The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
“Achieve Or Receive”
Nothing is more important for the human heart than to be right - righteous - in God’s sight. Thankfully, He has made the matter breathtakingly simple in the conceptual sense. We either attempt to achieve righteousness by our own efforts. Or we receive righteousness through the efforts and merits of Another. The former results in utter futility. The latter provides acceptance with God both now and forevermore.
“All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).
“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life” (Romans 5:18).
The standard of God perhaps the most definitive reason for both the assurance of grace and the despair of human attempts to make ourselves righteous.
“As for God, His way is perfect” (II Samuel 22:31).
In order to be acceptable with the Lord by our own merits and works - to achieve - we must perfectly fulfill His will from the moment of conception and forevermore. No son or daughter born of Adam’s race has even the slightest hope of fulfilling such a spiritual and moral standard. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God… In Adam all die” (Romans 3:23; I Corinthians 15:22). Even the slightest deviation from His will must, by definition, eliminate even the most seemingly accomplished among us from the slightest hope from righteous acceptability with God (James 2:10). Either perfect and acceptable to the One whose “way is perfect.” Or imperfect and necessarily rejected in order for the Lord to maintain the eternally holy paradigm of His character, nature, and way. “The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works” (Psalm 145:17).
Conversely, God perfectly and assuredly receives all who come by way of faith in the freest gift ever given, purchased by the highest cost ever remitted. Our Heavenly Father imputes the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ to all who freely receive His grace.
“Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us… righteousness” (I Corinthians 1:30).
“Accepted the Beloved” exulted the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians (Ephesians 1:6). Our Father sees all who receive His grace in the Lord Jesus through the lens of Christ. He views us as “in Christ,” and thus enrobed in the righteousness of His beloved Son. The hymn writer Isaac Watts beautifully depicted the breathtaking splendor of this wonder in his hymn, “Awake My Heart, Arise My Tongue.”
“And lest the shadow of a spot should on my soul be found, He took the robe the Savior wrought and cast it all around!”
In relationship and standing with God, the robe has been freely and forever cast all around. The better we know the nature and extent of the gift, the more we will also “be filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:11). “The root of the righteous shall not be moved… the root of the righteous yieldeth fruit… rooted and built up in Him” (Proverbs 12:3; 12; Colossians 2:7). We must see ourselves as God sees us, spiritually united to His Son whom He perfectly receives by a merit and achievement so perfectly satisfactory it can be freely applied to all who receive its eternal benefit. "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).
Achieve righteousness? Impossible. Receive righteousness? Possible and actual in all who realize the breathtaking simplicity of a grace that comes to us by way of more sorrow, suffering, forsakenness, and death than we will ever know. Paul stated the matter in the most stark terms and the most sublime proclamation of a grace whereby we receive righteousness in the only way any human being can ever know it…
“He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”
(II Corinthians 5:21)
“Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name have cast out devils? And in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.”
(Matthew 7:22-23)
“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous.”
(Romans 5:8-19)
Weekly Memory Verse
God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
(Revelation 21:4)
7902
