Called to Righteousness

May 5, 2019 Background Scripture: Romans 3 Lesson Passage: Romans 3:21 – 31 Quite often, conversations about righteousness devolve into different opinions about what constitutes self-righteousness. Any meaningful conversation about righteousness must be between parties who recognize an undeniable standard for what is righteousness. For those of the Christian faith, that standard is established by God. First and foremost, righteousness to a Christian should be viewed as being in right standing with God. Regardless of how one stacks up in comparison to another person, the issue that remains to be settled is: How does one stack up against God’s requirement? God’s standard for righteousness is more than situational or comparisons. God’s standard requires us to recognize what keeps us from being in right standing with Him. He tells us that our sin separates us from Him. Our sin is as much a part of our spiritual being as our DNA is a part of our physical body. No matter how well we stack up against another person, our sin keeps us from being in right standing with God. We can never attain to true righteousness through our efforts to increase our self-righteousness. We can become better than others and yet remain unrighteous and under the condemnation of God. Our hope of true righteousness lies in the text of our lesson today. In the text, God condemns all who are born of man and woman as unrighteous. Even those who received the oracles of God and were attempting to live by them were under the same condemnation. The text goes on to point out the behavior we exhibit as proof of our unrighteousness. God provided His oracles, the Law, through Moses to point out the unrighteousness that is in us. Many have and continue to use the Law in failed attempts to demonstrate a behavior that, on the surface, looks like righteous behavior, or righteousness. When the Law says that something is wrong, we attempt to do the opposite. When the Law says something is right, we attempt to do more of it. None of those things will ever make us righteous—they can make us better than other people, relatively speaking. But we will still fall short of God’s requirement. Sin is so intertwined within the soul of mankind that we cannot extract it no matter what we do or don’t do. Sin can naturally cause wrong behavior. However, behaving correctly does not remove sin. The Law only makes the presence of sin obvious. Behaving appropriately, according to the Law, cannot remove sin. A mirror reflects the image of whatever is place before it. A mirror does not judge, nor does it alter what is before it. Likewise, the Law reflects the sin of the one that is before it. It is up to the person to recognize sin and accept that God is the only judge of sin. God makes a person righteous by judging the sin and freeing the person of its punishment. God did this through the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross of Calvary for the sins of the world. All who accept by faith the death of Jesus as God’s punishment for their sin will receive the righteousness of God. This is the only way the person is put in right standing with God. It is not through individual effort that righteousness is attained. When God calls us to righteousness, He calls us to accept by faith Jesus as the one who took our place in God’s judgment of our sin. When we accept that our sin makes us unrighteous, and accept by faith, that Jesus was punished for our sin, then we show that we are in agreement with the Law. Robert C. Hudson