Latest / Accidental Bible Scholar / The New Creation in the New Covenant, Part 4

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The New Creation in the New Covenant, Part 4 · Accidental Bible Scholar

• Jeff Ward: All right, welcome back to the Accidental Bible Scholar podcast. We're excited you're here, excited to be here today. Last time we talked about freedom, all the freedom that Christ gained back for us and how we operate as a new creation in the new covenant with that freedom. Today we're going to talk about our identity and us being righteous and what that means. without further ado, Randy. All right, we'll continue. We talked about what did you say? Freedom? Freedom. And now righteous. I say one more thing? it's quick. Danny and Cindy Davis gave us this microphone. Sound quality today is going to be extra good. I forgot to say that last time, but thank you very much for the gold star gold microphone. Yeah, it's cordless. And thank you, We're waiting on the All right. Righteousness. Righteousness. It's new not new believers, new creations, believers in Christ are. hard to understand and I've got a couple of questions that I'll ask here as we go. We talked through this. And then of course, lots of scripture. And then we'll look at the fruit of righteousness, which I'm going to come at an angle that probably folks hadn't heard before. But your righteousness means to be in right standing before God. So you are right standing before God. It's a judicial declaration of guilty. So it's a judge hitting the gavel and going not guilty. Righteousness answers the question, is this person in the right? Okay, before God, is he in the right? So that's what righteousness is. put here, righteousness is the ability to stand in the presence of a holy God and the ability to stand eye to eye with the accuser of the brethren. So it gives us both the ability to come bold to a forethought grace, Hebrews 4:16 It also gives us the ability to stand up to the accuser of the brethren when he makes accusations. It's our ability to operate, it's our ability to reign and rule in that context there. God says that we're righteous. That's what His Word says, and we'll go look at some of those. It's the same righteousness that God is righteous. ⁓ I know that sounds weird, but it's not a downgraded version. There's no such thing as downgraded version, okay? It's the same righteousness that is the foundation of His ⁓ The psalmist tells us that the foundation of his throne is righteousness and justice. In Romans 517, I think I had that later on that we'll look at, is we're to rule and reign. So it is our fount, the righteous is the foundation from which we rule and reign. And we execute in accordance with the Genesis 1 contract that we've talked about, that we are to make disciples, bring God's will on earth as it is in heaven. So those are some of things that we'll talk about here in just a little bit. But there's a resistance to this. People will say, no, I'm not righteous. They may be well intended. But when you say that you're not righteous, you're basically in a state of unbelief. You're denying the word of God. So let's just read several. And I got to print out here so we can go a little quicker. But Romans 5.1. And I'll let you read occasionally and I'll read some. Romans 5.1 says, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. made justified means to be made righteous. So when you see justified and righteous, righteous is the result of being justified. OK, justified is the process of being righteous. is a just declaration of a judicial. declaration of you being right. Here Romans 5.1 says it's by faith. And if you go read Romans 5, it's contrasting faith with work. So it's not by anything we've done, it's by what Jesus Christ has done. And it's our faith in that, that now God declares us righteous in exactly the same way that he declared Abraham righteous in Genesis 15.6. Because he believed, he declared him righteous. That's the way we become. justified or we are righteous is by faith. Read 2 Corinthians 5.21 there. Okay. God made the one who did not know sin to be sinned for us so that in him we would become the righteousness of God. Okay, so 2 Corinthians 5 is a great little section, we're not going read it. whole thing we read verse 17 talks about being a new creation, but here it's talking about not only were we declared righteous, but we were declared righteous justly. So it was a just declaration. Why was it a just declaration? Because sin had been placed on Jesus. ⁓ actually became sin. then he put all of our sin on him. And then God poured out his wrath until he was totally exhausted. And there was no more wrath left. And now that sin has been totally taken care of. And the result is Jesus was always righteous. He was never in a state of in a position of wrong before God, but we get his rightness or his righteousness. His righteous is now ours. Go ahead, read next one, Romans 19. Hey, Romans 5 19. For just as through the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners. So