Perfectly righteous! – Friday, 06 April

“We know full well that we don’t receive God’s perfect righteousness as a reward for keeping the law, but by the faith of Jesus, the Messiah! His faithfulness, not ours, has saved us, and we have received God’s perfect righteousness. Now we know that God accepts no one by the keeping of religious laws!”
Galatians 2:16 TPT

Being right with God isn’t based on your ability to live up to certain rules or to-do-lists. God’s perfect righteousness is not a reward for good behaviour but rather it is a gift that can only be received by faith. We are made right with God and are kept right with God based on what He has done for us (grace) and our response to it (faith).
 
God’s perfect righteousness is not a reward to be achieved but rather it is a gift to be received. If you had to earn it the pass mark would be 100% and that means that you would need to perfect in keeping the law to obtain righteousness, and that is impossible! You might do better at me in keeping the law, but you certainly won’t achieve 100% success at it. Righteousness can only be received by faith, and because it is God’s perfect righteousness which He gives to us it means that we are perfectly righteous. How righteous are you? You are perfectly righteous! That means that you cannot improve on it nor can you increase in righteousness. Just like you cannot increase in your nature as a human, you cannot increase in your new righteous nature! You are no longer a sinner – that’s not your nature! You were a sinner but you got saved by grace and now you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus! You can mature in it and start to produce more fruit in accordance with your new nature, but you cannot become more righteous than you are right now.
 
The moment that you received Jesus you became 100% perfectly righteous. No matter what you do or don’t do, and no matter how bad you mess us you stay perfectly right with God. That righteousness isn’t based on your faithfulness to God or by maintaining some standard of holiness – no – it’s based on God’s faithfulness! Your righteousness would fluctuate if it were based on your performance because your performance fluctuates. As a believer, you have the righteousness of God because you’re in Christ, and now that righteousness you have can never fluctuate – it never increases because you do good, and it never decreases when you do bad.
 
Righteousness (being right with and accepted by God) isn’t based on your sacrifice; it’s based on Jesus’ sacrifice. It’s not based on your holiness; it’s based on Jesus’. It’s not according to your perfect faithfulness; it’s according to His.
 
“For God made the only one who did not know sin to become sin for us, so that we who did not know righteousness might become the righteousness of God through our union with him.”
2 Corinthians 5:21 TPT
 
At the cross, a divine exchange took place where perfect Jesus became sin for us so that we could be made perfectly righteous when we step into union with Him. All you need to do is believe – it cost a lot for you to be able to receive righteousness, but it really is as easy as believing.