Righteousness relationship with God by Faith

I remember watching a movie once called “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Most of the things Ferris did rebelled against the authority of his school as well as the authority of his parents. At one point, principal Ed Rooney is told that the kids in school think Ferris is a “righteous dude.”

Although the film is a comedy, it demonstrates well the difference between what the world may think about righteousness and what God says about righteousness and our relationship with him.

To better define a righteousness relationship with God, it’s important to know what righteousness with God is not. Righteousness is not obtained by any action or set of man-made rules on how to live or serve God. No one is made righteous in God’s sight by any effort put forth. Righteousness is not earned by how many times, how long or how often you pray. It’s not about any work of penance or about paying your tithes. Righteousness is not about being popular, either.

Righteousness, as I believe the Bible refers to it, means to be in right standing with God. It is the position one receives when he or she believes what God said through his word about Jesus. Righteousness is a gift from God received by faith. Righteousness accompanies salvation, which is received by grace through faith. Just as Abraham believed God and God credited him with righteousness, so we believe that God gave his son, Jesus, to die for our sins and we are counted as the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, according to 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Righteousness is credited after the rebirth of your spirit. When you receive salvation and the gift of righteousness, you change on the inside. Your outside still looks the same.

God explains this through Ezekiel 36:26-27, when he says, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”

At salvation, we receive his spirit and become temples of the living God. The outside man has not changed. Only the inward man, or our spirit, has changed. Your recreated spirit is what is right with God.

Before I was born again, I had no concept of a spiritual rebirth or what it meant to be right with God. I was just like Nicodemus in the third chapter of John asking, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?”

Jesus explained this to Nicodemus by saying, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.”

If you are not born of God’s spirit, you are not right with God and you cannot see the kingdom of God, according to the third chapter of John.

The real you is a spirit who lives in a body and has a mind, will and emotions. The body dies, but the real you — the spirit — lives forever. After it departs from the body, the spirit either goes to heaven or hell. It is the spirit that is made righteous. Our mind and body are not righteous. It is up to us to work on them with God’s help through his word and his spirit after we are reborn.

Sin separated us from God. God said that all have sinned and fallen short of his glory, according to Romans 3:23. Because of sin, no man can enter the presence of God in heaven without being reconciled to him. God doesn’t fellowship with sin. Sin, by definition, is separation from God, and it is what we are apart from God’s reconciliation.

Only God can reconcile us to himself — and he did that through his son, Jesus. It is through Jesus that righteousness becomes a reality. Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him, according to 2 Corinthians 5:21. If we receive the salvation that God provided through his son Jesus, we receive his righteousness. Jesus did all the work. He gave his life for us and died for the sins of the entire world. The gift is already there for us to receive.

Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” There is one way to heaven and that is through faith in Jesus Christ. He becomes our righteousness by receiving the free gift of salvation.

If you believe that Jesus died for your sins and rose from the dead, turn from your sin and ask God to save you now. By grace through faith, you will receive a new, recreated spirit and be right with God.

Brian Endle is a missions director at Palmer Victory Fellowship of Palmer. Contact Palmer Victory at pvf.outreach@gmail.com or 745-5045.

Opinions expressed on the Faith page are the author’s and are not necessarily those of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, its staff or its parent company, Wick Communications Co. To submit a column or other news for the Faith page, send email to news@frontiersman.com, or call 352-2268.