Q.33. What is justification?

A. Justification is the act of God’s free grace by which He pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in His sight. He does so only because He counts the righteousness of Christ as ours. Justification is received by faith alone.

Justification is God’s declaration that we are right in His sight. He declares us to be not guilty because of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Jesus has lived the perfect life that He grants to His people, and He has taken their sins and paid the price for them. Therefore when God looks at those who are trusting in Christ for salvation, He sees Christ’s righteousness, not their sins.

It is in this way that God is just in punishing sin, and He also justifies (declares to be righteous) the sinners who come to Him through faith in Jesus Christ.

Romans 3:21-26

²¹ But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it– ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. ²⁶ It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

It’s been a pretty busy day for softball today. The Knilram family had three games, of which I could only attend two due to the overlap of the games. But in those two, I saw a couple things I’ve never seen before.

The first game I could attend was in the coach pitch league. It is named coach pitch because the coaches pitch to their players. Right in the middle of one kid’s at bat, the other coach’s cell phone rang. He stopped to answer it.

“Hello. [pause] The key is in the cabinet. [pause] Yes, you’ll need it. [pause] Listen, I’ll have to call you back in a few minutes. Bye.”

In all my years of watching and playing ball, I’ve never seen a pitcher take a phone call in the middle of an at bat. That was something new for me.

But think of the possibilities. The manager could call from the dugout to tell the pitcher to “THROW STRIKES!” instead of having to walk all the way to the mound to give him that valuable advice.

The second game that I attended was the 10 to 12 year old league. There is one girl on the team who has never played softball before. She’s done a good job learning the game, but everything is new for her, and she sometimes doesn’t know what to do.

Today she managed to beat out an infield single. It was good base running on her part. The next batter grounded out to the second baseman, but our new player safely advanced to second base.

Then, because she got confused about what had happened, perhaps thinking the umpire had called the hit a foul ball, she turned around and trotted back to first base.

At first, no one noticed. But then the first base coach saw her and told her to get back to second. This caught the attention of other team’s pitcher, and she turned around and threw the ball back to the second baseman. They tagged her out as she came into second.

I guess that if she would have stayed at first base, she would have been safe. I don’t know of any rule against moving backwards on the base path when there is no runner behind you, but that is a situation I’ve never seen.

In a coach pitch game earlier in the year, when a girl struck out for the first out of the inning, the runners on first and second base ran in to their dugout. I guess they thought it was three outs and the inning was over. We didn’t notice at first and the other coach pointed out that we should have runners on base. I turned to look, and there were the empty bases. We had to call the girls to come back to their bases to finish the inning. So I guess I’ve seen girls leave their bases, but not to go back to the previous base.

“I’m Esmé Gigi Geniveve Squalor, the city’s sixth most important financial advisor,” she announced grandly. “Even though I am unbelievably wealthy, you may call me Esmé. I’ll learn your names later.”

– Lemony Snicket’s The Ersatz Elevator

Caption: “Italian actress Asia Argento poses during arrivals for amfAR’s Cinema Against AIDS 2005 event in Mougins, during the 58th Cannes Film Festival, May 19, 2005. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard”

Who says you need fancy, high-tech tools to defeat criminals?

Headline Tribune-Review: Burglary suspect caught, bound by neighbor

Rick Boggio once killed a 1,000-pound Kodiak bear with a bow and arrow.

This week, the Derry Township man nabbed a burglary suspect — with a roll of duct tape.

When Boggio, 43, heard glass breaking at the Barkley Beer Distributor near his home in Bradenville at about 1:15 a.m. Thursday, he went to investigate. Boggio said the business owner, Geano Agostino, is an old friend of his.

Boggio walked the 250 yards across a field and saw a broken window at the distributorship. He said that he then saw a head coming out of it.

Boggio reached in the window and grabbed the suspect, John Malletz Jr.

“Just as I got there, he was about to leave,” he said. “I extricated him from the building. I guess you could say I restrained him.”

