Righteousness from God

Today we can enjoy the righteousness of sons by living by faith in God’s Son Jesus. ‘Not having a righteousness of our own’ but a righteousness that is by faith in God from first to last.

Humans originally lived in God as sons of God. But Satan deluded them into attempting to live in a righteousness of their own by living in the knowledge of good and evil instead of living in God. God promised Abraham an inheritance of life in the Spirit. This promise is fulfilled in the lives of those who believe God and live in Jesus. In the mean time God gave the Jews a set of laws that He listed within the frame work of what Adam and Eve had chosen – a righteousness of their own apart from God. This held them accountable, and showed all too clearly that they could not live up to their own standards and they needed a savior.

Any ‘righteousness’ that is lived in law is ‘a righteousness of our own.’ It came from Eve; it came from earth, not heaven; it was carnal, it separated us from God and it robbed us of our authority over nature and ourselves. The law that God gave us, framed as a righteousness of our own in the law of Moses pointed to a greater reality; the Reality of a righteousness from God who is Christ in us. Life in the Spirit is Christ in us and Christ in us is life in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is a life in the Son with authority.

You can say with Paul and all who believe, “[I am] found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead’ Phil 3.9-11 NASB.

Keith Allen, August, 2011