With the Lord as your Righteousness, your sins can never stop Him from blessing or loving you

Believers in Christ, we are not under law but under grace. As the righteousness of God in Christ, depending on His righteousness and not on your own ability to do right, the Lord has blessed you and no one can reverse it. Like the stiff-necked and rebellious children of Israel whom Balaam could not curse, God does not observe iniquity or see wickedness in you, even when you sin and mess things up, because our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has satisfied His fiery anger and righteous judgment that should fall on you. In Christ, He sees us as RIGHTEOUS.

But does it mean that it is okay to be stiff-necked and rebellious and continue in sin because of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? Certainly not! God hates sin – stealing, murder, budget padding, running a red light, lying about how you are almost at work when you haven’t even left the house, not loving your neighbor as yourself (which no one can do on their own), all sin. God is against all these things. He sees the damage and death that sin brings to His beloved children so He sent His Son to save us from sin.

Our Saviour Jesus Christ came to save us from sin so how could He use the very thing He came to save us from as an excuse to not bless us?! Being in Christ is not deciding to be good. It is being transformed to the image of the Lord’s glory be the Holy Spirit.

Remember Isaiah 64:6 – ‘But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;…” "Righteousnesses" here refers to the good things we do with the sole purpose of getting from God, pleasing Him or getting right with Him e.g sowing seed, fasting, adopting children so that God will bless you with yours, donating to church building fund so that God will help you build your own house, etc.He gives us all things FREELY through Christ (Romans 8:32). In Christ we don't give to get; we get to give. We get to do these things and more. He isn't a demanding Master ready to let the devil have a go at you because you sinned. He is our loving Heavenly Father who sent His Son to die for us so that we can reign in life!

Back to Isaiah 64:6. Imagine the unclean thing here as a maggot-infested pot (sin nature inherited from Adam), with the maggots crawling all over the outside of the pot (sin manifested). What our Saviour does through His Spirit that dwells in us is wash our insides clean and continuously fill it to overflowing with the water of the Word, all through no effort of ours.

Once the heart is believing right, your actions and behaviour will line up with the Spirit within. The maggots outside the pot will vanish and with none crawling out to replace them because the inside is pure! Not only will you Live Right and not continue in sin, you will do exploits "For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." - Philippians 2:13

With Christ's gift of righteousness comes no condemnation, and it is this gift of no condemnation makes us go and sin no more.

But many believers are trying to get rid of their rebellious and stiff-necked nature (trying to stop sinning) by doing their best to obey the law! What many do not understand is that no matter how much one keeps the law and tries to be good, it cannot make one righteous in God’s sight. Galatians 2:16 says: ”Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.”

Also see Galatians 5:4 –“For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace.” No wonder many believers are still suffering symptoms of the curse. They are actively mixing law and grace and so lose both!

James 2:10 also tells us that breaking one is all it takes to be guilty of all. Under the law, the murderer/armed robber/rapist/child molester all rolled into one and the one who lies about having to work on a weekend to avoid visiting his mother-in-law are both in the same boat of unrighteousness and are subject to all of the curses in Deuteronomy 28.

Also, do you know what happens when you try to keep the law in order to be righteous? Paul explains this in Romans 7:5 - “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.”

The law arouses sinful passions in one (makes you want to sin more!) and the product is bearing fruit to death! No wonder Peter went on to deny our Lord Jesus three times after boasting that he would follow Him to the death! The more one thinks that he has the power to defeat sin all by himself, the more one fails.

Believers, in Christ, we have been released from the law. We are under grace, where we have our Lord’s righteousness as a gift (Romans 5:7). This is the only kind of righteousness that is acceptable to God, the one bought with the blood of His Son. You can’t mix it with yours. You can’t say “I’ll do my best to be obedient. Jesus will see that I have tried and do the rest.” You can’t have one leg on Mount Sinai and the other on Mount Zion. With our Saviour, it’s all or nothing.

Our Heavenly Father loves us that much that He blesses us with all things FREELY with Christ, even the grace to go and sin no more!

Believe Right and you will Live Right.