I came away from reading Proverbs 12 this morning with a palpable fixation on wanting to live a RIGHTEOUS life that becomes a witness by giving people around me a glimpse of Christ at work.
At first I was deflated—more like flattened, I would say–by that seemingly unreachable state. But then God calmed me down and I started to think it through.
My starting point was that God’s righteousness is his saving grace in and through the life, death, and resurrection of his son Jesus Christ. That we are justified by God declaring us righteous in and through Jesus Christ. And that he does it with expectation that we would live righteously by faith in word and deed.
Ok, fair enough.
But then it hit me that faith is not our righteousness. We become righteous when God credits it to us through our faith. Our faith is what binds us to Christ and everything he wants to do in and through our life.
Ah, that’s it…righteousness is a hope and not a fully present reality. And it is definitely worth the wait! Waiting and trusting Christ as the king of righteousness in this way dethrones sin in our lives.
Christ will be our righteousness, or we will perish.
Much less deflated by this point, I am driven to keep Proverbs 12 fresh in my life.
HOW ABOUT YOU?
Have you thought about your righteousness lately?
“Therefore it was also credited to him as righteousness. Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.” Romans 4:22–25
