Devotions

In Romans 1:17 his focus was on the righteousness of the just man who lives by faith. He demonstrated in Romans 1-3 that all men are without righteousness before God’s law (3:10-11, 20, 23). Through the shedding of Christ’s blood, God pardoned the sins of believers (Romans 3:25; 4:7-8). God also took the obedience of Christ and imputed it to His children (Romans 4:3, 24; 5:16-19). The just man truly was righteous in God’s sight for he was robed in the righteousness of Christ (Isaiah 61:10).

In Galatians 3:11, Paul emphasized the “faith” in the verse “the just shall live by faith.” Heretical teachers had come into the Galatian churches teaching that Gentile believers were not adopted or justified unless they merited these blessings by keeping the law (Galatians 3:1-5; 5:2-12). Paul demonstrated that it was faith and not works that made one a child of Abraham (Galatians 3:7, 29) and a child of God (Galatians 3:26). Throughout the epistle Paul emphasized that “a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ … for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Galatians 2:16).

In Hebrews, there was a different difficulty in that Jewish believers were tempted to turn from their faith in Christ (10:32-39). The latter half of Habakkuk 2:4 was again brought forward, only now the emphasis was on the word live. They were not to draw back but to persevere “to the saving of the soul” (10:39). Each hero of faith in Hebrews 11 and even the Lord Jesus Christ (12:2-3) was written about to encourage the just to “live by faith.”