also through the obedience of one man, many will be made righteous. Okay, so Again, we're quoting a lot from Romans 5. It's a great chapter. Go the whole thing. I like 4 and 5 address a lot of this. We're going to read Romans 5 in a minute, Romans 4. But I bring out this one because this is an important thing. Our culture, our flesh, wanted to define us by what we do. They our identity to be what we've done. Righteousness is and then what we do comes out of that. Righteousness, holiness, blamelessness, faultlessness, these are all descriptions of the new covenant believer. In our culture, we want to take what your sexual appetite is and give you an identity based on that or other things that you might do and that and put it on you as your identity. The Bible, the true identity comes from within. And as the new covenant believer, that's what we're obviously talking about. being forgiven and free and now righteous and next we'll pick up holy and we'll keep going to a few other things. Your identity is this and then your actions are determined by your identity. So that would be the fruit of righteousness. But what I wanna point out here is many of us think we're sinners because we sin. I wasn't a sinner because I sinned. I was a sinner because Adam sinned. And then I earned the title myself, but the sin, came out of my identity. My identity was a sinner. And that was passed down to me from Adam. So it says, for it just asked through the disobedience of the one man. This is Adam. Many were made sinners. I was made a sinner. And then I expressed that through sin. Okay? It's we, our culture and sense, or you want to call it our. fleshly part of us wants to flip that around. The Bible never does that. Okay, so are sinners because Adam sinned. And then he keeps going, says, the, or through the obedience of one man, many will be made righteous. So we are righteous now. ⁓ are no longer a sinner, not we no longer sin, but we are now righteous because of obedience. so he didn't sin and then he was obedient even to the point of death on the cross. So that is why we are righteous. Okay. That's a, that's a, that's an important thing because if it has anything to do with me, I might have trouble believing that I want to try putting faith in the fact that I'm righteous. If it's dependent on right. My faith won't work. it's just, not real faith. Cause I know that it's wink wink, It's not true, but I know that Jesus did it for me and because of his obedience, I'm righteous. Righteousness is counter opposed to center. You can't be both. There's no overlap. Okay, your identity is either you're right before God or you are not right before God. And that would be called in this, chapter five, a sinner and ⁓ if right before There's no overlap. It's not, I'm sort of right before God and I'm sort of wrong. It's either or, no there. And that's confusing to people because again, ⁓ if you say I'm a sinner, People are going, he's claiming to be that he doesn't sin. No, that's not it. I'm claiming my identity. haven't perfected that yet. Certainly the Holy Spirit through me has not perfected that yet. But can't do a righteous act. I cannot do a righteous act unless I'm already righteous. And I'll explain that later. But that's just a fact. I cannot it. It's impossible because if I'm not righteous trying to do righteous act, it's a self-centered act, which is therefore it's not righteous. And I'll go into little more detail with an example that a little bit later. Let's see. So the fruit of us being righteous is righteousness. The fruit of righteousness is righteous acts. Yes. And the fruit of a sinner is sin. Yes. I think you said that. Yeah. I didn't say that exactly like that, but yeah, that's it. You can correct it if you want. So... Well, think it's interesting you say, we're used to being identified by what we do, how we act. But the Bible is very specific that we are, and we're changed by who we are. And God this is who you are. So that's important that we think, okay, I'm righteous, that we focus on that. on who we are. Yeah, we talked about earlier in this study talked about we changed Kingdoms So the process this whole process of doing it was actually we died. We with Christ We were buried with Christ. We were raised with Christ and we've been ascended with Christ. Each of those habits has an associated Attributes or many maybe many associated attributes associated with specifically the Bible He was raised for our justification. So when we were raised with him, that was the declaration of our righteousness. We were justified by being raised with Christ. each one of those have a process to it. Lots of overlap, hard to put into English, but we understand by faith. We talked that way or alone. We're trying to study the Bible and understand these concepts. We don't understand them with our intellect. We understand them with our heart or with our spirit. And faith comes from heart or spirit. It is we understand by faith that I am fully and completely righteous. And it's only