“Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.”

I have read Romans chapter five hundreds, if not thousands of times.  This morning verse 7 stood out, glaring at me with the fact that our selectivity of scripture likely leads to a life allowing scripture in when relevant, versus a life conforming to what the Bible teaches.  “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.  Romans 12:2 (KJV). 

We live in a tenuous time of scriptural selectivity to fit our lives and align with what our heart desires and mind chooses to believe, versus acceptance of the whole body of scripture, perfectly written as a guidebook for living and the assurance of eternity.

I love that God does not burden me/us with the responsibility of vetting people.  I love that he alone determines who is righteous.  Who is good.  What is relevant.  What is noise and deceiving, versus what is important and true.  I have often heard someone say “they’re a good person,” when the fact is one equally broken human is assigning what can only be assigned by the Creator of all things.  True value.  True worth.  Righteousness.

John 1:1 (KJV) says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  There are few more definitive statements of the truth, the value and the inerrancy of the God’s word than John 1:1.  I was recently with a group of men struggling with a book in the Bible that does not necessarily align with today’s modern viewpoint of gender, roles, gender responsibilities and gender assignments.  God’s Word being diminished by a desire to align it to our desires, subtly eroded through decades of male verses female that have brought us to the precipice rejecting the truth of the inerrancy of all of God’s Word.  And the acknowledgment that His Word was gifted in physical form through humans that he supernaturally delivered what always has been.  The Word.

One of the men in the group made a profound and true statement “that it is a slippery slope when we (humans) decide which books are relevant in the Bible” versus which can be discounted or ignored because they do not align with modern Christianity.  In Matthew 22:31-32, Jesus argued with the Pharisees over the tense of a single word.  Then in John 10:35, Jesus said that “the Scripture cannot be broken.”  In 2 Timothy 3:16 we are told that “All scripture is God breathed”

When speaking I often use the example of entrusting one of my family member’s life to a surgeon that requires a textbook to learn the surgery needing done.  While my loved one is at risk of dying without the aforementioned surgery, I choose not to entrust them to a person not ready to perform what is needed.  My point is this through this illustration is this, we must be ready, full of knowledge, understanding context, and delivering the true hope that is found only in the entirety of God’s Word, versus risking delivering a false doctrine based upon Biblical selectivity.  I expect the surgeon to be learned, skilled and capable of performing the needed surgery with a precision and ability gained from years of learning, practice and expertise.  So too does God expect us to pursue righteousness gained through surrender, study, learning and complete acceptance.

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Romans 5:6-8

Context!  I rest peacefully in the knowledge that ‘God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’  I accept that he knows what I need better than my limited human mind can ever comprehend.  I choose to trust  His Word.  A trust that has and continues to come through the reading and seeking the truth that only comes from His Word.

Faith leads to trust.  Trust to hunger for knowledge.  Knowledge that many things are beyond my ability to understand.  Which leads me back to trust.  Which surrenders to faith.

Trust that God’s Word, the Bible, is the only source of truth in this World.  Lighten the burden of life by surrendering to the truth that God has gifted us through His Word.  It is more than enough!