What is righteousness?

God is righteous…

So are we…

Righteousness…

What is it?

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/ephesians/4-24.htm

The new man…

Having been created…

In righteousness…

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/ephesians/4-24.htm

according to God…

“down from, i.e. from a higher to a lower plane, with special reference to the terminus (end-point)” (J. Thayer)…

God is righteous and so He created the new man to be in His likeness – righteous…

We don’t know how righteous we are in our new man – our new creation…

When I go through seasons or even seasons within a single day where I “swing” between the flesh and the Spirit, i.e. the Spirit filling my new man (my new self), I often hear myself saying things which are not righteous and are not in accordance with the holiness of the truth…

And at the time I think these things are me, I have to be honest with God – but they are not me and He continually reminds me of this…

They are not me…

They are being “shed”…

If we want to know the righteousness of Jesus Christ – surrender to the Holy Spirit…

He will live through us…

I struggled for a long time in my Christian life to try and focus on Jesus – to try and “see” Him with my “spiritual eyes” and imagine Him from what we’re told about in scripture and try to “make something happen” in that respect but I am seeing more and more that as He wants to He reveals Himself to me – I have nothing to do with it and can’t “prompt” it or “make it happen” – He controls this not me…

What He does do though is live through me – and I see Him as He lives through me…

If you want to see the righteousness of God surrender to the Holy Spirit – let Him live through you…

Righteousness puts its love for God above any other authority – above any other love…

Any other “pull” on us is subjugated to surrender to the Holy Spirit…

We may really want our wife or our husband to understand us – we may really want unity with our wife or our husband – but if the Lord hasn’t decreed this – we must submit to His timing…

If the Lord hasn’t decreed that our children “snap out” of whatever they’re doing which “drives us crazy” then we must submit to His timing…

Righteousness is a state of being…

It has nothing to do with what is happening around you it has everything to do with what is happening inside you…

Whatever is happening around you will only highlight your righteousness as you see the Lord covering you and responding in peace and “evenness” to whatever provocation you are receiving from the “outside”…

Even when you are being flattered righteousness will not allow you to take any glory – it will protect you from this – and the thing is the Lord wants us to see His righteousness shining through us – we just have to receive it as a free gift…

Not just the free gift of being called “righteous” – pronounced righteous – but also the free gift of living righteous through the Holy Spirit’s abiding power in our lives – when He moves to make us righteous – practically through His abiding presence…

For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:17 NASB)

How do we reign in life?

Exactly how I am explaining above…

There is no striving in this…

We are seen by those around us (as the Lord enables) for what we still are in our flesh (sin which dwells in me) but we are also seen to be the righteousness of Christ (as the Lord enables) by those around us as He (the Holy Spirit) lives through our new man…

Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. (Romans 3:27 NASB)

I’ve found the hardest thing in my whole life to be to “stop” and let God complete what He has promised to me…

The hardest thing…

This is the law of faith…

Where you stop – sit in silence – and wait for God to do what He has said that He will do – without your “help” and without your “intervention”…

This is supernatural and this displays the righteousness of God…

For Jesus “stopped” and Jesus waited…

He waited for His Father to raise Him from the dead in the power of the Holy Spirit…

This is what we are called to do also…

To wait for the Anointing…

And to rise on wings as eagles as He enables us in His time – whoever is rising at a point in time is an encouragement to us all – it doesn’t matter who it is or whether we’re all rising together – we are all encouraged by the Anointing being released on any of our brothers and sisters…

All encouraged…

As we are the many-faceted display of the wisdom of God on earth…

Every piece doing its part – we make up His Body on earth and we display His Righteousness…

Every unique piece…

When we submit to the Holy Spirit He lives through our new self and every new self is unique – every new self is like a unique star shining in the reflected glory of the Sun of Righteousness…

We are all one in Christ Jesus – and His Righteousness will be displayed corporately – not in competition – by us all together in this “non-striving” fashion of waiting on the Holy Spirit…