Tag: righteousness

Romans 3:21-31 – 8 Words That Can Change Your Life

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

cross of christ

“But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because… he himself is righteous and he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.” (NRSV)

500 years is a long time.  It was that long ago when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg Church door.  It sparked the flame of Reformation, a legacy we still live with today.  Protestant Christians have a rich spiritual heritage in acknowledging and affirming the veracity of Holy Scripture and its central message of Christ’s good news of salvation.

8 words changed Martin Luther’s life, changed the course of history and Christianity, and can change our lives, too.

1. Law

The role of the law is not to save nor to sanctify, but to reveal the true state of our hearts.  The law can only condemn; it cannot save you.  Obedience is important yet cannot be done by sheer willpower.  Deliverance does not come by turning over a new leaf; that approach only gets you caught in cycle of regret, promising not to do it again, and returning to it.  Law makes us feel the great weight of our darkness.  We need to feel and know what that darkness really is….

2. Sin

Sin means missing the mark, falling short.  We must agree with God about what sin really is, without sugar-coating it.  We tend to think of sin as some terrible action like assault or murder, yet sin is primarily thought of in Scripture as not giving God his due – of de-godding God and replacing him with something else.  You and I need to be realistic about the bad news of sin before we can ever receive the good news of forgiveness.  You can’t be forgiven unless you can admit that you have done, or not done, something that warrants needing to be forgiven.  Moving forward in hope can only happen when we possess…

3. Righteousness

Righteousness means right relationships; unrighteousness means broken relationships.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for right relationships.  Like illegal aliens who cannot make themselves citizens, God grants us spiritual amnesty because we can’t make ourselves legal or righteous.  Through righteousness God has made it possible for us to live in harmony.  Holding onto bad relationships is like a dog returning to its vomit; there is no need for it because God has given us…

4. Justification

This term is a picture of the court of law.  It communicates for us that righteousness comes because God justified us, that is, he did for us what the law could not do – he sent his Son to be a substitute for us.  You can’t justify yourself by obeying the law or simply by being sorry.  Without the next word, we will wallow in our guilt because we need this for our justification to really live….

5. Faith

Faith is a gift given by God.  We do not generate faith within ourselves because sin estranges us from God.  We need God to act.  God’s righteousness can only become operative through faith.  You must hold out your hands and receive a gift to possess it.  You must come to the end of yourself to exercise faith.  You need to see that your sin is bad enough to have made your life unmanageable and that you have dug yourself in a hole too deep to get out of yourself.  If you think you can handle it, you are going back to the law, living in denial and not by faith.  We also need…

6. Grace

Faith must have an object, and that object is the cross of Christ.  It’s grace which gives faith and saves us.  Our denial is so great about our sin that we can’t reach out to God unless God acts.  Even while we were sinners, Christ died for us.  Opening the gift given to us, we find that we are given…

7. Redemption

Redemption is a word referring to a slave market.  We are slaves to sin.  We need someone to purchase our freedom.  The blood of Christ paid for my sin.  He bought me through his death.  Jesus has taken care of the sin issue through…

8. Propitiation

“Sacrifice of atonement” is the meaning of propitiation.  It is the satisfaction of God’s wrath against sin.  Because God loves, God has wrath; he is not okay with sin running amok in this world.  We are forgiven through the blood of Christ.  We are free to live into the gracious joyous life of God in Christ.  Yet, not all of us do so.  For example:

If the institution that gave me my car loan came along and forgave or satisfied the debt I have on my car, it would be weird if I kept making loan payments.  But that is what many people keep doing with their lives because they don’t really believe they are forgiven and loved by God.  We think God is constantly upset or, at least, agitated with us since we screw-up so often.  So, we live by law hoping that God will applaud our sincerity and our effort, wishing that everything will be okay.  But everything won’t be okay with that approach because God wants our faith, not our promises to be better.  His question to us is:

Do you trust me?  Do you trust me to deliver you from your sin?  Do you trust me to work out the situation that you’ve made a mess of on your own?  Do you trust me to provide for you everything you need? 

Live into your spiritual heritage. Don’t return to the law. Bask in the gracious gift of your freedom in Christ.  Live and enjoy Jesus because you have been made righteous, justified, and redeemed through the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

Longing for Justice and Righteousness

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
Some words make us squeamish.  Justice often gets a bad rap by some in the church, as if it were some code word for “liberal.”  Righteousness seems more like the “right” word, but gets thrown around like an old familiar blanket, as if we already know all that stuff.  So, what’s the big deal about justice and righteousness?  Other than being very biblical terms which get used a lot in Scripture, being just and right is what the Messiah is all about (Jeremiah 33:14-16).
 
            Justice and righteousness are most often paired together in the Old Testament.  They are really two sides of the same coin.  We often think of justice in punitive terms of giving lawbreakers what they deserve.  But biblical justice has much more to do with giving someone what they need and deserve in order to live and thrive as human beings.  To act justly means to provide things like clean drinking water, a safe environment, fair and equitable business practices, food to eat, a place to sleep, etc.  Righteousness is the relational element to justice.  To be righteous means to have right relationships, to connect with people, to move toward them and provide them with all the relational things that people need like respect, dignity, friendship, hospitality, fellowship, etc.
 
            Justice and righteousness are always to go together.  Justice without righteousness is at best, impersonal, and, at worst, condescending.  Righteousness without justice is only a dead faith that wishes well but never delivers.  But together, justice and righteousness brings love, peace, harmony, well-being, and human flourishing because all the basic necessities of life, physical and relational, are met in abundance.  This is what is meant in the Old Testament when Israel is referred to as “a land of milk and honey.”
 
