Your Spirituality Credit Score

What Is Your Spirituality Credit Score?

     Credit scores are important, especially if you want to buy some big ticket items; therefore, many of us watch to make sure we keep ourselves in a state where we have “good credit” or a good credit score.  Pay your bills on time… maybe a little early… and it doesn’t hurt your credit score; however, don’t pay them on time or be forgetful about paying them, and that credit score number will nose dive to an abysmal level and drown your financial security in the abyss of credit wreckage.  It takes working, paying attention, being on time or early, and we are in good shape… financially speaking. Needless to say you have to earn an excellent rating for your credit.  You have to work for it diligently.

   What about your Spirituality Credit Score?  How can you be sure you have “good credit” in the arena of spirituality? Isaiah gives us a hint when he says that our righteous acts of behavior “are like filthy rags.”  (Isaiah 64:6)  That sounds like a low score to me.  Paul says, “All have sinned and have come up short of what God would have us be spiritually….” (Romans 3:20.)  In other words, we have broken God’s law and our spirituality credit score is way below where it needs to be for us to be really alive. Spiritually speaking the “credit score” may even seem more bleak as we hear these word, “There is none good NO NOT ONE!” (Romans 3:10.) Say What?

    Now wait a minute!  Is this saying that no human being can have a high spirituality credit score?  No, I don’t think this is what is intended at all. I have heard people tell me,  “I have bad news and I have good news.”  I just gave you the bad news, but there is more to come.  We quoted (or I should say misquoted) Romans 3:20 because we left out the big picture or the context.  If you read all of Romans 3:20, with the verses that follow, it reveals something entirely different.  So, let’s try it again: “All have sinned and have come up short of what God would have us be spiritually, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”  What in the world does justified mean?  It means to be credited with being righteous.

     So let’s put the good news together here regarding our potentially positive spirituality credit score.  Yes, we have indeed blown it and our spirituality credit score should be “in the tank;” however, God redeems the situation as we place our faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord of our lives. He justifies us when we believe in Jesus.  That is He gives us the spirituality credit score of Jesus.  He credits us with Jesus own righteousness.  “Once we were alienated from God and enemies in our own minds, but now He has reconciled us by Christ physical body through death, and He did this to present us HOLY in HIS Sight, WITHOUT BLEMISH and Free From ALL Accusation, if we continue in the faith, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.” (Colossians 1:21-23.)  Needless to say God seems to have reconciled “the books” of our spirituality credit score and, through Christ Jesus given us the perfect score.

   One more time I ask this question:  “What is your spirituality credit score?”  You cannot do anything to build it up, but you can connect by faith with Jesus.  When you sincerely do this, the good news of the gospel teaches that He declares you a “holy” person who is not spiritually “blemished,” and in God’s sight you become “free from all accusation.”  He also promises in Romans 5:1, since we have been justified (given credit for being righteous) by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Jesus really did pay it all.  He really did pay our sin debts.  He paid the debt in full. He only asks that we turn from the sins that wreck our lives to receive a “sweet deal.”  He only asks that we then believe in Him and follow Him out of the darkness into the light. (John 8:12)

  What are you going to do with the abysmal spirituality credit score that is a huge part of our broken human condition?  You can stay broken and live independently of God. Or you can surrender to the one who gives you a perfect record in God’s sight and “scores you” as spiritually whole.

SoJourner.