Salvation | a 5-Day Skate Church Movement Devotionalنموونە

Justification and Sanctification

“Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.” Romans 5:1

One thing I really love about skateboarding is that the simple act of consistently riding a skateboard makes you a skater. It doesn’t matter how long you have been skating, how many tricks you can do, or how many stairs you can jump down. The title of being a skater is not earned by how talented you are, but by the simple act of just riding a skateboard. It starts with the decision to pick up the board and to start skating. The same is true in how God sees us as being justified.

Justification is God seeing us in right standing with Him even though we have all sinned and are deserving of death. (Romans 5:1) The way we are justified is by placing our faith in the fact that Jesus is Lord and that He died on the cross for our sins. It is not based on anything we have done, the things that we are going to do, or our attempts to try to earn this justification and “rightness” with Him. So often people focus so much on trying to be a good person with the hope that it will get them into Heaven, but what we see throughout scripture is that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Our own efforts to be righteous apart from Jesus will always fail, but by putting our faith in Jesus, God sees the perfect, sinless life that He lived as a substitute for our own.

Even though the simple act of riding a skateboard makes you a skater, if you really commit yourself to skating–even though you will never be perfect–you will naturally get better at it. Sanctification is the act of becoming more like Christ over time. Becoming more like Jesus isn’t accomplished through our attempt to achieve “holiness” but it is the result of the Holy Spirit coming into our lives and changing our hearts. If you have put your faith in Jesus, you are reminded in Galatians 2:20 that “my old self has been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” As a result, the way we think and act starts to bear the “fruit” of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22 describes this fruit as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

There will never be a perfect skateboarder, but I’m confident that the more you or I skate, the better we will continue to get. We might not recognize this progression, but everything from the way we push, how we flip a trick, or even how we ollie, all continues to become easier and easier and more natural. This is the same as our walk with the Lord. We will never be SINLESS, but every day we surrender our lives to the Lord and put our trust in Him will naturally sin LESS.

pushing further

1. Do you feel like each time you skate you get a little better?
2. Do you feel like your walk with the Lord is similar?
3. Do you ever find yourself trying to earn God’s love?