then from there that now I have the ability the power of the Holy Spirit working through me to produce the fruit of righteousness. Yeah. This is not in the notes, but in old common sense way of thinking of it or the old covenant way of doing it, if you picture a fruit tree with roots and fruit in the religious mindset, the the roots would be obedience and that obedience produces the fruit which we would label as righteousness. Well, that didn't work very well because we couldn't obey. ⁓ mean, we could a little bit occasionally sometimes, but even our obedience many times was from a selfish motive. And, now under the new covenant, that's all flipped upside down. The roots of that fruit tree is Okay. a because of what Christ did on the cross. And that produces a fruit of righteousness or a fruit of, you could call it obedience, you could call it good works, you could call it what you just called it, do you go? Acts of righteousness or righteous acts. There's several labels we could put that, but it's produced from the foundation or the roots righteousness. That's what comes first given to you and I or in all believers as a gift because what Christ has done for us on the cross. It's an express declaration of not guilty. This kind of goes off our notes too, but the certificate of indebtedness that's talked about at Colossians 2, 14 and 15 that was nailed to the cross and destroyed, that certificate of indebtedness is Satan's ownership certificate for non-believers. And then when they take it to the cross, it disappears. Now, Satan no longer has anything on us because it's gone. That's also built in there is the terms of right. That's why now when he comes at me with accusation, can come at it. I don't have to back down and go, well, show me where it's written. He can't. It was distorted the cross. Yeah. And I can just say, you know, basically he's going to have to accuse Jesus Christ because I'm clothed in Christ, put it in Philippians terminology. But anyway, is that good? Yes, sir. Romans four and four, five will keep going. Four, five. I'll read that says, but to the one who does not work, but believes in the one who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. So this is if you go start by Romans four, they're talking about different context and they're talking about Abraham. They'll talk about David here in a minute. And Paul's bringing these out. And they say, and they say the one who believes is credited as righteousness, just like. just like Abraham was in Genesis 15 six. I love the point that one reason I like Romans four or five so much is because God actually describes himself the one who justifies the ungodly. He goes, who believes in the one, that's God, who justifies the ungodly. That's a description of God that uses, that through the Holy Spirit, through Paul's pen, he calls himself the one who justifies the ungodly. First of all, it tells us that He justifies, he makes righteous. That's what that means, right? So he makes righteous the ungodly. The other thing is, if we were writing that, if we were describing ourselves as somebody, we're the ones that make righteous the godly. He doesn't. He describes himself as the ones, as the one who justifies the ungodly, which Paul's point up to here, the first three chapters of Romans is that we're all ungodly, right? There's none of us that aren't ungodly. So there you go. But I love that. probably one of the best descriptions of God I could foster him up with. he describes himself in so many ways, but that's just because ungodly before he justified me, but now I'm not. I put it's just who he is. His names are he is. And he is the that justifies ungodly. Philippians 3.9. What version do have? Can go to some other version? ESV? read that and then off your print out there read it in the NET. But read first one. ESV. ESV, Yes, we do. How about I do it in Greek Hebrew? Yeah, that works. Interlinear. That works. Three. Three nine. And be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. OK, yeah. Now read Eleanore, this is from the NET. NET. And be found in him not because I have my own righteousness derived from the because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ's faithfulness, a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ's faithfulness. You see the difference there? Oh yeah. So faith in Christ versus Christ's faithfulness. Yeah, faith in Christ, that's what, what was that ESV? That was ESV. That's what the ESV says. Oh, by the way, I've looked it up in of them. That's what most all of them say, except the NET. The NET says Christ's faithfulness. So let's back up for just a second. come back to that. So it's not a righteousness derived from the law. would all say, me, you and I are Gentiles, so we've never been subject to the law. But we've made ourselves subject to religion or to the law. for you and I, we could put it not because I have my own righteous derived from religion or from my own works, okay? But because of the rites that comes by faith in Christ or Christ faithfulness. Just