GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS THROUGH FAITH
There is only one way to be right with God. And that is to receive the righteousness of God through faith. Noah’s faith was in contrast to the rest of the world, which thought they could earn God’s favor. Noah received God’s justification by grace as a gift through faith. Whereas the world sought to earn God’s favor through self-effort, earning sin’s wages, which is death. Noah did not have the full light of the gospel, yet he had sufficient light to trust not in the ark, but in the God who told him to build it. It was not Noah’s faith that saved him, but the object of his faith. Noah believed God.
Today, we live in the full light of the gospel, seeing that the righteousness of God has appeared. For the righteousness of God is a Person, not a philosophy, a Savior, not a standard, a Lamb, not a law. For the righteousness of God is Jesus Christ. His coming fulfilled Noah’s forward-looking faith, as well as our faith that looks back to the cross, so that God “might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).