Boggio’s son, Dakota, 17, brought along a roll of duct tape, which they used on Malletz.

“We duct-taped his arms behind his back,” Boggio said.

Although the duct tape worked in this case, it isn’t a technique I would recommend. A better method would be my Father’s all-purpose fix: squirt the criminal with WD-40 and hit him with a ball-peen hammer.

Or, like Harpo, just use a brick.

Why did Boston win the 2004 World Series?

Headline Telegraph: Wearing red gives opponents blues

Sporting competitors are more likely to emerge victorious if they are wearing red, according to a study of performance in a range of Olympic events.

Red coloration is associated with high testosterone, fitness and aggression in a variety of creatures, such as mandrills, sticklebacks and birds.

Now two evolutionary biologists at Durham University have found the same effect might also operate in humans to subconsciously put an opponent on the back foot, whether in a fight or a sporting event.

It’s the socks.

Hollywood is a tough place for someone who gets too closly associated with a particular role. Everyone always thinks of them as that one character, and no one will hire them for any other acting jobs.

So what’s an actor to do when the movie series has run its course and there are no new acting prospects? Better start checking out the “Help Wanted” section of the local paper.

AP Photo:

Caption: “Hugo Casachahua, dressed as Darth Vader, one of the main characters in the Star Wars saga, reads a newspaper while waiting for the premiere of ‘Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge of the Sith’ in Lima, Peru Wednesday, May 18, 2005. (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)”

The year was 1720. Stock speculation was rampant in England as people sought to become rich buying stocks in all sorts of fly by night companies promising a quick buck.

[I]nnumerable joint-stock companies started up everywhere. They soon received the name of Bubbles, the most appropriate that imagination could devise. The populace are often most happy in the nicknames they employ. None could be more apt than that of Bubbles. Some of them lasted for a week, or a fortnight, and were no more heard of, while others could not even live out that short span of existence. Every evening produced new schemes, and every morning new projects. The highest of the aristocracy were as eager in this hot pursuit of gain as the most plodding jobber in Cornhill. The Prince of Wales became governor of one company, and is said to have cleared 40,000l. by his speculations.13* The Duke of Bridgewater started a scheme for the improvement of London and Westminster, and the Duke of Chandos another. There were nearly a hundred different projects, each more extravagant and deceptive than the other. To use the words of the Political State, they were “set on foot and promoted by crafty knaves, then pursued by multitudes of covetous fools, and at last appeared to be, in effect, what their vulgar appellation denoted them to be—bubbles and mere cheats.” It was computed that near one million and a half sterling was won and lost by these unwarrantable practices, to the impoverishment of many a fool, and the enriching of many a rogue.

Some of these schemes were plausible enough, and, had they been undertaken at a time when the public mind was unexcited, might have been pursued with advantage to all concerned. But they were established merely with the view of raising the shares in the market. The projectors took the first opportunity of a rise to sell out, and next morning the scheme was at an end. Maitland, in his History of London, gravely informs us, that one of the projects which received great encouragement, was for the establishment of a company “to make deal boards out of saw-dust.” This is no doubt intended as a joke; but there is abundance of evidence to shew that dozens of schemes, hardly a whit more reasonable, lived their little day, ruining hundreds ere they fell. One of them was for a wheel for perpetual motion—capital, one million; another was “for encouraging the breed of horses in England, and improving of glebe and church lands, and repairing and rebuilding parsonage and vicarage houses.” Why the clergy, who were so mainly interested in the latter clause, should have taken so much interest in the first, is only to be explained on the supposition that the scheme was projected by a knot of the foxhunting parsons, once so common in England. The shares of this company were rapidly subscribed for. But the most absurd and preposterous of all, and which shewed, more completely than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one started by an unknown adventurer, entitled “A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.” Were not the fact stated by scores of credible witnesses, it would be impossible to believe that any person could have been duped by such a project. The man of genius who essayed this bold and successful inroad upon public credulity, merely stated in his prospectus that the required capital was half a million, in five thousand shares of 100l. each, deposit 2l. per share. Each subscriber, paying his deposit, would be entitled to 100l. per annum per share. How this immense profit was to be obtained, he did not condescend to inform them at that time, but promised that in a month full particulars should be duly announced, and a call made for the remaining 98l. of the subscription. Next morning, at nine o’clock, this great man opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds of people beset his door, and when he shut up at three o’clock, he found that no less than one thousand shares had been subscribed for, and the deposits paid. He was thus, in five hours, the winner of 2,000l. He was philosopher enough to be contented with his venture, and set off the same evening for the Continent. He was never heard of again.

