Deleted Scenes: Don't be a spiritual miser. Romans 3:21-31

On Sunday here at The Bridge, we talked about some beautiful words. And I don’t just mean in the way they sound when you say them or look when you see them on a page. On that note, I did do a quick Google search to see what English words people thought sounded the most beautiful. Ephemeral and serendipity were popular picks. One person suggested “gorn”, which apparently is the name of some reptilian species from Star Trek? Not sure I’m on the same page as that person in terms of beauty. But I’m not talking about words that sound great. I’m talking about words that have beautiful meanings. I’m talking about words from Romans 3:24-25 like “redemption”, “grace”, “atonement”, and “righteousness”. Words like that are windows into the stunning, world-changing, life-saving work of our Lord. You could meditate on those words for a long time and not exhaust the riches that are buried in them from a biblical perspective.

And actually, I would recommend that. I would recommend we all dwell on those words in a deeper way. That’s because most of us, even if we are Christians, often don’t live as though they’re true. Or at least we seem to be ignorant of the implications. We might live as though we’re still in bondage to sin. We might live as though we were still trying to gain God’s favour with our goodness. We might worship idols in our heart as though those will give us some kind of satisfaction. The problem often is that we haven’t fully believed the truth that we say we believe. We act as though the Gospel wasn’t true.

We’ve probably all heard about misers- wealthy people who live as though they have nothing to spare. One of the most famous in history was a woman named Hetty Green. She lived in the late 19th century and was the richest woman in the world in her time, with something like 2-5 billion dollars in modern terms to her name. And yet, according to her Wikipedia article, “she was said never to turn on the heat or use hot water. She wore one old black dress and undergarments that she changed only after they had been worn out”. One story is that she told her laundress to only wash the dirtiest parts of her dress to save money on soap. She had everything and yet lived as though every spare penny was a life or death matter.

In Ephesians 1, Paul writes that “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us” (1:7-8). A few verses later, he prays that “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe” (1:18-19). He has lavished this grace on us. We need to know the riches of His glorious inheritance. The truth is, spiritually speaking, we are rich beyond our wildest dreams through the Gospel.

Here is my great need: to have the knowledge of my redemption, my righteousness through faith, my salvation through grace, penetrate every part of my heart so that I live in line with it. May I not be like a miser, seemingly ignorant of the riches I have access to, living a life that is radically dissonant from what my spiritual bank account says is true. God has made me righteous. He has showered His grace on me. May that knowledge thoroughly penetrate our hearts and shape our lives.