Romans 3:26
"To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness; that he might be just, and be the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus."
This includes His death, burial and resurrection – but never forget the shed blood. So now its time to look at the word “believe” as here used: Strong's number G4102 and we'll use the Thayer's definition: the conviction of the truth of anything, belief; in the NT of a conviction or belief respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, generally with the included idea of trust and holy fervor born of faith and joined with it, the conviction that God exists and is the creator and ruler of all things, the provider and bestower of eternal salvation through Christ, the conviction or belief that Jesus is the Messiah, through whom we obtain eternal salvation in the kingdom of God, the belief with the predominate idea of trust (or confidence) whether in God or in Christ, springing from faith in the same, fidelity, faithfulness, the character of one who can be relied on. All this from a base of G3982 and again from the Thayer's: persuade; to believe, to listen to, obey, yield to, comply with, to trust, have confidence, be confident.
All right, let’s come over to another one in Ephesians chapter 2. I like to start at verse 11, because see here again, what a difference from Hebrews. Hebrews is talking to Jews who’d been under the Levitical Law for centuries. But the Gentiles are just now coming into the picture with Paul’s apostleship. And so he reminds us:
Ephesians 2:11a
"Wherefore remember, (call to mind) that ye (Gentiles) being in times past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called the Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision…(that is by the Jew)" Now verse 12,
Ephesians 2:12
"That at that time (while God was dealing with the Hebrews under the Law) ye (Gentiles) were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, without God in the world."
That was the lot of the Gentile world. They were hopelessly lost. Only the Hebrew was under that economy of Law. But the next word is what? "But" The flipside! We’re no longer in that darkened area. We are now on this side of the Cross so the flipside is:
Ephesians 2:13
"But now in Christ Jesus ye who were at one time far off are made nigh (that is to God,) by the blood of Christ."
By the blood! You can’t cancel that out. You can’t throw that aside and say that’s a slaughterhouse religion. Sorry. Call it what you will but God demands our trust in His faith and our having to pass through trails to develop faith in that shed blood – as we said in the last section, "It’s the blood that purges us from our sin and the conscientiousness of it." And if you’re going to cast that aside, you’re in trouble. That’s all there is to it. You’re in trouble. I have to come back to this – I know a gentleman who was trying to show his brother-in-law what the Scripture said in plain English and his brother-in-law looked at it and said, "But I don’t believe that." And Willard said, "Then you’re in trouble. You see that is to be in lawlessness.”
Well put, right? Then you’re in trouble. If you can’t believe what The Book says when it’s directed to us Gentiles then we’ve got a problem! All right, so the blood of Christ is what brought us nigh, near to God. But when we've passed through the crisis of the cross we're no longer a Satan-child but have become a God-child which means we now have access to God Himself. Because of the power of Holiness which raised Christ and us from among the dead, the spiritually dead. For this was the purpose of the lambs blood sprinkled on the doorposts and the eating of that lamb while the death angel passed over Egypt. And then, we can come back again to Hebrews and after Moses has now introduced this whole blood concept, not just with sprinkling the altar; not just with sprinkling the Ark of the Covenant – but He sprinkled everything, including the people – and the reason is in verse 22.
Hebrews 9:22
"And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission."
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