By George R. Teshera

“Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Romans 3:28).

Many of us have gone into our rooms to ask the mirror on the wall, “Who is the fairest of us all?” There is only one answer, of course, and we like it. But Bildad the Shuhite asked, “How then can man be justified with God?”

An esteemed pastor of a church asked one of his godly men, an unlearned plowman, to tell him the most difficult thing in religion. The man returned the question to the pastor and received this answer: “It seems to me that the hardest thing in religion is to give up those pleasurable indulgences to which our nature is so prone, but which are contrary to real religion.”

The unlearned man then replied, “I think there is even a harder thing, and that is to feel that we are wretched and lost and perishing, and to give up all other hope than that which rests in the atoning blood of the Redeemer.”

I was wretched. I was lost. I was perishing. But thanks be to God, there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, for we are justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ.

I thank you, Lord, for redemption through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Originally published March 6, 1961