The day of the Lord’s appearing is going to come and it’s going to mean wrath for some and joy for others. In movies and books we hear stories of people who overcome great trials and grow in righteousness that results in virtue. This is actually a worldly pattern and its called “striving for righteousness”. The human soul wants to be declared righteous. If you look at all false religion, it’s all about feeling righteous and they are even prepared to blow themselves up and hurt themselves to gain this righteousness. But this is not the godly biblical pattern to righteousness.
The New Testament speaks of right wising, to be made righteous before God by faith alone. This is offense to the human soul, because it about what God did for us and not what we did. There is nothing that we can do to be made right before God. If you have an upside down boat, it needs someone from the outside to come and turn the boat the right way up or to right the boat. The boat cannot sail until it has been right wised.
Humanity before they are saved as well as Christians who don’t understand that they have been right wised by the completed work of Jesus on the cross, continue to try to prove themselves to God in their own strength, in their flesh effort. When you put your faith in the completed work of Jesus to save you, you are declared righteous in the sight of God and you have been right wised. God says “you have been right wised”. It is stupid to tell a sinner to live a good and pure life until they have been saved and born again and received the gift of righteousness. Righteousness has it’s origin in God’s grace. Grace means to be favorably disposed to someone else. Righteousness is about God giving grace and declaring a person innocent through what Jesus did for them on the cross, his death, burial, resurrection and ascension. Grace has nothing to do with trying to soften up the old man but grace is God either declaring a person holy and innocent by what Jesus did on the cross or declaring a person condemned. God declared the born again Christian innocent when we put our faith in the completed work of Jesus on the cross.
2 Corinthians 5:20-21 “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
We receive the positional righteousness before God by faith alone and are made the righteousness of God in Christ. Works have no part to play in receiving the gift of righteousness. If we try to work for this righteousness then we nullify the grace of God that wants to save us, but if we just receive by faith in what Jesus has done, then grace comes to us and salvation comes to us as we put our faith in Jesus Christ alone. We cannot boast as its not our good works of righteousness but the work of Jesus Christ on the cross that saves us.
Titus 3:4-5 “But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;”
Justification which is God declaring us innocent and receiving the gift of righteousness does not come to us by anything we have done at all, but only by what Jesus Christ has done for us. This is the foolishness of the gospel, the proud person doesn’t want to just humbly receive this gift by faith alone, the proud ones feel they have to strive and work to obtain the gift of righteousness and then they will never be saved and born again. It requires becoming like a child and receiving and believing like a child. It requires child like faith in what Jesus has done for us.
God comes to us with the gospel and says asks us a question, “Will you be made right?” The proud and humanistic response is, “I don’t need to be made right, I am not a sinner, I can cope on my own”. You see this question offends our pride, to think that God needs to come and make us right. Humanity likes to strive to be made right. When we put our pride away and realize our state of sin and separation from God and our need for a relationship with God and for God to come and save us, then our reply to God’s question is, “yes” Come and save me Lord, I need you, I am a sinner and I need to be saved by You.
Christianity is not about you being good and trying not to make mistakes. Its about God coming and turning your boat the right way up, right wising your boat and causing you to be born again. Now you have a new nature in Christ through the gift of righteousness and the old man has died with Christ and the new man in Christ now lives. There is no place for boasting, because there is nothing that we have done to earn or work for salvation, it has been a free gift to us and this came to us by grace through faith. To work us fundamentally opposite of grace. Grace will never come to you by striving and working, grace comes to you by believing and receiving the gospel.
Unfortunately the church is full of bad theology that has got deeply ingrained into Christianity due to bad teaching and understanding of the gift of righteousness and justification. The thing is we cannot make ourselves more right. Righteousness is a position and status that God has given us, and we are now the righteousness of God in Christ. A Christian once they are saved doesn’t need to strive to produce good fruit and do good works, as long as you are in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and you abide in Christ, the good works and the fruitfulness will naturally come. We are simply called to enjoy the relationship that we now have and abide in Him, and as we do this the fruit comes naturally.
There is huge warfare in the church today when you begin to preach and teach about God’s grace and that you can’t work to obtain it but simply receive it. Because people don’t understand this truth, they believe they have to work hard to prove themselves to God and earn their salvation through doing good works. You see pride and the soul wants to try and justify itself instead of simply believing by faith. The real gospel message pulls the rug out from underneath people who are trying to prove themselves to God. Humanism wants to prove oneself to God. This is deeply ingrained in humanity in the fallen nature. When you preach about grace, you will often get attacked by people who have a very humanistic world view, because their mindset is that you have to prove yourself to God. This boils down to self proclaimed works of righteousness. They don’t understand that God has to come and intervene and save you and turn your boat the right way round. Their pride prevents them from admitting that there is something that they cannot do. They believe they can do good works of righteousness to prove themselves to God. If they don’t humble themselves before God and receive the completed work of Jesus on the cross by grace through faith, they will go to hell.
Justification goes against humanity that believes they can do it on their own. It requires God coming from the outside and right wising our boat and saving us. Faith is to stay in a sense of abiding need, “ I need you Lord every moment of my life”. It is Jesus who makes us right and makes us competent to be able to live the way God wants us to live.
Righteousness is not something that we possess or own. It is assigned to us from the outside. It is not an intrinsic quality of my own. Religious people like to feel good about themselves and what they have done and how they are doing good works to prove themselves to God. Some people even fast to try to twist God’s arm to do things for them. Actually fasting breaks down our pride and helps us to know our dependence on God. When you try to do good works to prove yourself to God, those are dead works and filthy rags in God’s eyes.
The essence of sin is the refusal to live every moment in creaturely dependency. The goal of the Christian is to enjoy constant moment by moment relationship with the Lord and to abide in Him and to do all we do, with Him and in relationship with Him. Adam and Eve fell into sin because of their refusal to live in creaturely dependency with God. Sin is telling God we don’t need Him, that we can do things on our own.
Humanism says that Christianity is for weaklings. Humanism wants to glorify themselves and their own good works. True Christianity confirms human dignity but confronts human pride. Human dignity is knowing your dependency on God. Humanism wants to boast in their own self righteousness and good works of proving themselves to God. How many good works must one have to be saved? None How much fruit must you have to be saved? None What happens if you fall into sin for a moment? Do you loose your salvation? No
Humanism says, “I can do it all myself, I want to be right, I want to be free”.
True Christianity says, humble yourself and receive the gift of righteousness as a gift by faith. Come to Jesus and thank Him for His completed work on the cross.
Romans 3:27 “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.”
Here is a video teaching I made on this topic discussed above.
