The WORD for 2012 is: Righteousness.
There are three phases of Righteousness that we must understand, but first we must come to an agreement on what Righteousness is, and what it is not.
So, we begin by pointing out that Righteousness is not about our conduct or behavior. Please know that God is already aware that you don’t deserve anything from Him. Your sinfulness is not news to Him; in fact, you learned about it from Him! Salvation for sinners was God’s idea, not yours. All sin, past, present, future, yours, mine, ours, has already been taken care of:
“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5: 21 NKJV)”
That’s what Grace is. It’s about you receiving from God something, in this case Salvation, that you don’t deserve. If you had deserved it, you wouldn’t have needed it; if you weren’t aware that you didn’t deserve it, you couldn’t have obtained it, for Grace is only accessed by Faith. You must believe (1)that you are a sinner, (2)that you need a Savior, (3)that Jesus is that Savior, and (4)that He offers Salvation freely to you. When you believe these four things, you have the information you need to generate enough Faith to receive God’s Salvation by Grace. Only those who have Faith can receive anything that God offers by Grace. And since sin is universal, Grace is universal.
Righteousness is not about being “good enough” to be accepted by God. God knows, and you’d better not forget it, that you haven’t got what it takes to earn or deserve His acceptance. And His acceptance is the foundation upon which the first phase of Righteousness is built.
Phase One: Relationship
For us, Righteousness is about our relationship with God. We are all God’s family, living in exile. The Gospel is about informing our fellow exilees that God loves us and wants us back in His family. All who respond in faith are received into the family with open arms. For us who were born in exile, it’s like being adopted into a stranger’s family. But to God, who has seen His family drawn away, who has watched as His estranged family grows and produces generation after generation of strangers, His only desire is to seek and to save that which is lost. He wants us Back! For Him, our salvation is restoration, back into the home and family and life that we were created for in the first place. The rights and privileges as family members that He bestows upon us, our right to regard ourselves as His children, that, my friends, is Righteousness. The fact that we don’t deserve any of it has been rendered irrelevant by the death and resurrection of Jesus. He bought and paid for what we could not afford. He took our curse, and gave us his Sonship. Being God, He could afford what we could not.
“But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus… (Romans 3: 21-24 NKJV)”
Phase Two: God’s Righteousness
So what exactly, then, is God’s Righteousness? With whom must He maintain a right relationship?
Obviously, God’s Righteousness is a far different thing from our righteousness. He is the source of Righteousness; it is inherently part of His eternal divine nature. He bestows it upon us as a gift of grace because it is not inherently part of our fallen human nature.
I’m going to try to briefly sum up what I see as God’s Righteousness, ‘briefly’ being the operative word, given the amount of space at our disposal. I have written a fuller description elsewhere, and you can read about it here.
The essence is this: As soon as Adam, through an act of his will, allowed sin into the world, he and his descendants (us) became separated from God. The relationship between God and man was interfered with. At that moment, God had, and continues to have to this day, only one priority: He wants us back! Everything God has ever done in us and for us and through us and to us has been subject to that one all-encompassing passion, to restore us to His family. So God’s Righteousness is His driving passion to restore His lost family; for each of us, “whosoever will,” who respond to His grace with our faith and receive the restoration He offers, that restored relationship is His Righteousness granted to us freely by His grace.
Restoration of the family is God’s Family Business: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. (Luke 19: 10 NKJV)”
Phase Three: The Family Business
As new believers, we all start out at the beginning. The Apostle Paul referred to “babes in Christ,” and so we are, at least at first. We have the rights and privileges of family members, which, as we have seen, is a dispensation of God’s Righteousness. But God has more in store for us than just that. He wants to recruit us into the Family Business.
Let’s look at a rather mundane, not to say old-fashioned, illustration. Let’s say you have just joined a community social club. There are those who have joined, but rarely attend meetings; they show up for pot-luck suppers and raffles, but they are no-where to be found on work days, and their dues payments are often late. So it comes as no surprise, then, that when it comes to nominating officers, choosing chairmen for committees, or sending representatives to man the booth at the county fair, those half-hearted “members” get passed over in favor of those whose commitment and participation are consistently in evidence. These, as we say, are members “in good standing.”
As the children of God, we are fully members of the family, although we may not venture outside the nursery. Tragically, many of God’s children never mature past the nursery. Go to church every week, drop your tithes-’n'-offerings check into the plate, sing the songs, listen to the preaching, and on Monday it’s back to business as usual. How sad that so many of us see our own salvation as the end, rather than the beginning, of our Christian experience! How much more God has for us, if we only knew!
God’s desire for each of us is that we develop from babes and children into mature Sons and Daughters, from the rights and privileges of the family into the responsibilities of the Family Business. And for that to happen, we need an attitude adjustment.
When we were lost, God’s goal was to save us, to bring us back into relationship with him. Having been restored to the family, it seems that our goal, at least in the beginning, is to soak up His blessings; to behave, in short, like spoiled rich kids. But ultimately, God desires, not a nursery full of self-centered, spoiled babies, but workers and laborers that He can send out into the Family Business, reaching the lost. When we move from children into Sonship, we will begin to behave like God’s Son, who came, as we see above, to seek and to save the lost. And why should we not behave like God’s Son? What else would Sonship look like?
As children, we receive by grace, through faith, the Righteousness of God that makes us his children. As we mature and develop into Sonship, as our thoughts and attitudes take on the same passion that drives the Father, His Righteousness becomes more fully our Righteousness. And that, fellow pilgrim, is what God had in mind all along:
“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. (Romans 8: 29 NKJV)”
That’s the Word for 2012 from the Pulpit. Have a Blessed and Happy New Year!
Dave
