OUR STRUGGLE FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS

It is no news that many churches today are in a struggle for righteousness. Everybody is trying to keep rules and regulations just to appear righteous before God. They think that by keeping the laws of Moses, they will be declared righteous by God. Some unbelievers and atheist think that if they are able to do a lot of good works then they will appear good enough before God. You would probably have heard someone say stuffs like “I am not a bad person. I don’t drink, I don’t steal, I don’t fornicate, I help people all the time, I even visit the orphanage often, and so on and so forth. I don’t think I need your Jesus. I am already a good person” You see when unbelievers make such statements, they are simply thinking that one can become righteous by struggling to do many good things. They don’t know that such righteousness they get by their efforts is not regarded by God. They are pure only in their own eyes even though in God’s eyes they are still filthy.

                           

¹² There is a class of people who are pure in their own eyes, and yet are not washed from their own filth. {Proverbs 30:12 AMP}

Again you see people who claim to be believers boasting in their credentials. You hear them make statements like “ I am righteous because I paid my tithes complete, I fast and pray three times every week, I was born in church, got baptized at age six, I started singing in the choir at a very tender age, I don’t fornicate, I don’t commit adultery, I’ve been a prayer warrior from my youth, the list goes on and on” When people boast like this before me, the first thing that comes to my mind is that “this one doesn’t know what God’s righteousness is”  He is simply ignorant of God’s righteousness and therefore confuses self- righteousness for God’s righteousness. All such boastings have led to the “holier than thou” attitudes making some Christians look down on others.

Yet they say to each other, ‘Don’t come too close or you will defile me! I am holier than you!’ These people are a stench in my nostrils, an acrid smell that never goes away. {Isaiah 65:5 NLT}

 They go as far as grading righteousness and saying this person is more righteous than that person. What an ignorance! No Christian can be more righteous than another Christian since God’s righteousness is not earned by our abilities. And the truth is that a greater percentage of today’s Christians think they can earn God’s righteousness and so labour so hard in trying to look righteous before God. They are all in a struggle for righteousness. Until they realize the truth they will keep struggling in vain. This is what God’s word says about all those who are in a struggle for righteousness:

 ²⁰ Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin. {Romans 3:20 NIV}

To attempt to become righteous by struggling to keep the law is to be cut off from Christ. You fall away from grace when you think you can become righteous by your own religious plans and projects. You think you are trying to please God not knowing you are cutting yourself off from Christ and rejecting His grace. Christ therefore will profit you nothing if you depend on your labour to become righteous.

^2-3 I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law. {Galatians 5:2-3 MSG}

^4-6 I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love. {Galatians 5:4-6 MSG}

²¹ I refuse to reject the grace of God. But if a person is put right with God through the Law, it means that Christ died for nothing! {Galatians 2:21 GNT}

There is enough evidence in the bible to show that all such struggles for righteousness by works will amount to nothing. Nobody can ever be put right with God via the works of law. This is how Paul puts it:

¹¹ But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. {Galatians 3:11}

³⁰ Well then, what shall we say about these things? Just this, that God has given the Gentiles the opportunity to be acquitted by faith, even though they had not been really seeking God. ³¹ But the Jews, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping his laws, never succeeded. ³² Why not? Because they were trying to be saved by keeping the law and being good instead of by depending on faith. They have stumbled over the great stumbling stone. ³³ God warned them of this in the Scriptures when he said, “I have put a Rock in the path of the Jews, and many will stumble over him (Jesus). Those who believe in him will never be disappointed.”{Romans 9:30-33 TLB}

We must learn a lesson from the nation Israel, God’s chosen people. They went about struggling to be righteous by themselves but never attained it. They thought that meticulous adherence to religious rituals and the laws of Moses could make them righteous. They were just as ignorant as many Christians today. Let’s see what happened to them despite all their efforts.

Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.

² For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

³ For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

⁴ For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. {Romans 10:1-4}

You see, Israel did not submit to God’s righteousness because they thought they could be righteous by themselves. They were trying to make themselves good enough to gain God’s favour by keeping the Jewish laws and customs. They didn’t know that that is not God’s way of salvation. They refused God’s way of putting people right with Himself and cling to their own way of keeping laws, thinking that was going to work. They didn’t understand God’s ways of accepting people as righteous.

The truth is that just like most of us, they were sincerely in search of righteousness. They had a genuine zeal to be righteous but it was not according to knowledge.  They were so enthusiastic and desired to honour God but their zeal was misdirected. Similarly most Christians today, out of zeal and a desire to please God, are in a struggle for righteousness by trying so hard to keep the laws of Moses. They love God, yes! But they are ignorant of God’s way of making people righteous. How then does God declare people righteous?

 ²¹ But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses^[i] and the prophets long ago. ²² We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. {Romans 3:21-22 NLT}

Dearly beloved, I want you to understand that the way to pleasing God has been revealed. It is by faith in Christ alone. It is not by being good enough and trying to keep His laws but by trusting Christ to take away our sins and show us the way to heaven. He is the way to heaven. No man will ever get to heaven without passing through Christ. It is by our faith in Him that we are declared righteous. To struggle to be righteous by ourselves is to attempt to enter heaven through a window. Only a thief passes through the window. If you are a legitimate Christian then you must pass through Christ. He is the Door.

