"Justifying grace" is the grace of salvation through Jesus Christ. Read Ephesians 2:8-10. The Jewish religion places a very high value on righteousness. Righteousness means right behavior, right words, right thinking, and right everything else according to the Torah, the five books written by Moses that we know as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Apostle Paul was a righteous Jewish Pharisee who followed the law. One day on the road to Damascus, as he was hunting down Christians, Jesus came to him and asked, “Why do you persecute me?” According to Paul’s testimony, he accepted Jesus as his Lord that day and adopted a grace-based theology of salvation. We see his new understanding in the letters he wrote, like the one to the Ephesians when he wrote, “It is by grace through faith you have been saved, not by works.” Righteousness comes through Jesus, not by doing all the right things. We are justified by the blood of Jesus, not by what we do. We are restored into a right relationship with God because of what Jesus did on the cross. Grace is God’s free gift of salvation and eternal life. Our response to the gift is to receive it and then faithfully follow Jesus all the rest of our days.

Holy God, we thank you for Jesus and his sacrifice. We put our faith in Jesus, and today we are determined to follow Jesus as Lord. Let my words and deeds reflect the values of Jesus so that others may put their faith in you. Amen.