Righteousness

The simplest way to define “righteousness” is that righteousness is being in
right-standing with God.
When anyone gets saved, (born again, or puts their eternal trust in Jesus as Lord and
Savior), they automatically become “righteous”! What a deal.
This is the position that God wants every human being to be in, in their relationship with
Him. A place of perpetual acceptance by God and blamelessness from God.
It is a gift granted to me by God when I receive God’s salvation by accepting the
sacrificial work of Jesus’s life, death, burial, and resurrection as the basis for my
righteousness.
Romans 5: 17
“ 17 For if by the one man’s [g]offense death reigned through the one, much more those who
receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One,
Jesus Christ.)”
Righteousness comes in the salvation package.
Romans 10: 9 – 10
“9 If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the
dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with
God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.“ (emphasis mine)
Sometimes, Christians are not aware that they have the gift of righteousness from God.
When they come to the point of realizing this, they can happily just receive the gift. This
is done by a simple prayer of acknowledgement. E.g. Lord Jesus thank you for saving me
and enabling me to have God’s gift of righteousness. Father God, I receive Your gift of
righteousness with gratitude, and I live in it from this day forward, in Jesus name.

Righteousness-consciousness is Christ-consciousness. It means you approach God and
approach life from the understanding that you are in right standing with God. The
opposite of sin-consciousness.

Sin-consciousness makes you overwhelmed by your inadequacy before God, and makes
you feel condemned by your actions and tends to drive you away from God. It puts a
distance (physical, emotional, mental distance)between you and God (who you know is
holy), and it either keeps you from God permanently or makes you think you can go
clean yourself up and then return to God. Except when you return something else
happens (as it is prone to with our human nature). Then you feel like you have to take off
again and go clean yourself up. So, you end up with this yo-yo relationship with God.
Fortunately, a sin-conscious life is not what God wants for us. God wants for us a
Christ-Conscious life. What God wants for all human beings is a life of an intimate
friendship relationship with Jesus Christ. This happens through His Holy Spirit who
comes to live in us once we receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. God, in His infinite
wisdom, knew very well that human beings will not be able to live righteously enough on
their own, to meet the standard of God’s righteousness. To solve that problem by
GIVING us His quality, his kind of righteousness freely as a gift. Sin and the consequent
unregenerate human nature in an unbeliever, separates us from God. Since that nature is
the exact opposite of who God is, it makes a genuine friendship between man and God
impossible. Not to be funny, imagine you as a human being trying to have an intimate
relationship with your pet, – where you can discuss your emotions, your finances, your
past, you worries, future, children, job situations, friendships, and receive back tangible
advice and course correction to help you in either or all of these areas. No matter how
awesome your pet is, (which, it is certain that compared to other pets, yours is most
wonderful), your nature and that of your pet is just different. This is how our nature on
our own as humans is so different from God’s nature.
Such a difference makes it impossible for us to have that intimate relationship with God.
This kind of relationship, though, is what God envisioned when He created man to be like
Him. It is the relationship that Jesus came to restore between God and mankind.
So, Jesus paid for our sins, and took the penalty for all of them upon Himself.
Jesus took away our guilt, and declared us acquitted, and no longer to be condemned.
He took our sicknesses, our bondages, our sorrows, our poverty, our defeats.
So the road-block (sin), the obstacles (guilt, condemnation, improper fear of God, that
existed between us and God have been done away with.
There is therefore no obstacle between me and God. Unfortunately, I do not think I wrote
down the date I received this realization (revelation), but I remember that I was in second

year at Charis Bible College. Wao! I felt like screaming, shouting, telling everyone I
came across, and maybe using a megaphone to scream on the streets.
I had been struggling with sin-consciousness for decades. It prevented me from receiving
healing for my child and myself because I always felt unworthy. But as the scriptures
took away one obstacle after another, it suddenly dawned on me: There is no obstacle left
between me and God. Jesus took care of them all. Jesus has created ready access between
me and God at any time. I am always loved by God, always accepted by God, and always
welcome into God’s presence. I can freely take and own anything that God has promised
believers. I can freely exercise the authority of Jesus on His behalf, I can be who God
wants me to be here on earth, in His name. WAIT, Wait! Don’t click off just yet.
The question your mind should be asking now is: Are you telling me I can just go out and
sin and do anything I like, and not mind God’s standards?
If you asked this question, the short answer is no. But I congratulate you because by
asking this question, it means that you truly understand what righteousness means.
Paul the apostle was the Apostle of grace. You can see He opened most of His epistles
with greetings of grace, and He preached and wrote of grace (God’s unmerited favor) all
through the New Testament. When Paul preached grace, this was the same question that
arose. This is why the Jews had such a hard time receiving the gospel of Jesus Christ. The
were very Law-conscious, very sin-conscious, very self-performance conscious. You do
not blame them too hard, they were born into the Law of Moses and had been practicing
it for so long, it was going to take a willing heart on their part, and the work of the Holy
Spirit on God’s part to bring a renewed mind to the things that God had provided to us,
through the person of Jesus Christ. This is also why the concept of
Righteousness-consciousness can be a challenge for someone who grew up in most
traditional religions, including law-conscious Christianity.
Apostle Paul answers this question a few times in the New Testament with an emphatic
NO. He says, “God forbid”. (Like “Absolutely NOT”, or “that would be atrocious”).
(Rom 6:1 -2; Romans 6:15) And he goes on to address: Is doing good and living rightly a
bad thing? (Rom 7: 13). He then explains the problem is not the good-doing, the problem
is that as a human being with sin nature, we tend to struggle with sin, when we focus on
sin. Paul describes this struggle Romans 7:15-24.