All your zeal that was misdirected to struggling to keep laws must now be properly channelled to trusting in Christ by faith. Only then can you become righteous in God’s sight. Your desire should be to know Him more and come into true fellowship, born out of a sincere relationship with Him. Love Him more and have faith in Him, because the righteousness you are struggling to get has already been freely given by God to those who have faith in Christ Jesus. He has fulfilled the law’s requirements for us so that we can stop struggling. He is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes.

³ What the Law could not do, because human nature was weak, God did. He condemned sin in human nature by sending his own Son, who came with a nature like our sinful nature, to do away with sin. ⁴ God did this so that the righteous demands of the Law might be fully satisfied in us who live according to the Spirit, and not according to human nature.{Romans 8:3-4 GNT}

The Spirit of God in us now helps us to live righteously as we put our faith in Christ. We no longer struggle, flexing our muscles trying to keep God’s laws. We focus on Christ now not on ourselves. We therefore no longer get obsessed with self since it’s no more about what we can do but what Christ has done for us already. No more struggling to be righteous. Let’s drop all our credentials and lean on Christ just like Paul the apostle did.

In conclusion, my friends, be joyful in your union with the Lord. I don't mind repeating what I have written before, and you will be safer if I do so. ² Watch out for those who do evil things, those dogs, those who insist on cutting the body. ³ It is we, not they, who have received the true circumcision, for we worship God by means of his Spirit and rejoice in our life in union with Christ Jesus. We do not put any trust in external ceremonies. ⁴ I could, of course, put my trust in such things. If any of you think you can trust in external ceremonies, I have even more reason to feel that way.




 ⁵ I was circumcised when I was a week old. I am an Israelite by birth, of the tribe of Benjamin, a pure-blooded Hebrew. As far as keeping the Jewish Law is concerned, I was a Pharisee, ⁶ and I was so zealous that I persecuted the church. As far as a person can be righteous by obeying the commands of the Law, I was without fault. {Philippians 3:1-6 GNT}

^7-9 The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, first hand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.{Philippians 3:7-9 MSG}

I don’t know how else to convince you that God is no longer interested in your keeping of rules and regulations. The Jewish laws have long been done away with. They were never for us gentiles but for the Jews. Even the Jews who had the laws struggled and couldn’t keep them. They had to abandon the laws after Christ came to help them fulfil the laws. Why are we now struggling with what was never meant for us? Let me shock with what Paul said when he rebuked peter’s pretence.

 ¹⁴ When I saw what was happening and that they weren’t being honest about what they really believed and weren’t following the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Though you are a Jew by birth, you have long since discarded the Jewish laws; so why, all of a sudden, are you trying to make these Gentiles obey them? ¹⁵ You and I are Jews by birth, not mere Gentile sinners, ¹⁶ and yet we Jewish Christians know very well that we cannot become right with God by obeying our Jewish laws but only by faith in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And so we, too, have trusted Jesus Christ, that we might be accepted by God because of faith—and not because we have obeyed the Jewish laws. For no one will ever be saved by obeying them.”{Galatians 2:14-16 TLB}

Did you understand what you just read? The Jews have discarded the laws because their struggle to obey them was all to no avail. Paul said no man can be saved by obeying those laws.

I know some of you are afraid and are saying “what if I just have faith in Christ and discover later that faith alone cannot save us? That means we’ve been deceived”. That’s the fear of most Christians. Well I have an answer for you:

¹⁷ But what if we trust Christ to save us and then find that we are wrong and that we cannot be saved without being circumcised and obeying all the other Jewish laws? Wouldn’t we need to say that faith in Christ had ruined us? God forbid that anyone should dare to think such things about our Lord. ¹⁸ Rather, we are sinners if we start rebuilding the old systems I have been destroying of trying to be saved by keeping Jewish laws, ¹⁹ for it was through reading the Scripture that I came to realize that I could never find God’s favor by trying—and failing—to obey the laws. I came to realize that acceptance with God comes by believing in Christ. {Galatians 2:17-19 TLB}

Did you notice in verse 18 that you only become a sinner if you return to the law system? If you start rebuilding the old Jewish laws system and struggle to obey them, then you become a sinner. It shows that you don’t believe in what Jesus has already done for us and that makes you an unbeliever. Please don’t try to resurrect what Christ already buried.

Dearly beloved, go all out for God and not for religious rules. Do not struggle anymore for righteousness. It never worked for anyone and will also not work for you. No man can prevail by the arms of flesh. Stop being a law man. Start being God’s man.

^19-21 What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.

Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily. {Galatians 2:19-21 MSG}

Stop struggling, start believing!

¹⁸ He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. {John 3:18}

²⁴ “I am telling you the truth: those who hear my words and believe in him who sent me have eternal life. They will not be judged, but have already passed from death to life.{John 5:24 GNT}