THE GIFT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS #5

The righteousness of which the Gospel speaks is 'from God'.  It does not have its source or origin in our ability or perceived ability to keep God's law: it is 'apart from law'. It comes from God.

Nor does it have its origin in our minds, we humans did not think it up, we did not devise this Gospel righteousness: it is from God ' he has made it known, he has revealed it. 

The religions of men put before us a range of ideas about how we might find union with 'god', or find 'salvation', or enter into eternal bliss. Invariably the way of salvation or life identified in the religious of men, including minimalised 'Christianity', is the way of human endeavour, in which the desired goal or end is dependent on our individual ability to fulfil stated conditions

This tit-for-tat relationship with God is the way our human minds think. We are set in a performance paradigm, and we conceive our relationship with God in performance terms: If I do this, then God will do that. We conceive only a 'righteousness' which we ourselves must supply.

But the Gospel of Jesus Christ cuts right across this performance mindset; it comes with a message of the gift of righteousness, reducing our perceptions of moral achievement and spiritual self-sufficiency to nothing, cutting out all reason for both pride and despair. It pulls down the apparently 'righteous'; it lifts up the obviously 'sinful'. It first calls us all 'guilty' then offers to us all the alien righteousness of Jesus Christ.

This righteousness, this gift from God, is something that he has revealed, something that he has made known. Under the inspiration of God, the Law and the prophets of the Old Testament spoke of it in anticipation, and the disciples and apostles recorded and explained its ultimate revelation in Jesus Christ.

When some of the early Christians stood on the brink of discarding their confidence in this gift of righteousness in Christ, and reverting to the legalistic and ritualistic 'righteousness' of their traditions, the apostles warned them of both the seriousness and the foolishness of such an about face. Indeed much of the New Testament centres on this very issue.

Who would be so foolish as to choose the ideas of man rather than the revelation of God? Who would be so idiotic as to choose a heavy burden of unattainable prerequisites rather than a free, unlimited, incomparable gift? Who would be so unseeing as to depend on one's own righteousness rather than on the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ?

Sadly, it seems the answer is 'many'. God's gracious gift of the righteousness of Christ is left to the side while many, even within the church, labour to store up their own 'righteousness'.

Scriptures: Romans 1:17; 3:21; Galatians 1:6-9; 3:1; Philippians 3:1-9; Colossians 2:6-3:3; Hebrews 2:1-4.