a quick. note on that. In the Greek, is impossible to tell. They actually, there's no difference and you can't distinguish is it faith in Christ or is it Christ faithfulness. So ⁓ NET chooses to or to translate this as Christ faithfulness. So it's interesting to go read all the verses that you have memorized and other things that talks about faith in Christ. Galatians 2.20 is an example. There's lots of examples and the NET captures this other aspect of that same Greek phrase of Christ's faithfulness. I would contend that they're both true. If no way to distinguish between the two, then they're both true. Yeah. And you go, yeah, they both fit. But it's interesting to me that one of them is self-centered and one of them is Christ-centered. was going say one is Christ's faithfulness. So I didn't even do that. You didn't even do that. It is his faithfulness alone. that we are righteous. He's the author of our faith. Yes. And this captures that very well. It is also a faith in Christ. I'm not saying it's not, but it's interesting to me. We have this underlying self-centeredness that it's hard to get out of that. And we want to be responsible for something, right? We want to be responsible for faith. We'll be responsible for faith in Christ. most translations pick that. As you just said, he is the... author and the finisher of our faith. So we can't even do that. Right. Right. You know, it's funny. He was baptized with the baptism of repentance. That was on our behalf. We can't even repent on our own. You're thinking like, well, surely repentance is, is something that gets to be of me. No, even that he even went through that process in our place. And when an innocent man is baptized in repentance, the skies toward torn open, the whole spirit realm shook as, as the sky was literally torn open. And now we And it's never been put back. You and I still live under that open sky. I think you've said it before. We're so much worse off than we thought we We considered ourselves that he had to even repent and be baptized. We enemies of God, right? Well, we enemies. While we were enemies, or while we were dead in our sins is another thing. I thought I was decent. Yeah, I'm an okay guy, right? That's one reason we started this lesson with a section on the holiness of God, because only until you get the holiness of God and His righteousness and His goodness in the right location, even though I think it's impossible for us to get it high enough as finite beings, but if we get it in the right proportion to us, it's only then that we can legitimately understand that, ⁓ I have to have righteousness as a gift. There's nothing I can do. And we looked at that earlier that, you when we were talking about it, we talk about our rights as filthy rags. So, you know, even our good deeds are terrible. Right. You know, Jesus says when he's talking about us as parents, talking about giving our kids, if they ask for a fish, we give them a serpent, those kinds of things. If you'll read that, that's you could argue, say we're at our best when we're parenting. Yeah, that's kind of the best me. Maybe I don't know. Maybe you could say that. that but most of us are. That's one of our better times as when we're parenting. But if you go look at that, he goes, you being evil. So he's calling us evil when even when we're arguably could be at our best. And he goes, even you guys know how to give good things to your children. How much more so your father? So that's a different point that he's making. But the point is that you're making there is that, we fall so far short. Here's the problem. We fall so far short that we don't realize how short we fall. Right? mean, yeah. Fallenness prevents us from understanding how fallen we are. anyway. One thing, okay, he'll grow some righteousness out of a little bit of my righteousness and make it big. Yeah. It's like, no, he won't. Okay. On our first Corinthians. Move and replace. That's what he First Corinthians 6.11. For kill and resurrect. Yeah. Copy and paste. don't know where he said it. First Corinthians 6.11. If don't mind reading that. Sure. In whatever version you can find. Do you approve? I do. I don't speak Greek. Yeah. 6.11. Yeah. Some of you once lived this way, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. against ⁓ you were made righteous. Sanctified, we'll talk about next. Sanctified is the process by which you were made holy. These are both as all these have been past tense, done things. Yeah. Right. So, we were washed, we were sanctified. That means made holy. We were justified, that means made righteous and how? In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the name of Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one that made us righteous and made us holy. Titus 3.7, that's the next one there. So that since we have been justified by his grace, we become heirs a confident expectation of eternal life. So justification or righteousness is by grace and by that we have become heirs. So we are. side-by-side joint-heir of Jesus