Devotion 3 - How To Make Ourselves Ready?
Devotion
3 – How to make ourselves Ready?
There
are three kinds of righteousness mentioned in the Scripture:
Human Righteousness
Isa.64:6 – “We are all like an
unclean thing, and all our righteousness are like filthy rags…”
When
it comes to our justification, our “good” can never be good enough for the
perfectly holy and completely righteous God to earn our own salvation. As
Isaiah points out, our righteousness is about as good as ‘filthy rags’. In Hebrew
it literally means, “like as rags of menstruation.” The point is, both our acts
of righteousness, and the quality of righteousness that we hope can get us
saved, are disgusting to God. Indeed, the gospel is good news because we are
saved not by what we have done, but by what Christ has done. We can never be
saved by our own good works of righteousness!
Imputed righteousness
When we believe in Jesus, we are made righteous in Christ
through faith. His righteousness is imputed to us. We are made righteous with
His righteousness.
Isa.61:10 – “I will greatly
rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be
joyful in my God; For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness…”
Rom.4:20-24 – “He did not waver at the promise
of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to
God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also
able to perform. And therefore ‘it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ Now it was not
written for his sake alone that it was imputed to
him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who
believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead…”
Every born-again
Christian has the imputed righteousness of Christ, it is the righteousness that
is credited to us based on our spiritual rebirth and this righteousness restores
our identity as a child of God. In a sense, we can consider it as ‘passive’
righteousness, that is, we simply receive it from God by His grace for the
forgiveness of sin through faith.
Eph.2:8-9 – “For by grace you have been
saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the
gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
Walk of righteousness
However, after
receiving the robe of righteousness for our salvation, we are also commanded to
walk in ‘active’ righteousness as God-given
responsibilities, crucifying the flesh and walking in the spirit. In other words,
salvation by grace alone through faith does not take away man's
responsibilities to walk in righteousness.
1 Tim.6:11 – “But you, O man of God, flee these
things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love,
patience, gentleness.
1 Jn.3:10 – “In this the children of God and
the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is
not of God, nor is he who does not love his
brother.”
Rom.6:13 – “And do not present
your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin but present
yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments
of righteousness to God… present your
members as slaves of righteousness for
holiness.”
It is a grave mistake
for Christian to settle for the imputed righteousness of Christ and to fail to
seek after the practical righteousness of God.
Getting
ourselves Ready for the Bride
Rev.19:7-8 – “Let
us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the
Lamb has come, and his bride has
made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and
bright, for the fine
linen is the righteous acts of the saints.”
The fine linen, clean
and bright with which the bride makes herself ready for the bridegroom is not
referring to the garment of ‘imputed or passive righteousness’ but rather to
the garment of ‘active righteousness – they are ‘the righteous acts of the saints”. This
means that the bride has made herself ready by her ‘active walk’ of
righteousness.
To get ourselves ready as
the bride, we must translate our imputed righteousness into outworking of
practical righteousness. It is confusing when people say that the only
righteousness that has any value is the imputed righteousness, apart from that,
all righteousness are ‘filthy rags’ before God. Is God pleased only with
Christ’s work, and always displeased and disgusted with ours?
Not at all. Time and time again, the Scriptures show that God is pleased
with the righteous deeds of the saints. Indeed, the entire “Hall of Faith” in
Hebrews 11 is a catalogue of the great deeds of the saints. Think of all that
was done by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Samson, David,
Samuel, and others. Are all their deeds “filthy rags” in God’s sight? Thus, we should be praying always that we are
continuously filled with the fruit of righteousness to glorify God in and
through our lives. So that as a bride, we are always ready!
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