“I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I
do what I hate. 16 But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree
that the law is good. 17 So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does
it.
18 And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[d] I want to do
what is right, but I can’t.” Romans 7:15 -18
I want to do good. I am so focused on not sinning, not doing wrong, that it now becomes
a consuming fight of the will and becomes a main focus for life. I can become so focused
on the don’ts that the do’s are left behind. The curious thing is that “what we focus on,
becomes what we manifest”. We become sour, judgmental, unforgiving towards ourselves
and others, cranky, mean, etc. –essentially everything you were trying not to be. Even
when we do good, with the is state of mind, it would usually have a selfish motive for it
(It makes me feel good for myself; it makes me look good before others; in the future
they will also do good for me; I can see myself as better than others who don’t do what I
do, etc.). don’t feel bad. I know this to be true because it was real in my life.
The other problem is self-righteousness. Self-righteousness comes along with
sin-consciousness. I am a Christian, so I am going to do right! I resolve to live right. I set
out to do right on my own (physical, emotional and mental) effort. I am trusting in how
good I am, how much I do for God, how much I do for the kingdom of God as the basis
for my acceptance by God. I have become like a pharisee. In this frame of mine, I am no
different than an unbeliever who does good as their means of righteousness, of getting
into right-standing with God, or a means of meriting or earning good for their lives. If
this were sufficient, there was no need for Jesus to come to earth, let alone die for
humanity. We could have all been able to save ourselves.
Self-righteousness does not work, because the righteousness of man is like filthy rags
when compared to the righteousness of God! It always has an ulterior motive (overt or
covert). Our self -righteousness can not earn us salvations and can get us divine healing
nor make the miracle power of God work in our lives. It’s all solely based on Jesus and
what He has paid for and provided for us. Period.
Christ-consciousness or righteousness consciousness is that mindset that I am a child of
God. I am loved by God not for my goodness but because of Jesus’ goodness, and I am so
grateful for this grace, that I love God for it and I am in this friendship relationship with
God because of Jesus Christ. I live a life of love towards God, because of the gratitude
that I have towards God. I am forever grateful to Jesus, and I am so glad God has given

me His Holy Spirit to help me always and to be with me in challenging times. All these
give me joy and peace and make me feel like whatever could come against me is taken
care of both in this life today and in the hereafter. I really do not have any catastrophic
concerns. Now I focus on this love relationship with God. I focus on God’s purpose for
my life, and how to work with Him to fulfill that.
The curious thing is that since my focus is no longer on not-doing-wrong, I now
accidentally don’t do much wrong because I am manifesting what I am focusing on –
Jesus Christ and all that He has done for me. Your life is more joyful, you are more of a
pleasure to be around, you are now genuinely kind with no ulterior motives, but because
you love that person with the love of God. You are more forgiving because you are
conscious of the fact that you have been forgiven much yourself. You help better because
you know you need help yourself and are being helped by God. We could try to be all
these things with a sin-consciousness or a self-righteous conscience and not achieve the
same results.

Self-righteousness and sin consciousness have driven a lot of well-meaning believers to
fear, anxiety, depression, addictions, nightmares, poor work performance, poor team
members etc.
It has kept people from getting their promotions at work, succeeding at their businesses
or receiving divine healing or even having a life of answered prayers. We can come
though no other door but Jesus Christ. There is no side door or back door to God. Jesus is
the ONLY door, gate, entrance, way, and the only mediator.

Other attempts lead to frustration in this life and disappointment in eternity. For people
who go to church, I hate to see some end up in hell, because all the while that they were
at church, and “practicing Christianity”, they were actually trusting in their
self-righteousness. This is especially so for people who are active in doing church work,
people who give to church work and Christian ministries – that temptation can be there.
These things are good, they are commanded by God and they do please God, as long they
are not meant to be the basis that we think God accepts and loves us or does good things
for us. This is like making a sacrifice to please God. There is not going to be any sacrifice
that is superior to or is to be supplemental to the sacrifice of Jesus. Please be sure to place
all your hope on Jesus, but for your initial salvation and for your ongoing salvation, and
your life conduct.

When we love Jesus first, foremost, and always. When we “receive” all things from God
because we are convinced in our hearts that they come from God (James 1:17) to us,
through the Lord Jesus – then our good works (giving to ministries/churches, doing
church work, helping my neighbor, witnessing, volunteering at church), is pleasing to
God. We are fulfilling Ephesians 2:10.
Self-righteousness is great for our relationship with fellow humans on earth and for
dealings with the earthly civil laws.
God’s love and righteousness in us, is not God giving us permission to treat people
unkindly or to steal or to not pay our taxes or any other ill that we run into. (Romans 12
-15; Ephesians 5-6:10). On the contrary, these behaviors are not coming from the Spirit of
God (Gal 5: 22 – 23; 1 Corinthians 13)

Prayer of Salvation
Jesus, I believe with all my heart that you died for my sins, that you were buried and that on the
third day, God raised you from the dead.
I agree with what all that God says about you, and I openly speak with my mouth that You are
Lord. I receive You as my Lord and my Savior. Jesus come live in my heart, and change my life.
Thank You for loving me so much and saving me. Lord, by faith in your word, I receive
salvation now.