Christ. We are an heir of the Father because of, we're a righteousness because of grace. Alright, questions, comments? I was going a few more things about righteousness. Go for it. Okay, so here's a question that I pose to people sometimes that might be having trouble believing that I'm truly, authentically, fully righteous. Sure. Independent of what I have done or will done or can do or any of kind of stuff. Right. But purely by the work of Jesus Christ, by His faithfulness by His authored faith in Himself through me. So here's a question. If you're not right, let's say you go, okay, I don't believe I'm righteous. I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. I kind of got a feeling about this new creation thing, but I'm just not righteous. Randy, you haven't seen my resume. resume would go against it. that's, will pull out your resume, right? That little certificate of indebtedness? Yeah, exactly. It's going though for you and I, right? He only by bringing it up. He can't actually have anything legitimate to bring it But so let's say you're let's say, OK, you're not righteous. You know, you're a follower of Jesus Christ. Here's my question. What future event are you counting on to make you righteous? But so let's say you're let's say, OK, you're not righteous. You know, you're a follower of Jesus Christ. Here's my question. What future event are you counting on to make you righteous? so let's say you're not. Yeah, I've I'm a full, fully committed follower of Jesus Christ. I confess him as Lord. And do the power of the Holy Spirit, trying to make that look right, look like a reality to people looking at. But I am not righteous. Okay. I'm a sinner. Okay. What future event is going to change that? What future event is going to make you righteous? And I can only think it too, that people might give an answer. Well, my death. When I die, I'll be righteous. Okay. Well, let's just unpack the arrogance of that statement. You're saying that the death of Jesus Christ could not make you righteous, but your own death is going to make you righteous? That sounds stupid even coming out of our mouth. Or this word, crazy. That sounds crazy coming out of our mouth. Edit that out. So, right? So, if Jesus Christ's death, what's already happened, didn't make us righteous, what makes us think our death's gonna make us righteous? Well, the Word of God doesn't ever say anything even close to that. Yeah. Okay. And then, okay, well, it's not my death, it's when I get to heaven. When I get to heaven, I'll be made righteous. Really? You know, they don't let sinners in heaven, right? Yeah. And if you're not righteous, you're a sinner and you're not fit for heaven. You can't go to heaven unless you are righteous. Only the righteous go to heaven. So there is, again, there would be nothing in anywhere in scripture that would say, oh, when you get to heaven, we're going to spray you off, dip you and reform you and make you a new creation. And we're going to declare that you are now right before the Lord. There's no scripture that even hints at that. All the scriptures that I've just read and many more. have called it a done deal. That it was done at the cross. And it was fully implemented in me when I said, save me Jesus. that's kind of the, I meant to look it up and I should have, I don't have this memorized, it is, it's in Hebrews, and I'm not even gonna guess at the chapter, but it says something to the effect that if you believe and then you go back into sin, well, there's no further sacrifice to be made for sins. In other words, there's not another future coming. ahead of you. if ⁓ are calling yourself a sinner, let's say then, okay, if you really are, well, there's not a future, there's no other sacrifice coming. Right. It was either done at the cross or wasn't done at the cross. There's not something else coming. That's what that Hebrew section would say. Yeah. But. I'm trying to find it. Okay. All right. It's in Hebrews. Maybe we'll find it later. Yeah. Any questions or comments on that? I have a, I'm going to go on. I'm going to talk about the fruit of righteousness next. Yeah, no. Okay. Let's talk about the fruit. Well, first of all, before we talk about fruit, no, let's come back to that. Remember, we're going come back to this. Don't forget. Okay. Let's go. I mapped out a different section on the fruit of righteousness. It's just, that's just started having a stream of consciousness. Started writing stuff down. I'll write a different paper here. And of course, I wrote the definition again, but let me read it because it's or I put righteousness as being made right before God as a gift based on the blood and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's the ability to stand in the presence of God with no guilt, no shame, no condemnation. It is the ability to rule and reign in the face of accusing demons. Amen. So that's what our righteousness is. But let's talk about the fruit of righteousness. I don't want to talk. I'll talk about. I'll come back at the end. We'll talk