It Starts Small

As we continue our series of pursuing righteousness we have been examining, in God’s Word what it means when we say God is a righteous God. We have learned that God is righteousness. It is not something God has, it is who He is. One of the things that is important to recognize is that God takes his righteousness and puts it on us.

¹² Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all sinned. ¹³ In fact, sin was in the world before the law, but sin is not charged to a person’s account when there is no law. ¹⁴ Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression. He is a type of the Coming One. ¹⁵ But the gift is not like the trespass. For if by the one man’s trespass the many died, how much more have the grace of God and the gift which comes through the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflowed to the many. ¹⁶ And the gift is not like the one man’s sin, because from one sin came the judgment, resulting in condemnation, but from many trespasses came the gift, resulting in justification. ¹⁷ If by the one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:12-17

God made Him, Jesus Christ, who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 

He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:21

One of the beautiful things about God being righteous is that he imparts that righteousness to us. That means because of Christ right now you can stand before God and be declared righteous. This very moment if you are in Christ, you are righteous, meaning you are seen by God as just, innocent, and in right standing with Him.

Your righteousness is not a result of anything you have done but because of everything that Jesus has done for you.

Because of that you can now approach a righteous God knowing that He has declared you righteous in Christ. One day God will set everything straight. God will one day stand as judge of everyone. There will be a moment when we all must appear before this righteous judge where God will settle all accounts.

If you are in Christ, the good news is your account has already been settled because Jesus has made atonement for you. If you are not in Christ then you will be judged according to God’s standard of righteousness, which no one can meet in their own ability. This means you have two choices. You can stand in your own righteousness or you can stand in Christ’s righteousness.

Either way, God will apply His just standard and every judgment will be right and just because that is who He is.

AS we are told to pursue righteousness, we need to remember it is not something we can produce, but God’s righteousness worked through us. Just as we learned last month studying love, God is love and love is God. God is righteous and righteous is God. IF we are going to pursue it, we need to surrender ourselves to Him to allow Him to work His righteousness through us.

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