Saturday, August 17, 2013

Righteousness Based on What?


“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4 NASB).

Now that is what I call good news! Jesus Said; “You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48 NASB). Why do people go to hell? Is it because they have sinned? Yes they have broken God’s law; but more than that, it is because God is righteous. If God who is righteous were to allow a man who is not righteous into heaven (God’s dwelling place) God would no longer be righteous. In order for a man to enter into God’s home (heaven), that man must be just like God, perfectly good, that is righteous.

The law of God says do not worship anything but God alone, do not create false gods and worship them, do not take His name in vain, honor the Sabbath, honor your mother and father, do not murder or even hate, do not have sex even by thought outside of marriage, do not steal, do not lie, do not covet. “For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on law shall live by that righteousness” (Romans 10:5 NASB). In order to be righteous based on God’s law you must keep the law perfectly from conception until death, which is your entire life span in this temporal realm. “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all” (James 2:10 NASB). Breaking God’s law even once means that we are not perfect and most of us have broken His law a multitude of times. Our heavenly Father is perfect, and therefore we cannot enter into heaven (God’s dwelling place) by the righteousness based on law. This is not good for us, because to be outside of heaven is to be outside of the presence of God, only God is good, and therefore there is nothing good outside of God; only weeping and gnashing of teeth, unimaginable pain and longing, hell.

“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4 NASB). This does not mean that Christ is the end of the law all together (Romans 3:31), because the law is good; it is us that are not good. But what it does mean however is that Christ is the end of the law as far as being the way you can be counted righteous before God. Faith in Christ alone means that your righteousness is not based on your own personal righteousness, but on the righteous of another. Namely the righteousness of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living God; who lived that perfect life in the flesh that we should have lived, never breaking God’s law even once. He willingly died, separated from God for our sins, because He loves us. Then after fully satisfying the wrath of God for our sins, as only a perfect sacrifice can do, God raised Him from the dead, furnishing proof to all men that Jesus is the Christ, the only begotten Son of God, and that through faith in Him alone, we are made righteous, and can come into the presence of God in heaven. This not based on our own merit, but on Christ’s alone. Yes, this is good news, this is good news indeed!



Mike Peek a slave of Jesus Christ