– Charles Mackay in Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Once again, we see that there is nothing new under the sun.

Source: Randy J.

I’ve played some tough games of hide-and-seek, and I’ve tried to enlist our primary dog in the search. (She always gives away my hiding spot, but she doesn’t always point out the kids for me. Traitor.) But this is going a bit too far to win game of hide-and-seek.

Headline AP: Call off cavalry: It was hide and seek

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — Two young boys’ apparent game of hide-and-seek prompted a massive search involving dozens of people, a helicopter, military planes and at least three K-9 units.

The boys — both about 5 years old — were found hiding under a bed in their grandmother’s Darkesville-area home Thursday afternoon, about 90 minutes after they were reported missing.

“The kids had a game of playing hide-and-seek,” said Chief Deputy Kenneth Lemaster Jr. of the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Department. “It was a game to them.”

Almost all available law enforcement officers took part in the search. Local media outlets were contacted, and crews aboard several West Virginia Air National Guard C-130 planes, already flying in the area, were asked to help. A Maryland State Police helicopter also participated in the search.

One of the dogs eventually picked up the children’s scent and started tugging on a blanket they were wrapped up in under the bed, Lemaster said.

Headline AP: Aviary to Send Rare Bird Eggs to Russia

It reminds me of an old Dr. Seuss book, back from before the days of political correctness:

To make the best scramble that’s ever been made
A cook has to hook the best eggs ever laid.
So I drove to the country, quite rather far out,
And I studied the birds that were flitting about….

The places I hiked to! The roads that I rambled
To find the best eggs that have ever been scrambled!
I hunted new birds along wild tangled trails,
Through gullies and gulches, down dingles and dales.

– Dr. Seuss in Scrambled Eggs Super!

“Oh, hello Bertie” he [Catsmeat Potter Pirbright] said. “I wanted to see you.”

“Oh, yes,” I riposted quick as a flash. And I meant it to sting, for I was feeling a bit fed with Catsmeat. I mean of his own free will he had taken on the job of valeting me, and in his capacity as my gentleman’s personal gentleman should have been in and out all the time, brushing here a coat, pressing there a trouser, and generally making himself useful. And I hadn’t set eyes on him since the night we had arrived. One frowns on this absenteeism.

“I wanted to tell you the good news.”

I laughed hollowly. “Good news? Is there such a thing?”

“You bet there’s such a thing. Things are looking up. The sun is smiling through. I believe I’m going to swing this Gertrude deal. Owing to the footling social conventions that prevent visiting valets hobnobbing with the daughter of the house, I haven’t seen her, of course, to speak to her. But I’ve been sending her notes by Jeeves, and she has been sending me notes by Jeeves. And in her latest she shows distinct signs of yielding to my prayers. I think about two more communications, if carefully worded, should do the trick. Don’t actually buy the fish slice yet, but be prepared.”

My pique vanished. As I have said before, the Woosters are fair-minded. I knew what a dickens of a sweat these love letters are: a whole-time job calling for incessant concentration. If Catsmeat had been tied up with a lot of correspondence of this type, he wouldn’t have had much time for attending to my wardrobe, of course. You can’t press your suit and an other fellow’s trousers simultaneously.

– P.G. Wodehouse in Jeeves and the Mating Season

[Transcribed from the audio version of the book, so all punctuation and paragraph formatting errors are mine.]