Good day
I trust you're doing well.
This will be the start of a new series where I'll be sharing some aspects regarding righteousness - what it is, our need for it, how we receive it, can we lose it, the benefits of it and what expectations come with it.
To understand our need for the gift of righteousness, we have to go back to the place of man’s original sin, which was committed by Adam in the Garden of Eden.
Adam was created in God’s image and likeness. God made provision for all of Adam’s needs. He had absolute authority on the earth, enjoyed unhindered fellowship with God and was fully righteous before God. However, he was still a free moral agent and could choose to obey God or disobey Him, and when he sinned by disobeying God, Adam died spiritually. He was separated from the life of God ... and just like Adam, we also have free will to obey or disobey God, and the consequence of our disobedience/sin carries the same result, separation from God (Isaiah 59:2, Romans 6:23)
Unfortunately, each and every one of us sit in this predicament. The bible says in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. This means that no one can claim to be righteous/innocent before God. James 2:10 says that whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. This means that even if we've told one lie in our lives, it means that we've sinned and will be held accountable for our actions, therefore proving the Bible true when it says that we’ve all sinned and fallen short of God’s Glory.
The bible says in 1 John 3:4 that everyone who sins breaks the law and that sin is lawlessness. Lawlessness refers to someone who has no regard for the commandments of God, and Jesus said in Matthew 7:21-23 that those who practice lawlessness will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Again, we all fall into this category. No one is innocent of this. Everyone will be held accountable before God. The bible says in Romans 5:12 that just as sin entered the world through one man, and death (spiritual death) through sin, and in this way death (spiritual death) came to all people because all sinned. In Romans 5:18 it says that through one man’s offence judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation.
The consequences of sin/lawlessness is that it places us in an unrighteous state. The bible says in 1 John 5:17 that all unrighteousness/wrongdoing is sin and in 1 Corinthians 6:8-9 it says that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Meaning that if we want to inherit the kingdom of God then we need to be considered righteous. Righteousness refers to our right-standing before God, the character or quality of being right, just or innocent, the condition acceptable to God or the state of being approved of God.
Now there are some religions that promote practices and doing good works as a means of earning right-standing with God. They encourage their followers to adhere to certain rules and regulations so that they can work their way into God's "good books" ... However, religious practices can never grant right standing with God to anyone. This is not a case of doing enough good deeds to cover up or try and eradicate the bad deeds - like someone who planned to rob a bank and had all the steps in place of how they're going to do so, how they're going to escape, where they're going to store the money, etc. but then they get caught after doing so and now they plead to the judge to find a way where they can offer to do some good to get out of their pending judgement ... the problem is that the individual remains guilty.
So how do you remedy something like this? How do you take someone who is declared guilty of their sins and worthy of punishment and declare them innocent by just wiping their slate clean or removing all record of their sins? How do you remove the wrongdoings/transgressions/sins and present them as innocent as though they were never guilty of it in the 1st place. Is something like this even possible?
We'll find this out in the next message ...