Practicing Righteousness

Practicing Righteousness

Practicing righteousness is imperative if you want to enter the kingdom of God. This is made perfectly clear and plain in Matthew 7.

It made no difference as to what they had done in Jesus’ name; if they also committed unrighteous acts, they would be inexorably rejected.

Since we have all done unrighteousness—sinned—we need the forgiveness of sins first; we need forgiveness for all the unrighteousness deeds we have committed. Therefore the Father sent His only begotten Son, because He does not desire the death of a sinner. He, the Just One, died for us the unjust, in order to have the power and the right to wipe out sins. He has atoned for all our unrighteous deeds.

Our faith in this work is at first imputed to us as righteousness, without us having any righteous deeds. Romans, Chapters 3 and 4.

Nevertheless—and we must take note of this—this is only on the obvious condition that we have now been converted in spirit and in truth so that we now love to practice righteousness and therefore begin to abstain from all kinds of unrighteous deeds immediately from the heart, as it is written: “Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” 2 Tim. 2:19.

Everyone who hungers and thirsts for righteousness will be filled with righteousness. He becomes happy because it succeeds. He receives everything he needs from God in order to carry out righteousness in his life. Matt. 5:6. Glory to God!

To think that you can practice unrighteousness in money matters and other things years after you were converted, and then claim the atonement and get to heaven “on account of the blood” is the world’s greatest delusion and deception.

The Scriptures testify about this with all clarity; among others, we have the apostle John’s clear and strong testimony that everyone who practices righteousness is born of God (1 John 2:29), and that the sign of whether a person is a child of God or a child of the devil is whether he practices righteousness or not. 1 John 3:10.

God’s righteousness, which in area after area becomes our personal righteousness through the obedience of faith and through transformation within us, reaches very far and deep.

Everything has a small beginning, as does righteousness in our life. Let us compare it with the many letters of the alphabet.

“A” in the alphabet of righteousness is to pay your financial debts, pay for what you have bought, pay for the work that others have performed for you, pay your taxes, etc.

If you love righteousness, then you pay immediately, at the right time, or even before the due date—willingly and with joy. If you cannot pay everything at once, you pay as much as possible as quickly as possible, and often.

If you were unable to pay what you owe, you buy as little as possible and absolutely not anything beyond what you need until you have paid it all off. And should it, against all expectation, take a long time before you are able to pay it all, then notify the ones to whom you owe something that you have not forgotten but will repay as soon as possible. Moreover, if I really love righteousness and believe God, it will not take that long, for God loves the righteous person and blesses him! Glory to God!

A person’s righteous mind (he has of course received a new mind) tells him to repay what he can even though it is only a little bit. This pleases God so much that He makes sure that the entire amount is soon paid off. “The blessing of the Lord makes one rich . . . .” Prov. 10:22.

The less righteous a person is, the more things he discovers that he needs to buy for himself. The more righteous he is, the less he buys for himself.

“The wicked [ungodly] borrows and does not repay . . . .” Ps. 37:21. If the righteous person has to borrow, he does it sorrowfully. It is his longing and his joy to repay it.

The ungodly person’s joy is to borrow. When he has been able to borrow, things are fine and he is happy.

Well, this was a little bit about the first letter of the alphabet of righteousness. And in this context it is fitting to say, “If you cannot do the least, how could you then do anything great?”

The person who does not practice righteousness builds on shifting sand.