Jacob's Spring Devotional Articles

TWO KINDS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

"When the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit." (Titus 3:4-5)

My prayer for you personally as you read and contemplate the kindness of your God today that you will be able to grasp His great love and allow it to literally become a part of your being. The good news of His kingdom is so awesome that sometimes it is hard to lay hold of it. Ask God to give you a revelation in your inner man of who you are in Him.

God has a rest for all of us and when Jesus declared it is finished from the cross this is what He was saying. He was declaring that the work of the cross was and is perfect in every aspect and every respect. There is nothing we can do in addition to what He did to secure us a greater measure of acceptance before our Father God.

We have the only religion on the face of the earth that grants us rest from our own efforts of obtaining salvation. Every religion except ours is based on works that an individual must do if he hopes to have eternal salvation. What God has given us is a relationship with His Son and this is a gift from heaven that we have received simply by our believing and receiving by faith.

"Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we might be as it were, the first fruits among His creatures." (James 1:17-18)

God is good – all by Himself. We must learn to give thanks with a grateful heart to this wonderful fact. Our God is good. Through the blood of His Son we have been brought into His presence and Jesus is telling the Father that we are pure and clean and holy. The Father has a smile on His face as he sees us hid in His Son. All of our sins have been washed away by the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus.

When Jesus went into the presence of God after His resurrection He prepared a place for us to be seated with Him. Scripture calls it the mercy seat.. The blood of Jesus that was shed for us came forth in the Spirit and it is still fresh today. Jesus took His blood and poured it out on the mercy seat in the presence of God. As we take our seat with Christ we are continuously cleansed from all unrighteousness by His blood.

Under the old covenant the High Priest took the blood of a lamb once a year and poured it out on the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies. This had to be done each year. At the cross where the perfect Lamb of God shed His blood we see that the Father tore the veil in the temple that covered the mercy seat and made a way for us to come into His presence through His blood. We all still sin and come short of the glory of God on a daily basis but the wonderful news is that when we confess our sins we discover that it is not just covered by His love but it is washed away by His blood. Let us be quick to repent so that we can continue to be pure and holy and blameless before our God.

"If we admit that we have sinned and confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and continuously cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)

Man is a spirit being. He has a soul. He lives in his body. In the verse we read in Titus 3 we are told that our spirit is renewed. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden they died spiritually. For 7,000 years we see man trying to find peace in his soul and the only way this can happen is through the perfect and finished work of Calvary. When you were born again you were born of the Spirit and have become a spirit being once again.

When we receive Eternal Life which is the very nature of God we become a new creation. To have a joyful walk here on the earth we must understand that we have been recreated and not that we just received the Righteousness of God but that we in fact have now become the Righteousness of God in Christ. We have been made one in the Spirit with Jesus and the Father sees us this way.

"Being therefore declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans 5:1)

This will require a lifetime to fully grasp because our minds must be renewed to the reality of who we are in Christ. We can believe what Scripture says about us is absolutely true, that God Himself is now our very Righteousness, and that we are the Righteousness of God in Him.

"Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things are passed away; behold they are become new. But all these things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ." (2 Corinthians 5:17)

What is the true meaning of righteousness? We understand that Righteousness means the ability to stand in the presence of our heavenly Father without the sense of guilt or inferiority. After Adam and Eve, every person born comes into life with a sense of sin consciousness. This is what gives birth to all the religions in that they are trying to find a solution to man's sin nature.

God's solution for this sin problem is His Son. His righteousness becomes ours by taking Jesus Christ as Savior and confessing His Lordship over our lives. God's provision for us is a new nature – His. What a glorious redemption we have in Him. We stand complete in Christ.

"The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." (Romans 14:17)

This gift of righteousness from our God restores to man all that he lost in the Fall with Adam and Eve, plus a new relationship as a son with all the privileges of a son. This righteousness restores our standing before God. Not just our standing but also our fellowship. Jesus came to earth to show man the glorious relationship we can have with our creator. Jesus approached the Father with the same liberty and freedom as a child approaches his parent. This is all our as a free gift. Let your heart cry "ABBA" today. (Romans 8:15)

Righteousness restores to man his lost faith. With a fellowship that is pure and clean with God we are now able to hear His voice and allow this to build faith within us to move mountains. Nothing is impossible to those who hear His voice and in simple obedience say yes and amen to His life giving instructions on a daily basis. Hearing His voice is very practical as we learn to trust Him in all of our ways.

"Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the sky poured rain, and the earth produced its fruit." (James 5:16-18)

You are a righteous man (woman) and your prayer avails much. You have been made righteous by receiving the nature of the Father. There is no limit to your prayer life. You have within you all the elements that are necessary to make you all that the Father dreamed that you would be in Christ. The thoughts of the Father for you are for good and not bad. His plans for you are to conform you into the very image of His Son and see you walk in great liberty and boldness and power here on the earth to set your fellow man free from the snares of the devil.

Dare to pray; dare to use the name of Jesus; dare to take your place. Be fearless as Jesus was in dealing with Satan, because you have His Name; the Name that has been exalted above every name and you can cause every name to bow before the name of Jesus.

You have personally been reconciled back to God through the Lamb of God and now have received the ministry of reconciliation. You have become an ambassador of God with the message of reconciliation to those who are lost and without hope.

"Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Corinthians 5:18-21)

Go forth in who you are in Christ Jesus. You are as righteous as you will ever be because it is His righteousness. Keep your eyes on Jesus and not on yourself. Enjoy your great salvation and be pleasing to the Father as you go forth as his son. He will love you for doing so and has promised to empower you with His Spirit as you go forth to share His great love.

