You Are the Righteousness of God

I love the fact that in all of my failure, mess, and insecurities, God loves me. He doesn’t just tolerate me or like me; He loves me.

I shared this truth that God loves me with a person lately and they asked how I know. They weren’t trying to disagree or mock my statement. They were honestly asking how I knew that God really loved me.

There are an overwhelming number of evidences of God’s love for us. There are so many that I don’t have the space or time to share all of them.

I will focus on two passages of scripture that are huge in revealing the extent of God’s love for us and the result of that love.

Romans 5:6-8

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Please, allow me to draw the picture that is presented here.

We as humans are powerless.

The word powerless means to be weak, infirmed, feeble, or helpless.

We are sick from sin. We are also helpless to provide the cure for our sickness.

I hate feeling powerless. I don’t like feeling that I have no ability to control or change things.

The reality is that, before I surrendered my life to Jesus, I had no control. Even as a follower of Jesus, there is very little I have control over. But before Jesus, I didn’t have the ability to change the fact I was a sinner and was dying because of sin. I couldn’t change the fact that God and I were not in unity. I couldn’t change the fact that I was sick with sin.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is admitting that we in ourselves have no power to change the fact that we are sinners.

We as humans are ungodly.

Romans 3:10-18 says, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

That is not a flattering picture of humanity.

Humanity without Jesus:

Is Not Righteous

Doesn’t Seek God

Has Rejected God

Has Become Worthless

Does Not Do Good

Words Are Deceitful and Mean

Violence Characterizes Our Actions

Living in Failure, Misery, and With No Peace

Doesn’t Fear God

When you take all those characteristics, it equates to ungodliness.

I know that to many, the idea that we are born sinners or born with a bent toward sin or a nature that leads us to sin is not believable. Yet that is what God’s Word teaches and what our experience testifies to.

We are not only ungodly, but remember we are also powerless. We cannot in our own ability and resources change the fact that we are ungodly.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is acknowledging the fact that, without Jesus as Savior and Lord, we are ungodly.

We as humans are sinners.

Sin is mainly defined by many, even many in the church today, as immorality. There is so much more involved in sin than immorality.

The word sin in scripture means to miss the mark.

The idea of sin is revealed in Romans 3:23. Sin is not living up to God’s standards.

What are God’s standards? To perfectly obey Him all the time. I equate that to have to making 100 on every test, assignment, and homework in kindergarten through your senior year in high school. Some people have made all A’s, but no one has made 100 on everything through thirteen years of school.

There is no human being who has ever completely obeyed God all the time. Oh, wait a minute. Yes, there is, and His name is Jesus.

Jesus lived a powerful, godly, sinless life. He perfectly obeyed the Father all the time.

Jesus then allowed Himself to be placed on the cross and crucified. Jesus did that as our atoning sacrifice. He could be our atoning sacrifice, our perfect sacrifice for sin, because He was sinless.

Jesus died for us while we were powerless, ungodly sinners.

No one else would even think about doing that. Jesus didn’t think about doing it; He did it.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is accepting the gift that only Jesus could give us, the gift of forgiveness and eternal life.

The result of Jesus dying for us while we were powerless, ungodly sinners is found in 2 Corinthians 5:21.

That verse says, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Jesus took the guilt and penalty of our sin and gave us His righteousness, His sinless perfection before the Father.

The result of you and me accepting Jesus’ gift of His life sacrificed for us is not becoming a better person or better spouse or parent or going to heaven. All those will happen, but the primary result of us accepting Jesus’ sacrifice is that we become the righteousness of God.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is, through the sacrifice of Jesus, becoming the righteousness of God.

You and I are the righteousness of God, not because we have done anything to accomplish that, but because Jesus went to the cross, and in dying He accomplished that.

Through Jesus Making Me the Righteousness of God, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls

                                                      Joe