OD?
“WHAT IS IT TO HAVE RIGHT
STANDING WITH GOD?
HOW CAN I GET IT?
WHERE DO I FIND IT?”
When you stand before God, you must have his righteous
standard of sinlessness not your own.
This is called having God’s righteousness.
God’s righteousness is had by faith, but this faith is only as strong as the belief upon
which it is based.
St Paul, the chief apostle, was the one entrusted to
deliver this gospel truth.
“…he (Abraham) received
the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith
…”
Rom 4:11
“For the
promise, that he (Abraham)
should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to
his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.”
Rom
4:13
“What
shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which
followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the
righteousness which is of faith.” Rom 9:30
“…the
righteousness which is of faith
speaketh on this wise …” Rom 10:6
“For we
through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness
by faith.” Gal 5:5
“… the
righteousness which is of God by faith:”
Phil 3:9
WHAT IS
RIGHTEOUSNESS? Righteousness
means to have a right standing with the law, that is, never to
have broken
any laws. If you have never broken any of man’s civil laws, you stand
right
with the law. You are righteous. Your standing with man’s law is
perfect. In
geometry, right angles are those of 90 degrees, where the vertical line
stands
upright to the horizontal line. You can, as it were, stand vertical on
the
horizontal platform of man’s laws. You have righteousness according the
man’s
laws.
But God’s
laws are far more strict than man’s
laws. God will judge your thoughts and intents not just external actions and behaviours. No one was
good enough to obey and fulfil God’s laws. That’s why he had to come to
earth
himself as Jesus Christ, to do the job. He had to do this on our behalf.
Never
mind being sinless regarding man’s laws down
here on earth, God has an infinite standard of purity and sinlessness
that had
to fulfilled, and only Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, could
accomplish this.
So
to get right standing with God, according to his
standards, you must have his obedience to his laws. When you stand
before God
to be judged, you must be able to say “I have obeyed and fulfilled
100% your
laws God and have your right standing – I have your righteousness.”
CAN
WE MEASURE HOW LARGE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD
IS?
God’s
perfection in obeying his own commandments,
that is, Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilling the law in sinlessness, can
not be
measured. There is no language on earth to describe it. The best we can
do is
give an analogy. Jesus Christ was not only perfect but infinitely
perfect. In Jesus Christ is the sum total of heaven’s treasures. For one
sinner to be saved and get to heaven, it needs this 100% totality
of giving
all on the cross. For a billion trillion sinners to be saved,
it would
still require the 100% of the totality of the cross.
But
Roman Catholics believe that they can have
right standing with God by having God’s grace in the form of the wafer,
in
their stomach. How could a human temple contain the total sum of God’s
goodness?
It can’t!
If
all the water in the world’s oceans represented
God’s grace, all of it would need to be swallowed by one sinner to get
saved …
and then multiply that by a billion earths. The sum totality of God’s
grace
would have to be swallowed by just one sinner. This is called impartation.
Catholics believe that God can impart this grace into
themselves by a
little biscuit and thimble full of grape juice. This is absurd!
Another
analogy of God’s grace is this. Suppose you
received an inheritance of 100 billion dollars. What do you do? Do you
try to
collect it in a couple of suitcases? No way! The amount is too large
for that,
so you would have it deposited in your bank account. This is called imputation.
The money would be put into your bank account. It would be imputed
to
you. With salvation, a sinner needs the total of God’s grace imputed
into his spiritual bank account. The human temple is far too small to
contain
the un-measure-able wealth of God.
How
does a sinner get the total sum of God’s grace
for salvation?
By
believing. When you believe, it will be
by God’s gift of faith that will freely impute all of
God’s grace
to you. God’s grace is to be found IN Jesus Christ – not
some
biscuit or grape juice IN you!
“But to
him that worketh not, but believeth on him
that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for
righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the
man, unto
whom God imputeth righteousness without works” Rom 4:5-6
As the
jailer was told “Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved… and by him (Jesus) all
that
believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be
justified by
the law of Moses.” (Acts 16:31; 13:39). In other words … it’s
not of
works and eating the Lord’s supper, that is a work!!!
**** ****
Harley Hitchcock
This
website’s front page is:
www.
“Some day you
will stand before God
… You must have his righteousness”
Australian Bible Ministries, PO
Box 5058 Mt. Gravatt East 4122 Qld, Australia
www.AustralianBibleMinistries.com
