Could there be a more important question than this? How do I get right with God? Here is a question of eternal significance.

Every man-made religion says it’s about what you do. You have got to do something to get to God. Such an approach appeals to our pride, since it means we contribute something. We also feel that, like a taxpayer, we have rights, God owes us something if we have done something for Him.

But the Gospel says, it’s all about what Christ has done. You can never do enough to get to God, since you should be loving Him with all your heart all the time anyway, so you cannot make up for any failure by trying a bit harder. If we could get to God in our own strength then Jesus would not have needed to come into the world and die for us.

The Gospel strips away our pride, and it strips away our attempts to try and control God by our behaviour.

The Gospel is so much better, it tells us that it is all about what God has done, and not what we do.

But, someone might say, surely in the Old Testament it was about what people did. Surely they had the law, and the sacrificial system to get them right with God?

In Romans 4, Paul shows us that the way to get right with God has always been about trusting God rather than what we do. All of the law and the sacrificial system pointed forward to Christ’s perfect obedience and sacrifice for us. Paul gives the example of Abraham to make his point. Was there something Abraham did in order to get right with God? No! He couldn’t get right with God by what he did, he simply took God at his word, believing the promise that God made. He received righteousness as a gift! Romans 4:3 tells us “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

That is how to get right with God! Trust Him, take Him at His Word. For Abraham, that meant believing the promise that God would give him a descendant who would bring blessing to the nations. For us it means believing in that descendent (Jesus) who has brought blessing to the world by dying and rising again. That’s how Paul ends the chapter in v25, he speaks of Jesus being “delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”

We’re used to the idea of Christ dying for us, but here Paul says that Jesus’ resurrection is just as important! If Jesus had stayed dead then there wouldn’t be justification. If Jesus had stayed dead it would have meant that he had some sin of His own that he died for, but the fact that He rose means that He was sinless, and death couldn’t hold Him. His sacrifice had worked!

But what about circumcision! Didn’t that get Abraham some credit with God? No, he received righteousness as a gift from God through faith before he received the sign of circumcision. The circumcision was a sign that he believed, it was a seal of the promise that God made to him. It was given to him and his children as a sign that they belonged to God and that if they trusted God like Abraham they would also be made right with God through the descendent who would die in our place and be raised for our justification.

Now that Jesus has come, the way to be made right with God continues to be the same – it’s still by faith. But the sign has changed from circumcision to baptism. We no longer need the bloody sign of circumcision since Jesus sacrifice has dome away with the need for any blood to be shed. Instead, believers and their children receive the sign of baptism as a sign of belonging to God and a seal that God will keep His promise of forgiveness to all who trust in Jesus.

So how do you get right with God? Is it about what I do, or what Christ has done? Praise God it’s all about what Christ has done! In him all our sins can be covered.