Short of the Glory of God

Our Text:

Romans 3 : 23 NKJV
For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Romans 3 : 10-18 "As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one..." I have taken my time to quote all the Scriptures wherefrom the Apostle Paul took the statements following his "as it is written,"  from the Psalms,  Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah.

Psalm 14:1-3 NKJV
The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, They have done abominable works, There is none who does good. [2] The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. [3] They have all turned aside, They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one.

Ecclesiastes 7:20 NKJV
For there is not a just man on earth who does good And does not sin.

Psalm 5:9 NKJV
For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; Their inward part is destruction; Their throat is an open tomb; They flatter with their tongue.

Psalm 140:3 NKJV
They sharpen their tongues like a serpent; The poison of asps is under their lips. Selah

Psalm 10:7 NKJV
His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and oppression; Under his tongue is trouble and iniquity.

Isaiah 59:7-8 NKJV
Their feet run to evil, And they make haste to shed innocent blood; Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; Wasting and destruction are in their paths. [8] The way of peace they have not known, And there is no justice in their ways; They have made themselves crooked paths; Whoever takes that way shall not know peace.

Psalm 36:1-4 NKJV
An oracle within my heart concerning the transgression of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes. [2] For he flatters himself in his own eyes, When he finds out his iniquity and when he hates. [3] The words of his mouth are wickedness and deceit; He has ceased to be wise and to do good. [4] He devises wickedness on his bed; He sets himself in a way that is not good; He does not abhor evil.

Beyond any measure of doubt we can all agree that we have sinned against God.  We're born with a sin nature and we also sin. This has to be settled if we are to move forward in this discourse.
There has to be penalty for this situation, and throughout the Old Testament, it could not be settled,  but had to be covered daily with an incredible amount of bloodshed.  No blood however could settle it.

But thanks be God, and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, it was settled at Calvary! The question of the penalty was between God and Christ. Christ satisfied the demand of the law, and granted in God’s sight a complete pardon to all mankind, who are willing to accept the provision by faith, for all the sins they have committed: so that they are delivered by their faith, from the penalty they have incurred at once.

But the question of the guilt still being incurred, is another thing altogether; and the child of God, however far he may be advanced, if he is indeed enlightened by the Holy Spirit, must awaken to the consciousness that he has been incurring guilt in the sight of God, not because he has committed what are known among ourselves as definite, acts of sin against the codes of morality and respectability that man puts forward, but because he has incurred guilt in the sight of God: because he comes short of the standard that God puts up, and it may be brought home to his soul that he has committed an act, or spoken a word, or thought a thought, from which guilt will arise in the sight of God.

He must awaken, if his soul is sufficiently enlightened by God, to the consciousness that every thought, word, and deed that proceed from him has, in a deep spiritual sense, brought guilt upon his soul by being short of the glory of God, lacking the perfect holiness of the standard that the Lord Jesus Christ accepted in His person.

Independent of the man, the provision that Christ Jesus made for sinners and for sin, keeps the man, moment by moment, cleansed from this guilt, altogether independent of his feelings or experience; that is the availing power of the blood, for though the man comes short of the glory, and though he cannot walk in this mortal flesh up to the standard of the Lord Jesus Christ’s perfection, and is therefore in that sense, and only in that sense, a sinner, yet he need never have a feeling of depression on account of these unconscious shortcomings, because the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is cleansing him from all sin. Moment by moment as the thing proceeds from the man, springing from the sinful nature that lies deep within him, unconscious he may be of guilt, at the moment, yet incurring guilt, the man finds, by the grace of God, that he is kept cleansed, instant by instant, through the operation of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ in God's sight.

As long as we remain in this house of flesh, our offering is tainted and requires the cleansing power in the blood of Jesus to make it acceptable before God, otherwise there will altogether be no need for His blood to continue to work. The work done to justify us at Calvary would have been sufficient, but He continues to work! Hallelujah!

In an earlier post we talked about Isaiah exclaiming that he was a man of unclean lips, dwelling in the midst of people with like ailment.  This is the reason why.  We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. This is also the reason why we should take care in our judgments of others. Do I understand that the adulterer is a sinner? I should understand also that in the eyes of God, outside of the cleansing work of the blood of Jesus Christ, and His continual advocacy on my behalf, I am no better than the thief or the adulterer, or indeed the idolater.

#momomily2015