Officer Devotional: Righteousness through faith

We’ve seen increasing hatred spewed against police- from negative rhetoric in the media to anti-police politicians to jerks with nothing better to do who show up to calls for service just to cuss out an officer or make his day more difficult.

As human beings, when we are told the same thing over and over again, it’s difficult not to start believing it. So being called racist, nazi, fascist pigs 12 times a day from nearly every possible angle starts to take its toll. This is how the world, or at least a loud portion of it, identifies us as police officers.

But what does the Bible say about that? Romans 5:1-2 says, “Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have also obtained access into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory.”

The Bible tells us that we are declared righteous in our faith: That is how He identifies us. Through our faith and thanks to our Savior, we are righteous, and God freely gives us His peace and His grace.

Notice this doesn’t say we will have peace in the world: things will still go wrong. We will still be called racist, nazi, fascist pigs. Those jerks will still show up to cuss us out. We will still be sinners. But those things will happen while we have peace with our Lord. Those hard times can be used for His glory.

Earlier in Romans, Paul told us that we are all guilty before God’s law, and that’s still true to this day; we are all sinners. But Jesus has taken away our sentence, and now, through faith, we are justified to have eternal life with the King.

This verse is specifically important for first responder followers of Jesus because it confirms that simply through faith, we have access to God’s grace. What a beautiful thing for those who strive to protect and serve, but face trauma after trauma: Because of the constant negativity in their day-to-day life, we often fall short of the perfection that society demands of us. Sometimes that’s by simply being rude to a person on a call for service, and sometimes it’s something far worse, like turning to drugs or alcohol to help us cope.

No matter where you may fall on that spectrum, the great news is that you are guaranteed to have the grace of our good and loving God. All you have to do is have faith.

Editor’s note: Being a police officer…is hard. There’s no other way around it. And I’m not even necessarily talking about the actual work of an officer, which is also hard. I’m talking about everything else that goes with it: the emotions, the negativity, the trauma. It’s just hard.

One of our goals at Law Enforcement Today is to support law enforcement however we can. As a company, we believe in God and we want to find ways to bring Jesus into the lives of our readers, especially those who are serving our communities and our country.

A natural extension of that is by offering short devotionals- short because we understand the hectic schedule with non-existent free time of officers- which we'll be bringing you one Sunday a month. Please know that we at LET are praying for each and every reader, each and every first responder, each and every active-duty military member and veteran. We see you, and we appreciate you! God bless.