Are You Confident That You Are Righteous?

Let’s talk about what it means to be RIGHTEOUS.

Definition

Righteous: the state by which one is able to stand before a Holy God as if one has never sinned.

One of the best ways to understand what it means to be righteous is to first understand what it means to be a sinner. Sin cannot stand in the presence of God– not one little bit. If we understand this, we can easily see that righteousness becomes essential for a life of relationship with God.

As a Christian, are you confident that you are righteous?

Is your righteousness……unchanging? Unshakeable?  Untouchable?  Or is your righteousness something that you must maintain?  

I have met many Christians who are uncertain how to answer these questions.  Jesus emphasized the importance of righteousness when he put it on par with the Kingdom of God in Matthew 6:33.

“Seek first the kingdom of God and all His righteousness.”

Notice that we are to seek HIS righteousness, not a righteousness of our own. 

He famously told the crowds that listened to His sermon on the mount that “unless your righteousness exceeded that of the Pharisees and the scribes, they would in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”   Clearly Jesus is reiterating that a man-made or man-maintained righteousness isn’t going to cut it.  The Apostle Paul knew that righteousness was foundational to our relationship with God when he told us in Romans 14:17 that “the Kingdom of God is not meat or drink but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.”  

If righteousness is foundational to experiencing the Kingdom of God in our lives, it is important that we understand Righteousness.

The first thing to understand is that we did not, and could never, earn the status of righteousness.  All of us sin and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23) If righteousness is not earned by our own efforts, then how do we get it? The Word of God tells us that Jesus BECAME sin that we might BECOME the righteousness of God IN CHRIST.  (2 Corinthians 5:21)     God, Himself,  imputes, or “assigns”  righteousness to us in the great trade of Jesus’s identification with us through the atoning work of His loving sacrifice.   It was through our identification with Adam that we all became sinners.  And in the same way it is our identification with Jesus, called the Second Adam, that we all become righteous. 

For if by one man’s offense death reigned by one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by One, Jesus Christ.  Romans 5:17

Paul called it a righteousness we receive “by faith.”  In Phillipians 3 he famously called all of his attempts at righteousness “rubbish” and highly valued “being found in Him not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.” 

We can see that God’s Word tells us that righteousness is indeed a gift, not earned.  And that this gift allows us to reign in life once we are engrafted into Jesus Christ. Because we did nothing to gain this righteousness, it is also a parallel truth that we can do nothing to lose it either.  In the strictest sense, righteousness is now our assigned state IN CHRIST.  Isiah prophesied about the precious state of salvation and righteousness together when he described the “clothing” of the future family of God.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels.”  Isaiah 61:10

We must become confident that our righteousness comes from faith in Christ alone and therefore is unchanging. In our Christian walk, we might sin, then repent, ask for forgiveness, and begin again to follow the Lord. Throughout this entire process, we remain righteous.  The sin we commit is not the ‘right’ thing to do, but our identity before God does not change.  If we sin after becoming the righteousness of God in Christ, we are now a righteous child of God in need of fresh forgiveness. If we lose our righteousness when we sin, how would we approach our Holy God for this fresh forgiveness?  It is exactly because we have been given the gift of righteousness that we are able to obey the exhortation in Hebrews 4:16 to “Come boldly into the throne of God’s grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace in time of need.”

Righteousness is indeed immediately imparted to a new believer when they commit their lives to Christ and become born again.  It is the state that allows continual relationship with the Father through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Righteousness should not be confused with sanctification. Sanctification or holiness is a process whereby the Holy Spirit develops those who are righteous into the image of Christ.

Why is it so important to know that your righteousness is unshakeable?  Because the enemy would like you to shrink away from God instead of running to Him when you make a mistake.  And so much else is riding on our righteousness and our understanding of it.

Not only does your righteousness allow you to live in your identity as a child of God, but it is also the foundation of so many more blessings.

It is our right to guidance, as the Shepherd leads us in the paths of righteousness. Psalm 23:3

It is a breastplate in our armor that guards our heart from condemnation.  Ephesians 6:14

It allows us to continue to bear more and more fruit. 2 Corinthians 9:10

It is an ever-outstretched scepter in the hand of our Loving King. Hebrews 1:8

And it is the crown that we will one day lay down in worship to God. 2 Timothy 4:8

Paul knew that we would need to ‘press in” to understand the depth of this amazing gift and to hold tight to it despite the enemy’s attempts to get us to let loose of it. In Hebrews, the depth of the revelation of righteousness is compared to “meat” writing that “spiritual infants are those who live on milk for they have not yet been pierced by the revelation of righteousness.”  Hebrews 5:13

Let us not remain unskilled in the word of righteousness.  Let us seek to understand and walk in all of the covenant blessings that Jesus has secured for those who have put their whole trust in Him and particularly the truth that we have received the powerful, precious and unchanging gift of righteousness.