THE CREATION RULE

To the embarrassment of Christians everywhere, prominent Christian figures are regularly being exposed for their involvement in drug use, pedophilia, homosexuality, fornication, adultery, pornography and fraud of all kinds. Many of these men have openly grieved over their failure as though vexed by some Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde phenomena. Simultaneously, a growing apathy has crept over the Christian masses. Either we have grown so accustomed to such failings and don't expect anything more or we are simply afraid of what we might discover if we pry too deeply. Dare we ask why? Why is an institution whose basic message to the world is "Accept Christ and be changed for the better" proving to be on no higher moral footing than the world it hopes to impact?

From a purely logical point of view, one of two things must be true. Either Christianity is powerless, meaning that Christ and His teachings are false, or the problem is due to man's failure to appropriate the power that Christ promised. It is evidently not enough to be able to quote the Bible from memory or accurately articulate particular tenets of faith, since many of those found wanting in recent days could do this better than most. If the church today has proven anything, it has proven that more than mere head knowledge is required to live above the passions that drive the world around us. What can lift God's people above this amoral jungle? Do we need a greater firmness of purpose? Do we need to double our efforts?

How did the early believers escaped their "untoward generation" (Acts 2:40) and still turn the world up-side-down (see Acts 17:6)? It is one thing to overcome the world by escaping to a monastery and shutting yourself away from all its negative influences, but quite another thing to possess the greater influence when rubbing shoulders with it daily. The scriptures reveal such an overcoming Church. If we dare to believe them, we may take heart, because they also foretell the glory of the latter house (the end-time Church) that will far exceed the glory of the former house (the early Church).

This will not happen without the recovery of the dynamic that alone can restore godly activity and productivity to the church. Glory as revealed in the scriptures is nothing more than the visible presence and power of almighty God! Such glory has little to do with the greatness of men, but emanates from the Lord Himself and is "the glory of the Lord." When Solomon's temple was dedicated, "the glory of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD" so "that the priests could not stand to minister. . ." (1 Kings 8). Ezekiel shows us in his vision the appropriate human response to such glory. "Then he brought me by way of the north gate to the front of the house: and I looked, and, behold, the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD: and I fell upon my face" (Ezekiel 44:4 KJ2000). God's glory brings an end to the need for mediators between God and men. In His glory the priest cannot minister and the prophet cannot stand.

Whether we see it around us or not, such a glorious church is in the making. Christ is building, sanctifying and cleansing it even now. "That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Ephesians 5:26-27 KJ2000). The Church that Christ is presenting to Himself is, in the scriptural definition of the word, glorious, "filled with the glory of the Lord"--God Himself.

The purpose of this article is not to criticize or expose anyone, for all of us fall short of the glory of God in one way or another. I am not above or separate from the rest of the body of Christ as though I were already living in the absolute good of what I am about to share. In the ultimate sense, such things are corporately realized. No man lives to himself. We are members one of another. It is my absolute conviction that everything that is wanting in the church today is proportional to the degree that we have, unwittingly or otherwise, abandoned the Life that makes an individual a victorious Christian and a group of such individuals, a glorious Church.

Jesus spoke of the true Christian life to Martha whose brother, Lazarus, had been dead for four days. "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:25-26 KJ2000). Consider Jesus' question. Do we believe this? Do we believe that the dead shall live and that living believers will never die? Was Jesus simply talking in riddles and empty platitudes or was He describing a realm beyond natural limitations? He demonstrated the reality of His words moments later when He stood before the tomb of Lazarus and commanded, "Lazarus! Come forth!" At His word, all that science deems certain, fatal and irreversible was overruled, and he who was shut away in the grave, beyond all hope of recovery, came forth alive. (Talk about violating the second law of thermodynamics). Jesus' next command to those who stood by is also very significant, "Loose him, and let him go."

Some might say, "Yes, believers will live forever but this only applies to the afterlife; 'the sweet by and by.' This has little to do with our daily existence." Such unbelief is not unique to our day, since this was Martha's initial response as well. When Jesus told her, "Your brother shall rise again" (John 11:23), she immediately did the acceptable theological thing. She put everything off into the future. "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day" (John 11:24). Satan doesn't tremble at our faith in God's ability to act sometime in the future, because tomorrow never comes. When tomorrow comes, it is no longer tomorrow but it is now today; so the religious mind replaces it with another tomorrow and Satan is once again spared. He is, however, terrified at the prospect of God acting today; being present and glorious now, this moment. Satan is clearly behind the present theological attempts to demythologize and strike all that is miraculous from the biblical record while downplaying the need to be born from above today and empowered by the Spirit of God now.

In a theological environment that only dares to believe that God has acted in the past and may again act sometime in the future, Jesus invites all who have the courage to believe Him and to join Him today in a life that is every bit as miraculous as the resurrection of Lazarus. He who has life in Himself (John5:26) bids us to come forth in resurrection life. The rest of the story does not depend on us, but is the consequence of a miraculous receiving and sharing of Divine Life, which transforms even the most physical aspects of our daily lives (Romans 8:11).

In Hebrews we read this very admonition with a warning that we as Christians can fail by our lack of dynamic faith in the power of God:

But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. Therefore (as the Holy Spirit says, Today if you will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness: When your fathers tested me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Therefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do always err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I swore in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end. (Hebrews 3:6-14 KJ2000)

This speaks of a daily confidence, of Today, of daily hearing and obeying His voice and most of all of walking with and obeying the living God, for we have been made part of Christ Himself as His body and He is alive!

This article is dedicated to those believers who long for something that transcends the ordinary, which can lift them above the droning dirge of contemporary dispensational theology.

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Last modified: 04-Mar-2008