ISRAEL rejected the righteousness of God. In our zeal to want to serve God more fervently because we love Him, we have attempted to serve God based on our own performance or works and have also rejected the righteousness of God.
It is for this reason, many of God’s people live condemned, filled with guilt and shame from mistakes made in the past.
Which leads me to ask, do you know that you have been made the righteousness of God in Christ? Do you know that your past present and future sins have all been forgiven? And when you come before God, He sees you through the finished work of His Son. He sees you righteous. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, ‘For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him’. This is the new covenant of grace.
Paul says in Ephesians 3:14/15 that the whole family in heaven and earth is named from the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and we know that God sent His Son to die for us–to bear the sins of the whole world. But what sets us apart from the world, in the context of sin, is that we who have received Christ, have the righteousness of God.
The Old Testament prophet Zechariah had a vision of the high priest, this is in Zechariah 3, Joshua standing before God and Satan (meaning accuser in the Greek) standing to oppose him.
In the vision the prophet sees the high priest in his filthy garments and the he hears the Lord instruct the angel to remove Joshua’s filthy garments and the Lord said to Joshua, ‘See, I have removed your iniquity (guilt) from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes.”
I believe that the filthy garments here represent the righteousness man obtained by works of the law through the temple system under the old covenant. This is righteousness which is of the law. In Isaiah 64: 6, the prophet cries out to God, “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.”
Therefore the rich robes that Joshua was clothed with represent the righteousness of the God. In doing this, God was revealing to Zechariah that there is coming a time when man will no longer need to justify himself by the works of the flesh, but that He is going to install His government through His Son, the Christ who will by His righteousness justify many, thereby establishing His righteous rule and reign. This is the righteousness of faith.
We have become far too sin conscious but sin is not the problem in the body of Christ today. Jesus bore all of our sins on the cross. Several scriptures confirm that. For those who are not mindful of God’s justification for them, will seek to serve God based on their own righteousness – as Cain did when He presented His offering to God by the works of his flesh and God rejected him.
Likewise the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son, when he said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time, yet you never gave me. Under the dispensation of grace, self righteousness does not hold up in the presence of God’.
There is nothing that we can do through the works of our flesh to make ourselves righteous or acceptable to God. Jesus said, ‘Apart from Me you can do nothing’. The day that the church of Jesus Christ comes to this revelation is the day when self righteousness will truly be banished from His church. And as long as we remain ignorant of God’s righteousness, the accuser will continue to torment us with guilt, shame and condemnation with every mistake that we make.
In my own life, I am learning the importance of God’s righteousness and more importantly to acknowledge His righteousness every day. Several times throughout the day, I remind myself that Christ is my righteousness. Even more so after I had done something, said something or even thought something, that I shouldn’t have and I have repented before God, but the enemy will not let me forget it. It is there that I stand my ground and confess Christ is my righteous. This is the place of perfect peace.
It is pointless walking around as the sons of God with guilt and condemnation hanging over our heads. This will not strip us of our inheritance as sons but will certainly render us weak and powerless as the sons of God.
The righteousness of God is a free gift. (Romans 5:17). We have been justified freely (without cost to us) by His grace (Romans 3:24).
In closing, I declare this over you, You have been made the righteousness of God in Christ. You stand in His righteousness alone. Sin shall not have dominion over you. You have been redeemed from the curse of the law, from oppression, guilt and condemnation. You have been declared righteous. Through the righteousness of His Son, God has enabled you and empowered you to live right.
Receive that righteousness of God and enjoy the liberty with which Christ has made you free.
