The righteousness of God is imputed through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. There is no partiality, for God sees all men as having sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and can only be justified (made right with Him) freely by His grace alone through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.  To demonstrate His righteousness, Jesus Christ was set forth to pay the price of our redemption by His blood so that through faith, we could be reconciled to God.

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So anyone, through keeping the Law (his own righteous acts) cannot be justified before God. Romans 3:20[NIV] “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.” So when we judge another for his acts, words, presumed motives, we automatically come under the law, for the new covenant made through the blood of Jesus is a matter of the heart that believes and a mouth that confesses [Romans 10:9-10 “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”] No one can know the heart of a man other than God (Jer. 17:10) and it is from the fullness of the heart that the mouth speaks (Luke 6:48).

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Romans 3:10-18 gives us a list of things that happens in our heart if it is not set right before God.

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Throughout the New Testament we see Jesus perceiving the hearts of men and responding (John 2:24-25; Matthew 9:4; Luke 9:47).  God Himself says in Jeremiah 17:9-11 “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?  I, the Lord, search the heart….” So now who can stand before the Lord.  But thank God for His mercy for Ezekiel prophesied about the redemption to come in Ezekiel 36:26-27 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”  This is confirmed in 1 John 2:27: “But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true….” So now the law is not law of works (written in ink) but the law of faith written by the Holy Spirit on the tablets of our heart (2 Cor. 3:3).

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Proverbs 20:5 says “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters…” The problem with deep waters is that one cannot see the bottom. A diver who goes deeper into the ocean needs another light source to penetrate to see those things that lie at the bottom of the ocean. Only in God’s light can we see the true condition of the human heart. Jesus came to reveal the sinful and broken heart of humanity in order that those who are lost might come to repentance and salvation. Looking at it this way, the exact nature of the ministry of Jesus was that He came to unveil people’s hearts and to unveil the heart of God toward broken people. Without this initial unveiling of the fallen condition of our hearts we cannot be saved. Once saved we have to learn to live in an intimate relationship with God who loves us and writes His law in our hearts so that we live rightly before Him!

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Thought: "Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life."(Proverbs 4:23)