Justified by faith: Jesus told the rich man if his family did not believe Moses and the Prophets they would not believe if One were raised from the dead. The just live by faith.
Imagine you were with Jesus in His earthly ministry seeing His works of teaching and healing and feeding. After seeing the abundance of times He ministered to people without fail you still did not believe that He was the Christ.
In truth, not in accusation, did the Pharisees say Jesus was doing His work by the power of the devil. In other words they were not jesting or using a figure of speech but they made a direct charge against Him.
Now perhaps you can see why if they were to see One raised from the dead they would not believe. If they did not believe are seeing everything else Jesus did seeing Him raised from the dead would not bring about their faith.
If the just live by faith what is faith and what is the object of that faith?
Faith is believing the promises of God. In our day the object of faith is the person and work of Jesus Christ. All the promises of God are in Him.
The primary promise is that forgiveness of our sins is in His shed blood and our justification is confirmed by His resurrection from the dead. Therefore we are reconciled to God by faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
This faith in Him eliminates confidence in our own works for reconciliation with God. This would mean that God would justify us based on our good deeds but to be justified by faith is to be justified by our faith in Jesus’ good deeds.
In this justification Jesus Christ is glorified above all men forever as the One by whom the rest of us are reconciled to God. This is God’s goal that while we are on earth Jesus Christ is the supreme man and we all submit to His Lordship.
To conclude, therefore if you don’t believe in Moses and the Prophets who spoke of and pointed to the Christ then you won’t believe if One was raised from the dead.
