January 18 — Justified in Jesus

Hope for Today: A Daily Devotion from Reasons for Hope*Jesus

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“Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” Romans 10:4

The law calls for a perfect righteousness — which, in ourselves, never will be found; but all its demands were fulfilled by our Surety. Every true believer finds that righteousness in Christ which he stands in need of — and is enabled, through the Spirit, to rest upon it for justification. He faithfully endeavors to obey the law as the great rule of his duty both to God and man; yet he is so sensible of his own manifold defects, that he would utterly despair — if he could not look up unto Jesus, and say, “You will answer for me, O Lord, my God!”

Well may the apostle exclaim, “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things — and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law — but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.”

I will renounce all righteousness, as the ground of my justification before God — but the righteousness of Jesus alone. Yet will I daily walk by the precepts of His holy Word.

Devotion by Karl Heinrich von Bogatzky (1690—1774)