That being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Titus 3:7
For someone who had spent most of my writing career pounding on the keys of a manual typewriter, the arrival of computers and word processors in the newsroom marked a huge transformation. Part of that transformation in the 80s and 90s was the arrival of an entire new vocabulary surrounding the new technologies we were using. Many of these new words are commonplace now, but at the time, they fell upon my ears as unusual and strange. One of those words I was actually very familiar with, but its context was totally different: the word ‘justified’ that appears in today’s text.
As Christians, we all know about being justified as a wonderful aspect of our salvation. We can all quote such lovely verses as Romans 3:24 : ‘Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’, and Romans 5:1: ‘Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’. And we recognize that being justified means being right with God, or as we used to say, ‘just as if I had never sinned’. This is a precious reality as we consider that our justification is provided to us by God’s grace, which means it is something that we receive without deserving it. But there is also a different aspect of being justified that we can learn from our word processors.
Almost every word processor I have ever used allows me to justify, or align, the words either to the right or the left of the page, or to centre them on the page. In most cases, the content is justified to the left of the page because that is the most comfortable for the reader. Our text is not talking about words but about Christians, but the principle is the same. When God saved us, He justified – or aligned – us with Himself in every aspect of His character. Sadly, we do not always display that alignment in our lives as we should. Does our life line up with the holiness and righteousness of God? Does our speech line up with the truth and graciousness of our Lord Jesus? Does our love for the Lord’s people line up with the love that our Saviour displayed and commanded among His disciples? Does our compassion for lost souls line up with the tears and longings that we read concerning Christ in His gospels?
We are justified; now we need to go forth and display that justification today and every day. – Jim MacIntosh