about. Philippians 3.16 after I read this, but I wanted to take a different slant on fruit of righteousness because we kind of have it as morality, know, fruit of righteousness being moral, being kind, being a nice guy, being a good guy or gal or whatever, there's a lot more that comes as a result of or as a fruit of our being righteousness and let me just read some of these. is A freedom righteousness is the ability to no longer have a consciousness of sin. You talk about backwards from what most people believe and think, what most theologies tell us, and that's Hebrews 10, two through four. That basically because the once all time sacrifice of Jesus ⁓ it the conscience and removed need for a consciousness of sin. And it was the contrast in the law that had repeated sacrifices, which was a wouldn't clear the conscience, it was a reminder of sin. But it actually says in there that because of the Jesus Christ, we no longer have a consciousness of sin. We're no longer to be sin-focused. To be sin-focused is to be self-focused. or the law requires us to be self-focused because we have to constantly make the assessment, am good enough? Do I pass? Am I meeting this hurdle that I'm trying to get over? That's a self-focus. Righteousness is Christ-focused because He has made it over all of her hurdles. He is righteous and he's given me that righteous. And now I can focus on him and be moved from glory to glory like St. Corinthians three would sell us. But the ability to no longer be half a consciousness sin. It is a fruit of righteousness, is no condemnation of any kind. That's Romans eight one. It means acceptance and this acceptance. Here's what's huge I think. is this acceptance of Jesus Christ, of his righteousness, or this understanding that I'm fully accepted before him. That alone has so many fruits of it. But one of them, it creates a spiritual power. It creates this power to rule and to reign in accordance with Romans 5, 17 through 19, and Romans 3, 24. That's what I would throw out as references there. Let's read Romans 5 17. We've 19. Let's just start back and go 17 18 19 and then we'll maybe talk a little about 17 there. 5 17? Yeah, do 19. Okay, for if by the transgression of the one man, death reign through the one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ, exclamation point. Consequently, Just as condemnation for all people came through one transgression, so too, through one righteous act came righteousness leading to life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man, many were constituted sinners, so also through the obedience of one man, many will be constituted righteous. Okay, go back to that end of 17, the way you said it, it's the point. And it says, for those who receive, right in there, read that to that. How much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one Jesus Christ? Okay, I want to bring out two points here. It's raining in life right here now. It's raining in life just like originally we're supposed to with the Genesis one covenant. And now we've been restored underneath the Lord in the kingdom of the sun, whom he nearly loves. We've been restored to rule and reign. It is. ruling and reigning from the foundation that the psalm says God reigns from, is and is the foundation of his throne. That's where we rule from. notice too, it says we have to receive it. Those who receive the abundance of grace and of righteousness. So if you're constantly stiff arming it, You're not going to rule and reign effectively. You're going to try to develop your own kingdom, build your own kingdom, which is actually building Satan's kingdom. Instead of receiving his grace, receiving his righteousness, and now go about the work of building the Christ kingdom. Bunch of different ways to say that. Anyway. That's good. So that's one thing that this acceptance, this being in right standing does. I put here, kind of an obvious one. We can boldly and confidently come before the throne of God. mean, good grief, are you kidding me? This throne, we read Isaiah 6, and 850 years later is described almost the same way in Revelation 4 when John sees it. So what's the implication? It's going on right now still? But we can walk into that area. We're told to come boldly. We're invited. We're commanded, actually. Ephesians uses the word confidently, to confidently come before the throne of God. That is only allowed because of we're not standing with him because we are righteous. There's other things that go in there too. We're a son coming before a father. And those were a king, small k coming for the king, capital K, king of kings. But we can do it boldly. put here, our sins are no longer remembered. That's a, well, when we go look at the, we'll go back to Hebrews 10, 5 through 17. When we get to a few more sections here in this lesson to with what the Holy Spirit does. But the Holy Spirit has witnessed. was the note at Calvary as the Father and the Son were dealing with our sin. And his witness is, says he bears witness that our sins and our lawless