Day 49.

Hanging in my garden are 3 flycatchers. Inside the jars, I place a solution that stinks. Sometimes I stand there and watch as the flies swarm around looking for a way in. I have killed thousands of flies in these traps. Every time I pass one, I give it a swirl and drown the 20+ flies buzzing around inside. 
As I stood there one day, I asked myself, “Can’t they see the hundreds of drowned comrades in the solution? Can’t they see they are going to share the same fate! They are all trying so hard to get in the holes at the top. They will find the stench and be trapped. Then I asked myself, “Can’t people in the world see the stench of things they are attracted to; swarming around things that lead to death. Why do people choose that option over what God offers? The evidence is insurmountable! Jesus is who He claimed to be! This world is an orbiting cemetery and God has offered us a way of escape. 
Seasons, years, and lifetimes are brought to the shores of eternity like driftwood on an incoming tide. The tide returns and gathers them away and they are lost forever. A person’s life stretches like a shadow at evening and then fades into the darkness. And for what has it been. Why are so many people willing to live and die and never know why? Why would you want to go out of this world not knowing why you came into it? 
At the end of it all, we all end up at the judgement seat of God. (2Cor.5:10.) Our whole life comes into review – and what good has it been? What will you be able to point to and say, “This is my life?” 

The greatest thing I ever learnt was the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ alone without the works of the law. It is the hub of New Testament Christianity!  

The verb to justify is a key term for Paul. Of the thirty-nine times it occurs in the NT, twenty-seven are in Paul’s letters. Justification is a legal term, used in courts of law. It deals with the verdict a judge pronounces when a person is declared innocent of the charges brought against him or her. It is the opposite of condemnation. Additionally, because the words just and righteous come from the same Greek word, for a person “to be justified” means that the person also is counted as “righteous.” Thus, justification involves more than simply pardon or forgiveness; it is the positive declaration that a person IS righteous.  
Justification was also relational, it revolved around their relationship with God and His covenant. To be “justified” also meant that a person was counted as a faithful member of God’s covenantal community, the family of Abraham.