How to Justify Your Existence

11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
                                                                                                -Luke 18:11-14
 
Jesus tells us that one of the purposes of these two men praying was that they might be justified before God. One of them comes to God attempting to stand on his own record of very good stuff that he’s done.  He thinks his resume is what will justify him before God.
 
The other man knows that he has no hope in his own resume. He’s not done enough religious stuff to try to brag about it before God. So he merely throws himself at the mercy of the God who, as it turns out, prefers to be exalt the humble while humbling those who exalt themselves.
 
Everyone wants to be justified at some level.  We want to justify our actions, we want to justify our very existence.  We want to be right in both who we are and right in what we’ve done.  Ultimately, we need to be able to stand before God, fully justified.  
 
Given that all of us at some level want to be justified, Jesus presents us here with a choice.  We can either drum up our own justification or we can allow God to justify us. We cannot have both.
 
Most of us will spend our lives trying to justify ourselves with something that we do: our resume, our achievements, our religious activities, our careers, our kids that we’ve raised, our political or social causes, our Crossfit accomplishments--whatever we might find that makes us feel that we are good people and it has been good for us to be alive.
 
Jesus invites us off the treadmill of our performance into something much deeper, more relational, more connected, more grounded, and more glorious. In humility, we receive God’s gracious gift of justification, given to us in Christ.  In Christ, it’s not about who’s done how much but how much Christ has done on our behalf.
 
Spend some time this morning telling God that you don’t want your own record to justify you.  Tell God that you want Him to justify you instead.  Surrender your internal record of all the good that you’ve done and trust that God delights in it but that’s not what justifies you. Receive the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for your sins as the only eternal source of justification and give thanks with a humble heart.   

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