deeds will be remembered no more. That's one of the Holy Spirit's. The is to remind you, to remind me that our sins have been taken care of. The power of sin? No, no longer subject to it. The penalty of sin? No, no longer subject to that God or that aspect. I put it as part of our ability to stand and I'm talking about the term that's used in Hebrews 6. Standing, that you may stand. Be strong in the Lord. That's Ephesians 6.12. And then when we look at the different things that Paul calls the of the Lord. The point of the armor of Lord is that we stand on the evil day. That's quite a right? part of that is the breastplate of righteousness. So this righteousness, it protects identity. It protects us against accusations because Satan's gonna want to put us into that old way of thinking that we are what you do. And he's gonna want to call us out. Right? And if we sin, he's going to call us a sinner. If we lie, he's going to call us a liar. He's trying to change our identity with accusations. So we'll set the true identity, who are in Christ, as we'll set that aside and start acting in a false identity, which was our old identity, which he'll keep trying to accuse us into that. But that's one of the things that breastplate of righteousness, that understanding his righteousness is Christ's righteousness covering me. I don't have to listen to his accusations anymore. Proverbs 28 one says that the righteous is as bold as a lion. being righteous, right? Think about it. If I am fully right before God, that gives me a ⁓ boldness that really can't be matched in anything else, right? Any other kind of boldness is arrogance. Sometimes this boldness almost appears as arrogance to ⁓ people that aren't exercising faith or to the faithless, either one, to the non-believer. and to the believers that aren't exercising their faith. It looks like Eric, no, it's boldness. Boldness is a lot because I am right standing before my God. Romans 1.17 says the righteous live by faith. Psalm 85.10 says that righteousness provides peace with God. Peace with God and righteousness are very closely compared and you'll see that in also Romans 4 and 5. 5.17, which you just read. And I'll say here, rule and reign, but we're not victims. That believer that you and I just read about, 5, 17, 18, 19 is not a victim. And Romans 8 would tell us the same thing. It's the last part of Romans 8. We are overcomers. The exact accusations just bounce right off of us. We're more than conquerors. We're more than conquerors. Many times we want to act like victim because we feel like maybe that's humility. That's not humility. That's unbelief disguised in itself as false humility. Yeah, I've said that a few times, but that's so important to understand. We're accepted in the beloved. That's Ephesians 1 6. I already said accepted, that's another. We're accepted in the beloved, in Christ. Christ is the beloved. Now we too are the beloved and we're accepted by the Father. We are free from Oppression and we're free from fear. That's an example. That would be Isaiah 54 14. We are free from oppression and free from fear all because we're in a right standing with God. love Isaiah. That's 54. I think it's Isaiah 51. Could be Isaiah 54. Probably should have looked it up. Isaiah 51, I he says, who are you to be afraid? I'm standing right next to you. And you're like, dude, yeah, who am I to be afraid? He's accusing us of being stupid. because we're fearful when he's the one standing right next to us. He's like, dude, you can't be fearful. I'm here. And quit. And so just stop it. We are free from the power and the dominion of sin. ⁓ my goodness, this is huge. We are free from the power and the dominion of sin. We don't have to be sin conscious anymore because we are free from that. And as long as we stay focused on ourselves and sin, we'll just stay in it. It's like a dog chasing its tail. There's no way out of that. OK? ⁓ That's the downward spiral that's described in the middle part of Romans 7. And that person who's in that downward spiral in the middle part of Romans 7 is the one who's trying to follow the law and does not consider themselves dead to the law like the woman that's described, the wife that's described in the first three verses of Romans 7. And then Romans 7, 4 says, have died to the law that we may bear fruit to God, kind of lines with what we've already been saying. I put here we we pray bold prayers that are answered. That's James 5 16, know, it talks about a righteous man. His prayers availeth much, his prayers are powerful. So a righteous person prays bold prayers and they're answered because why? Well, when we have confidence to come before the throne. I put here Psalm 5 12 says we are blessed and favored. Psalm 34 15 says God's eyes are on and his ears are open to the righteous. Come on. He hears our prayers. He's watching us continually. He's another Psalm says he guides us with our eyes, with his eyes. You know, like a mom. I don't know. My mom could guide me with my eyes, right? But he's guiding us with