When a person works, his pay is not given to him as a gift. He earns the pay he gets. But a person cannot do any work that will make him right with God. So he must trust in God. Then God accepts his faith, and that makes him right with God. God is the One Who can make even those who are evil right in His sight. David said the same thing. He said that a person is truly blessed when God does not look at what he has done but accepts him as good: "Happy are they whose sins are forgiven, whose wrongs are pardoned. Happy is the person whom the Lord does not consider guilty." For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

   In Christ, you were circumcised, not by any physical act, but by being set free from the sins of the flesh by virtue of Christ's circumcision. You shared in that, just as in baptism you shared in His death, and in Him shared the rising again to life - and all this because you have faith in the tremendous power of God, Who raised Christ from the dead. You, who were spiritually dead because of your sins and your uncircumcision, God has now made to share in the very life of Christ! He has forgiven you all your sins: He has utterly wiped out the written evidence of broken commandments which always hung over our heads, and has completely annulled it by nailing it to the cross. And then, having drawn the sting of all the powers and authorities raged against us, He exposed them, shattered, empty and defeated, in His own triumphant victory!

   God made us free from the power of darkness, and He brought us into the kingdom of His dear Son. The Son paid for our sins, and in Him we have forgiveness.

   In Christ we are set free by the blood of His death. And so we have forgiveness of sins because of God's rich grace. God gave us that grace fully and freely. God, with full wisdom and understanding, let us know His secret purpose. This was what God wanted, and He planned to do it through Christ. His goal was to carry out His plan when the right time came. He planned that all things in heaven and on earth would be joined together in Christ as the head.

Taken from Rom. 4, Col. 1, Eph. 1, The Phillips Translation and The Everyday Bible.
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