Wrestling with Righteousness

Some good thoughts on the feedback cards from Sunday. In particular, people are wrestling with the whole issue of righteousness. Yes we shouldn't be self righteous but is it okay to be confident of our righteousness in Jesus? How do we live confidently in Jesus without falling over into pride or self righteousness? Great questions.

Some thoughts;

1. When we talk about 'righteousness' it can sound a little too churchie and abstract from our lives. But righteousness is the big eternal issue. When the Bible speaks of our righteousness it's talking about our standing before God. Are we forgiven, right, okay, blameless before God? So it's the big issue.

2. The Bible is very clear that we can never be right with God on our own terms (see Romans 1:16-3:26 or Philippians 3:1ff for the apostle Paul's powerful explanation of this). We only receive righteousness in Jesus. Jesus died for our sins, in our place so that when we trust completely and only in Jesus for our salvation we are right before God. We need to be very clear about this because of our human tendency to promote ourselves and think we can bargain with God. The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18 that we looked at on Sunday is very powerful in destroying our pride before God. So to partially answer the questions above we only have righteousness and confidence in Jesus.

3. But what does that look like in the Christian life? Can we have confidence and be proud of our achievements? Of course. God not only wants us to be saved he wants us to know and be certain that we're saved. Christianity is not about keeping you well behaved by making you feel vulnerable and scared. Being a Christian means you are holy and blameless in God's sight now (see Ephesians 1:1-14). Our problem is that we so often turn that into pride, apathy and SELF (rather than Jesus) righteousness. So Luke 18 destroys our pride and slide into self confidence so that our hope and trust would be in Jesus.

4. So how can someone who is feeling they are 'going well' identify those subtly areas where they are self righteous or pride? The big and obvious one is to devote yourself to reading, meditating on and praying through the Bible (both alone and in community). I've found that when i lose sight of the glory and beauty of God i start to slip into pride and self reliance. But as i enjoy and delight in God for all his beauty, power, mercy, and grace then i put aside my small ambitions and agendas to serve him. As i said this is kind of obvious but so easy to forget. Martin Luther said that the Christian life is always one of repentance. We continue to examine our hearts under the light of God's word - repenting, trusting, growing. We keep on looking to the cross of Jesus for our salvation, our hope, our forgiveness. It's only when we look there and see our saviour and Lord that we have true, real, eternal hope and confidence.

Trusting only in Jesus,

James