The Righteousness of Jesus

…the power of sin is the law. (I Cor. 15;56)

If I needed to flee into Galilee, from where must I flee? That was the question I had to ask myself. The answer was to come over the following months and years and, indeed, is still coming. Through it all, I have gained a better understanding of the Christian walk and been freed from bonds that shackle the love and joy Christ Jesus has for us. I have also glimpsed how universal much Christian experience is while being so very diverse at the same time. And I have seen the need for the church to better understand the battle in which we are engaged that we might all fight a more victorious warfare.

Early in my Christian experience, I had a good bit of misdirected zeal to please God. For example, I once took a writing pad and began listing all of the commands of God I could find in the book of Matthew. I wanted to know what God expected of me so I could act upon it and please Him.

Soon I had a list of commands more difficult than anything Moses brought down from the mountain. True, his were engraved on stone and mine were only scribbled on paper, but my intentions were about the same as those of the children of Israel in days gone by. To paraphrase them, “God, you show me what to do and I’ll do it (and deep down inside, I’ll probably be a bit more holy too).”

I look back now and remember that I was most serious when I did this. I was trying to live by a rule book but neglected to see that the Prince of Peace Himself, the author of the book, had come into my heart to direct my pathways all the days of my life.

He wrote the rule book he gave to His servant Moses. He told the early Israelites that if they would keep His commands, they would live and, if not, they would die. This first covenant, as glorious as it was and as holy as the Law is, proved to be a ministration of death. Israel, unable to keep the stringent requirements of the Law, went deep into religious bondage and was in large part blinded and unable to receive the Messiah when He came.

And here I was reading the books of the New Testament and coming up with a harder law than Moses had given the Hebrew children. The Law had commanded Do not murder, but Jesus tells us that anyone who is even angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. If Moses’s people died in the wilderness, what hope was there for us today?

As holy as the Law was, the way of the rule book did not work. If it had given us salvation, Jesus would not have had to suffer the agony of Calvary. God dramatically demonstrated man’s failure to find life through the covenant of commandments and ordinances during His many centuries of dealing with ancient Israel.

No, Christ did not come to give us a larger, more comprehensive book of rules and regulations to follow. He came to give us Himself. He came not only to provide further revelation of the Father; He came to give us life.

God brought this into sharp focus into my own life one evening by asking, in His small still voice, a simple question, “Just who is going to grow the fruit of the Spirit?” I knew He was talking about such things as joy, peace and gentleness. I thought for a moment and realized it had to be Jesus who did it if it was to be done. I simply needed to quit striving and let Him do it. Shortly thereafter He gave me a single key word that seemed to sum up the whole matter, “Yield.”

How we need to rest in Him and simply yield to the Spirit of grace who would do His work in us. How very different the New Covenant is from the Old. What a temptation it is to take beautiful God-breathed scripture, profitable to us in so many ways, and reduce it to a rule book for our lives, thereby ending up with a walk not unlike that of the ancient Israelites who perished under such law. We must take seriously the teaching of the gospel concerning the Holy Spirit who wants to dwell within us and direct our lives from our love-filled hearts. We must yield to the One who wants to open scripture to our understanding and lead us along His victorious paths.

We need to be intensely aware that something so much better than walking by rules, regulations, and moral precepts — the Old Covenant way — is now available to us through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. We need to know that JESUS HIMSELF IS OUR COVENANT, a covenant incomparably more precious than a book written on paper or commandments engraved on stone.

We find Christ referred to as our covenant in words of prophecy from Isaiah:

I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. (Isaiah 42:6-7)

And again:

Thus saith the LORD, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people… (Isaiah 49:8)

And from Jeremiah . . .

“The time is coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the LORD.

“This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.” (Jer. 31.31-34)

What a blessing to know that He puts His law in our minds and writes it on our hearts by coming into the very hearts of those who love Him! He and the Father make their abode in us. He pours out His Spirit upon us, which is the Spirit of the living Christ (Ref. Joel 2:28).

How futile the way of ordinances and moral precepts to direct our lives, regardless of how modern our particular version may be, when we can have the living Christ Himself as pilot of our ship. As Paul told the Galatians:

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20)

How much better it is just to yield and let Christ live His life through us, fully knowing that our old worthless selfish nature was co-crucified with Him and that when He arose from the dead, we arose also (Ref. Col. 3:1). Let us apprehend by faith that the crucifixion of this old nature was completely accomplished at Calvary and let us walk in that knowledge. When we arose with newness of life we were new babes in Christ. We had taken on His nature, a righteous nature by His grace.

So let us establish once and for all in our own minds what happened to the laws and regulations that old dead religious nature wants to follow and not revive them for our lives today, regardless of how attractively they may be packaged.

…He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Col. 2:13-15)

Why would we want to revert to our former approach to life?

All who rely on observing the law are under a curse…. (Gal. 3:10)

And, as scripture tells us,

. . . by observing the law no one will be justified. (Gal. 2:16)

Instead, let us follow in the New and Living way, CHRIST IN US, THE HOPE OF GLORY. Let us understand that Jesus Himself is our righteousness, our holiness, our wisdom and redemption. (I Cor. 1:30) Think of the greatness of these gifts:

Righteousness
Holiness
Wisdom
Redemption

Jesus told us to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness. As children of God, we have been given a new nature, a righteous nature! This is not a righteousness based on man’s works but on the sacrifice Jesus made for us. The blood of Jesus was shed to give us this righteous nature. If we know Jesus, we are not sinners saved by grace; rather, we were once sinners but have been saved by His grace. What a vast difference between these two statements! Today, we are children of the most high God with His nature imparted to us. He has given us the mind of Christ, God’s very wisdom to guide us. Our salvation is far more than just a pardon from God; it is an impartation of His nature! We have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and made righteous! This is very good news!

In our Christian walk, let us know that the fiery trials we experience are used by God to burn the legalistic bonds and other shackles that stifle our freedom. When the Hebrew children were thrown into the fiery furnace, they lost nothing but their bonds from which the fire had freed them. God is a Consuming Fire who, in His love for us, wants to consume everything that hinders our walk with Him.

And what hinders our walk with Him more than a legalistic approach to Christianity? It comes as an angel of light, but as the apostle Paul plainly tells us, “…the power of sin is the law.” (I Cor. 15:56). The Law in itself is good and holy, but to walk by it, instead of by the grace of God, is to invite disaster into our lives. It is to come up against a force that stirs up lust and greed and all of the evil found in man. As we are told in Romans 7:7-10:

What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what it was to covet if the law had not said, Do not covet. But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from the law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

Much of our Christian warfare is a battle in overcoming the life of self. It is among the greatest battles we have. And self is deep in the prison of darkness trying to justify itself before God by keeping the law. May we see the reality of the crucifixion of self along with the accompanying complete crucifixion of the external legal code that would keep us in slavery to sin. May we understand that Jesus completely won this victory for us at the cross.

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