Day 13: Faith to Live By

In Romans 1:16, Paul stated the one basic requirement for experiencing the power of God for salvation: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” In God’s all-inclusive offer of salvation to the human race, He has laid down one simple requirement that never varies. It is faith.

In verse seventeen, Paul went on to explain how this truth of salvation can be known: “For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous man shall live by faith.’” Obviously, to “live,” in this context, means more than to have normal, physical life. We know that even the wicked and the ungodly have that kind of life. But Scripture reveals that there is another kind of life—a life of righteousness—that has its source in God alone. The only way that anyone can receive this kind of life is by faith in Jesus Christ. Having received this new kind of life through faith in Christ, we are faced with the challenge of working it out from day to day in practical living.

How are we to do this? The answer is simple: by faith. The verb “live” is one of the most all-inclusive words we can use. Everything we do at any time is included in living: eating, drinking, sleeping, working, and the innumerable other activities in life. Through faith, every one of these commonplace activities can become a way to express the life of God that we have received within us. We are often prone to assume that the mundane actions of daily life have no spiritual significance and offer no place for the application of our faith. But Scripture actually teaches the opposite.