Understanding Your Religion
7 Major Doctrines that Define Christianity
Becoming Acceptable to God (continued)
The Sub-Doctrine of Justification - Part 2
Stratégie d'enseignement
The focus of this lesson is on how God resolves the legal dilemma in justifying guilty sinners without compromising the Law. Of special note in this lesson is the contrast between man’s futile attempts at self-justification and God’s way to justify man.
Résultats de l'apprentissage des étudiants
- Know: Understand the contrast between the futility of man’s attempts to justify himself and God’s plan for man’s justification.
- Feel: Recognize the grace God grants us.
- Do: Live faithfully in recognition of God’s grace.
Corps de la leçon
Questions à discuter
Vous trouverez ci-dessous des suggestions de questions à utiliser pendant la partie de la leçon consacrée à la discussion guidée. Vous trouverez également des suggestions de réponses aux questions pour aider les élèves à saisir les différents concepts. Ces réponses sont fournies pour faciliter la discussion et ne sont pas considérées comme des réponses "justes ou fausses".
Primitive sacrificial system
Giving something to satisfy the anger or appetites of the gods. This was an attempt to manipulate the gods or make peace with the gods. A major problem is that the god was made in man's image including the shortcomings of man. Being a false god to begin with, it would be impossible for man to be justified.
Law keeping
To be acceptable before God, one must strictly keep the ceremonial/moral law. Over time man watered down or added to the law from man's perspective and lost sight of the intent of the Law given by God. Furthermore, it is impossible to keep the Law perfectly in spite of one's efforts.
Human philosophy
The belief that man controlled one's own fate through a higher level of understanding and wisdom through meditation and logic. The idea was that the more one knew and understood, the better he became. A major issue is that it was human philosophy and not God's will. Many of the requirements of God appear illogical to man. (As a follow-up question, consider asking for examples of man's philosophy in contrast with God's will. A good example would be the requirement of baptism to wash away our sins.)
Magic
Magic and belief in the occult tries to control the unseen world through the use of charms and rituals. Paul tells us we are in a spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:10-18). We cannot control the spiritual or unseen world, God does.
The time is now
We do not become acceptable to God before we are born or after we die. We are made acceptable in this life by God as we accept His method. God reveals in His word His requirements and we must accept and obey God.
The method of imputation
To impute means to put something on someone else. God put our sins on Jesus because we are unable to remove them ourselves (Romans 3:19-24).
The intent of this question is to have students internalize the idea that God justifies us. We cannot justify ourselves. He did/does so through the blood of Christ. When we accept His will then we are added to the body of Christ as adopted children.
As we learn the doctrine of justification – being made acceptable to God by God, we understand that it does what we cannot do. We cannot remove our sins through sacrifice, effort, philosophy, magic or any other means other than submitting to God's plan as He has revealed it in scripture. God brought this plan about because of His grace. We must accept that grace and respond to it by faith.