Just a Thought "25"

There is an element of pride today on the part of many who think God must be looking on them with special favor, because they happen to belong to a particular denominational persuasion.

In fact, there are people who take great pride today and elevate themselves above others, because they rightly divide the word of truth, when rightly dividing the word of truth is merely a tool to use so that a person can come out with a proper understanding of scripture.

So-called Christendom today fails to rightly divide the word of truth, because they have mixed God’s program with Israel and his program with the Body of Christ and mixed dispensations together; dispensations that do not mix together, and as a result, they think they have taken on Israel’s role from the point where Israel left off.


The programs have simply been intertwined in the minds of the religious world. Any kind of works at all, even if they appear to be good works in a our minds, that are done for the purpose attaining salvation, or for the purpose of maintaining salvation, and even for the purpose of proving our salvation is a slap in the face of God, who had to provide the gift of salvation, because our righteousness would be totally incapable of meriting it.

Our good works must be done solely out of appreciation for what God has already accomplished. God knows whether there’s a hidden motivation even to ourselves, hidden by our pride nature to look good before others, to appear knowledgeable before others, to somehow elevate self in relation to others, to gain the praise of others. God knows the motivations of the human heart.

Paul is not telling us to eliminate doing good things once were save, he is telling us to totally and completely once and for all, remove any and all works forever from the criteria in our minds by which God saves us, or the basis by which God keeps us saved.

God completely took works out of the equation when it came to gaining or maintaining salvation! Paul has fenced us all in and it is a closed-in pen, in a manner of speaking, of wrath worthiness, therefore, the human race is in need of a Savior, simple as that!

Working to maintain a standard, any standard whatsoever while trying that standard in our mind to the acquisition of or the maintenance of our right standing before God is an exercise in futility, it will not work. Works are absolutely excluded as a basis by which God gives the righteous standing Paul has in mind for the human race.

What the heart of sinful people do is to humanize God, there is no fear of God when we humanize God. God is our great big buddy in the sky, even Jesus has simply become our best friend. Many think that salvation comes to those who can maintain a sufficient camaraderie with Jesus, their friend.

The law was never given as a standard by which a person could live their life and achieve righteousness, it was given to be a mirror, so that those who were placed under that law might gain a better glimpse of themselves. That is what the law program did, it allowed a person to stand back when looking at the law and see themselves in a proper light.

The law was given in order to reflect a perfectly clear picture of how sinful a person really is, we need to see ourselves properly apart from faith in the one who is faithful on our behalf.

God knew what it would take to save us, he knew what it would take to have us dwell with him through eternity future and that dwelling with him should require that we would measure up to his degree of rightness, and measuring up to his degree of rightness would only come one way.

Our salvation must come from a justification found totally apart from us, totally apart from who we are, totally apart from the things that we do and promise to do, and commit to never do again. The law was a picture and it was a mirror to show us that we needed justification that is given to us, that is credited to us freely, we need a justifier who would justify the ungodly by faith.

Justification by grace through faith, what a marvelous thing God has done, and who would have thought of a salvation in the sense that God’s plan would call for him to join a person to his son, therefore, what belongs to the son would now belong to believing people who have been joined to the son.

Our human nature being what it is, we automatically rise up and rebel against the truth, but Paul goes to great length to prove beyond any showdown of a doubt, that everyone of us are continually coming short of the standard of God’s perfect righteousness.

So when Paul mentions sin, he does so for the purpose of having every individual realize and admit that through out the course of our daily lives, we all miss the mark of God’s perfect rightness. We never measure up anytime in our human live, we never measure up to who God is and with God’s righteous character, he can not dwell with anyone who does not.

We could look at the righteousness of God in the sense of righteousness being an attribute of God, his righteous character is part of his glory. God is perfectly righteous in himself, he never deviates from his own perfectly right standard.

We know that nothing has ever changed about God’s righteous character, so Paul does not have God’s attribute of righteousness in mind when he says, “But now, the righteousness of God apart from the law is manifested,” God has provided for the human race, what the human race desperately lacks, God’s very own perfect righteousness.

What Jesus Christ accomplished for the human race, does not make the human race measure up to God’s rightness, we have to be righteous-ified. God declares unrighteous believers to be righteous, it is a gift, a declaration of rightness with God and this comes totally apart from that unrighteous person’s production, no inherent merit on the part of the one being declared righteous.

God’s power from on high joins every believer to Jesus Christ himself. Those who have trusted in what Christ has accomplished where their sins are concerned are made heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. It is Christ’s faith that righteous-ifies those who take their stand with God when it comes to what God has stated his son accomplished for them.

It is Christ faith that is freely credited to the account of the one who believes the good news given to the apostle Paul to proclaim to us in this age of grace.