THE GIFT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS #18

This gift of righteousness ' God's declaration of acquittal made possible and effective by the life and death of Jesus Christ ' produces two opposite responses, one wrong, one right.

Some people say: 'Well then, if Christ has fully kept the law on our behalf, and if he fully paid the penalty for our sins, then it doesn't matter what we do, we can sin all we please!'

Such a response looks only at the gift, and it does so from a self-focused perspective. It does not look at the Giver ' it does not see his utter holiness and purity; it does not see his immeasurable love; it does not see in the cross of Christ the extreme offensiveness and wrongness of sin; it does not see in the cross of Christ the horrific and intense just judgment of God that all sin invokes. It does not see the deep hurt of God, nor understand the origin, the meaning or the cost of the gift.

Such a response also fails to understand that in receiving this gift of righteousness a person acknowledges that God's judgment that fell on Christ should rightly have fallen on them because sin is totally wrong, totally offensive to God, totally opposed to God and his purpose for us.

Such a response, the Bible says, it totally out of order, totally at cross-purposes with the gift of righteousness.

The gift of righteousness is not intended to set us free to sin, and to thereby continue to dishonour God, but to liberate us to pursue personal righteousness and so bring glory to our God.

Paul put it this way: the right response to the gift of righteousness is to offer ourselves and all that we are to God as instruments and slaves of righteousness which will lead to holiness.

Freedom from sin's just penalty and condemnation does not mean freedom to sin God has rescued us from sin's penalty and condemnation, not so that we can continue to be slaves to sin, but so that we can serve him in practical, personal righteousness and holiness. 

Scripture: Romans 6