            The time of abundance is here for us in the person of Jesus Christ.  Yet, it is not here in its fullness.  We anticipate, wait, and hope for the Second Coming of our Savior and King.  While we exercise patience, we long for better days.  A true Advent spirit is a deep longing for justice and righteousness because King Jesus is just and right!
 
            What do you long for today?  I long for things which are broken to be made right.  I long for biblical justice.  I long for the day when my grandson will have no more seizures.  I long for the day when individuals and families will not have to fight cancer anymore.  I long for the day when there will be no more depression, mental illness, or dementia.  I long for the day when people will be completely free of addictions.  I long for the day when there will be no more sex trafficking, death from malnutrition, grinding poverty, corrupt governments, whole families and communities torn by the ravages of HIV and AIDS, refugees with no place to call home, and devastating natural disasters.
 
I long for righteousness.  I long for the day when women and girls all across the world will not be abused and become the victims of disordered power.  I long for the day when Israelis and Palestinians, Iranians and Iraqis, Japanese and Koreans, Russians and everybody else will no more hate each other.  I long for all believers everywhere to experience the exhilaration of new life in Christ.  I long for my community to repent and believe the gospel.  I long for men and women of God to embrace Jesus and forsake all other gods.
 
            I long for the kingdom of God to come in all its fullness, in all its freedom, joy, prosperity, peace, and happiness.  God’s kingdom will not be ushered in through continued worship of things and the constant practice of accumulating more and more.  God’s kingdom will not come through worshiping a particular nation or country.  God’s kingdom will not be ushered in because of self-effort, savvy marketing, and full schedules.  God’s kingdom is not the same as our personal agendas for life. 
 

 

The kingdom of God will come when God decides it is going to come because Jesus is Lord and no one or nothing else is king!  I want to be doing justice and righteousness when he arrives.  The church of Jesus is a gathering of people who are to be just and right in their thinking and practice.  Holding those two important words together is vital to every congregation.

Psalm 11

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            God is quite serious about people living in such a way that is righteous, that is, in right relationship with others.  He does not tolerate the wicked – those who only have regard for themselves and violate others with hateful speech and actions.  At the core of God’s very being, he “hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.”  We are to be righteous because God is righteous; we are to hate wickedness because God hates it.
 
            Anytime we talk about wickedness and righteousness, it typically is in the context of others who are violent and we who are not.  This is, at best, misguided, and, at worst, flat-out a self-deception.  It is easy to observe violence in others while ignoring our own part in wickedness.  We rarely equate violence with our words, but the sheer fact is that our tongues are prone to violent speech.  Whenever we seek to dominate a conversation; start an argument in order to win at all costs; put others down for their thoughts and ideas; engage in name-calling; or, speak against another behind his/her back; then we have come under the judgment of the God who abhors every form of violence.
 
            We often feel justified in our violent speech because of our supposed pure motives.  But this disregards the mental activity that takes place in our heads before we speak.  Too many people are prone to jumping to conclusions and thus misinterpret another’s words and actions.  If we would but stop and listen to ourselves, paying attention to the erroneous stories we can tell in an instant about others, then we would measure our words and seek to connect them with the righteous nature of God.  Righteous deeds spring from righteous thoughts based in truth. 
            Holy God, your perfect character and righteousness has always been and always will be.  Help me to connect so deeply with your goodness that my thoughts, words, and actions reflect your impeccable nature through Jesus Christ my Lord.  Amen.

Daniel 9:1-19

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            Daniel was one of the godliest persons in the whole of Scripture.  It was not so much because he was wise and insightful, savvy and ingenious.  He was certainly those things.  But what made Daniel godly was his tremendous sensitivity to sin.  It drove him to prayer.  It led him to fast.  It caused him to cry out to God with a great penitential confession.  Now, mind you, Daniel did not have all this concern because of his own personal failings; he was not the one running from God.  Yet, he identified so closely with his fellow Jews that he was totally distraught over their disloyalty to God’s covenant stipulations.  In other words, Israel simply did not care to obey God and they were not concerned to offer any kind of prayer of confession.  Daniel did for them what they either would not or could not do for themselves.
 
            The Lord Jesus told his disciples what truly characterizes a person of righteousness.  He said that God’s stamp of approval rests upon those who mourn (Matthew 5:4).  Genuinely godly people react emotionally over sin – not only theirs, but the sins of others.  Dwelling in the light of God’s presence will always cause us to discern the blackness of sin in all its foul depravity.  To not grieve over sin and disobedience is to not know God.
 
            Every human being is rushing toward eternity, and will be judged according to God’s gracious revealing of himself and his ways for humanity.  The person who grasps this reality cannot help but grieve over sin.  He mourns over the sins and the callous disregard of God in his nation.  He mourns over the greed, the hate, the cynicism, and the base lack of integrity around him.  Indeed, such a person mourns that there are so few mourners.
            Merciful God, I confess to you the sins of your people – their inattention to the things that are most important to you.  I grieve over the state of so many that do not know your grace and goodness.  I am ashamed before you that so few are sensitive to sin, even in your church.  To you, Lord God, belongs mercy and forgiveness.  O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive.  To you do I plead on behalf of the sins of many so that your grace will become operative through Jesus Christ.  Amen.