A Different Time

I receive daily devotionals from Walk Thru the Bible; and, I was struck by this one today.  It references Romans 4:

 Justification by faith is illustrated in the Old Testament through the lives of Abraham and David.

 To impute something means “to apply something to your account.” The Bible teaches that no one can earn salvation.  However, God will give it to us freely if we have faith in Him.  God honors the attitude of our hearts and imputes righteousness to our accounts.  To be able to impute righteousness to those living during Old Testament times, God looked ahead to the work of Christ on the cross.  Now he looks back to the Cross.  But in both cases, God’s people have been saved by grace through faith.

The only way those in the “faith” chapter – Hebrews 11 — could have been saved is by God looking ahead to the Cross.  This is truly amazing when you think of it.  However, as we see it, Jesus Christ was yet to be incarnated; so, with our logical, finite minds it can be difficult to grasp that the OT faithful could be saved by the Cross.  Weren’t they under the Law instead?  This is because we see time in a linear fashion.  The Greek transliterated word for ‘time’ in this sense is chronos [Strong’s # 5550] from which we get the word ‘chronology,’ for example.

Yet God is not constrained by time as we know it since He is living outside of it in ‘eternal time.’  This is why many of the NT passages which are spoken of in the present tense are actually in the future according to our linear time.  When the Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Church at Colosse, “Since, then, you have been raised up with Christ…” [Colossians 3:1a NIV] he was speaking of a future reality but also our present standing in Christ.  Since this is our future inheritance, Paul is instructing: “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” [v 3:2]

When I consider the lost sometimes I think, “Eternity is a l-o-n-g time.”  But, is that really an adequate expression of the eternal?  The finite mind just cannot grasp such a thing.  No beginning, no end: How can that be?  This should induce us to evangelize all the more.  Yet, I don’t evangelize as much as I should.  In the hustle and bustle of life, sometimes I just don’t have the time.  No – I don’t make the time.

Today is the day of salvation.  The time is now…