Righteous Despite Appearances
Righteous Despite Appearances
Let's begin in Genesis 15.
Genesis 15:6 (NIV)
"Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness."
Abram (Abraham) was made righteous. God had promised him a son who would inherit his land.
Now lets jump forward in his life.
Genesis 16:1–3 (NIV)
"Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife."
Abram (Abraham) and his wife cooked up a plan to help God make good on His promise. It's much the same for many of us today. God has promised that the righteous will inherit eternal life and be pleasing to Him, and we decide that we better get busy helping Him because from what we can see, we don't look very righteous.
The plan Sarai and Abe cooked up was sinful. It involved an adulterous relationship with a woman to whom Abe was not married.
After that we find this:
Genesis 17:16–17 (NIV)
"I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”
Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?”
This does not look like faith either, does it? He actually laughed in disbelief.
Now let's jump ahead to Romans where the Apostle Paul talks about Abraham.
Romans 4:18–22 (NIV)
"Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be. Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”
This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Think about this for a moment. We saw that Abraham's faith absolutely did waver and that he went so far as to sin by having illicit sexual relations with a woman not his wife. He laughed at the promise as he aged further with no evidence that God would actually do what He had promised.
How can it possibly be then that Paul, writing through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit could say that Abraham's faith never wavered and that he was fully persuaded about what God promised?
Here's the answer:
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!"
And here:
2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV)
"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
New creatures have no past. What I mean is that the change that God made in us when we put our faith in Christ Jesus has made us completely new creatures who HAVE NEVER SINNED. That is how complete the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf is. We weren't simply forgiven; we were made righteous (verse 21 above). That's what the Bible means when it says that we were forgiven ALL our trespasses and that we were cleansed from ALL unrighteousness. We ARE RIGHTEOUS. We are pure, holy, and blameless, because Jesus Christ GAVE US HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS.
This is what people are trying to communicate when they say things like "God sees us as righteous." Unfortunately, that statement doesn't go far enough. The Bible goes much further and makes it clear that God is not faking Himself out or looking at us through Jesus glasses. We are actually and for real righteous. Nothing we can do can change that because nothing we did made it so in the first place. Righteousness is a gift.
Abraham was made righteous. He became a new creature who had never sinned.
It is exactly the same with us, Saints.
