No-Good Credit - Martin Wiles

God saved you by his special favor when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this. Ephesians 2:8 NLT

No-good credit. No one wants that.

Credit. The amount of money a particular lending institution is willing to loan me because they believe I’ll pay it back. Perhaps I’ve borrowed from them before, or they have checked my borrowing record. Credit cards have a credit limit. If my charges exceed that, they may honor my purchase, but I will pay a penalty. And everyone has a credit rating—a calculated number based on someone’s borrowing and repaying history. A low rating means I can’t borrow money, or if I can, I’ll pay an exorbitant interest rate. Credit is something we build based on past borrowing behavior.

If I’m timely with repaying my loans, my credit line increases, and my credibility with lenders rises. Not so with God. He issues no credit limit based on our current or past behavior. Our sinful nature kills our credit line, and good works can’t resurrect it. We can’t pay our sin debt, and because of that, our spiritual credit rating is the pits. We may repair our credit rating so lenders will risk lending us money again, but we can’t restore credit with God.

Fortunately, the credit picture with God isn’t all bad. What we can’t do for ourselves, God did for us. He won’t issue us credit personally, but he will give us Jesus’ credit rating.

Jesus has an excellent credit rating. Perfect. Sinless. Pure. Righteous. Spotless. He completely obeyed his Father’s plan. All we must do is ask, and God will credit his Son’s righteousness to our account. This allows him to forgive our sins, see us with his Son’s righteousness, involve himself in our lives, and grant us eternal life with him. 

Are you trying to get credit from God through some other means than Christ? God has only one way of approving our credit: our faith in Jesus.

Father, thank You for Your wonderful grace that allows us to be forgiven and cleansed.

Tweetable: How's your credit with God? 

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