us. He guides us with his voice, but he'd rather just guide us with his eyes. Hey, just over there. Boom. And we just go because there's a relationship that we have. So that's some of the, maybe a different slant on what people are talking about or talk about, think about when you're thinking about fruit of righteousness. All right, so let's go read Philippians 316. Can you look that up? Philippians 316. So before you read, there are folks out there. that make a good logical argument based on our old way of thinking that would say, yeah, but Randy, I'm not righteous because of this, this and this. Or I'm a sinner because here this prohibited, I did this today or whatever. And this connection between who I am and what I do. And Philippians 3.16 brings this out. Philippians 3.16. Nevertheless, let us live up to the standard that we have already attained. OK, so let us live up to the standard we've already attained. So what's the standard we've already attained in this context we're talking about is righteousness. It's in that context, too. It's the whole we've been given and we're talking about as our identity here. But the standard which we have attained is righteousness. And Paul's saying, let's live that out. He didn't say, Go do this, this, and this in order to become righteous. That's what religion says. And that is, in fact, what the law says. OK? Do these 800 or 650-something things, and you will be righteous. And do them from your first breath to your last absolutely perfectly. And you will be righteous. You're not, well, OK, I'm not sure that matches. I mean, I'm sure that's possible. Pretty sure it's not. Only one man's ever done it. But this says, we've already attained. in this, what we're talking about here is righteous. We've already attained holiness. We've already attained faultlessness. We've already attained blamelessness, Colossians 1.22. We've already attained these things. And now Paul says, nevertheless, go live that out. Read that one more time. Nevertheless, let us live up to the standard that we have already attained. OK. Let's live up to the standard that we have already attained. This is probably a good place to stop. I was going to cover it in the next one, holiness, but it applies here too. But I said it earlier. I said, you cannot do a righteous act unless you're already righteous. What I mean by that. Jesus came down. It was already in the law if we read it correctly, but he basically said, it's not just what you do. It's your motives behind what you do. That matters. Okay. If you're doing it for show, it doesn't count. Okay. If you're doing it because you truly care, it counts. And he adultery with undressing a woman or having lust in your heart with a woman. He equated murder with hate in your heart. He talks about being defiled by what comes out of mouth because what comes out of our mouth is what's inside us. So there's this idea. It's not just what we do. It's our motives and what's inside us and all that matters. let's say you're in need. I don't know what the need would be. Let's say I drive you here in town and I see you got a flat tire and you help. I pull over to help you. Is that a righteous act or is that an unrighteous act? Well, it depends. If I don't see myself as righteous, And I'm going to do, I'm going to be a good Samaritan to Jeff and I'm going to go help him out. That will help me be righteous. That's not a righteous act. Why? Because it looks like I'm helping you out, but I'm doing it for me. It's a selfishly motivated act because I need something from you. I need something from helping you. I need to be righteous or I need to be, see myself as good or I need others to see me as kind or whatever. Right. But if I'm Resting in a position of righteousness and peace and joy. I'm resting in a position of love. I'm resting sitting on a foundation of righteousness Then as an expression right dude, why just I'm gonna go help Jeff. Why cuz he needs help And and I just don't know help that guy that would be a righteous act But I have to do it from a position of righteous Righteous for it not to be self-centered for it not to be I need something from this, right? But anyway, that's that was my point earlier that I said we bring up. may touch on again. Holiness would be kind of a similar kind of thing. Holiness is a gift. But anyway, that's that's my point on righteousness. We are, in fact, fully righteous. And we rule and reign, according to Romans 517, from a position of righteousness. Right. So ever since Adam, we've been executing the covenant of Adam as unrighteous people, enslaved to sin. enslaved to Satan. After Christ, and now we come into the new covenant, we are now people, we're subject to the covenant, Adam's but now we are fully under the authority of Christ. We are rightly oriented to our God, our Father, because of what Christ has done, and we are righteous, and it is from that foundation that now we go and live life. Questions, comments, or thoughts on that before we end? Nope, that's good stuff, Randy. Thank you