DIG for Thursday the 5th of October….more than just robed; MADE righteous…..Ephesians 6 v 14

Paul likens our Spiritual armour to that of a soldier. Have you ever thought of righteousness as armour?

A couple of years ago I did a teaching on the Old Testament High Priest’s garments and how his robe is a picture of the righteousness that He has clothed us in.

Isaiah 61:10 says that God has covered me in a robe of righteousness, but in the New Covenant our righteousness goes deeper than that.

When we put on a coat or a robe we only cover up what’s underneath. Being clothed or covered doesn’t change us on the inside.

But the righteousness of God goes right to our core. We aren’t just covered; we are MADE righteous. Not through our own efforts and good works, but ONLY through Jesus’ efforts and His Good Work (2 Corinthians 5 v 21).

How is righteousness like armour? Righteousness is like truth. It is what it is whether we know it or not, and we only benefit from it when we know it!

Do you know you are righteous? If we know that we are right with God, not just skin deep, but right to our core, what can the enemy accuse us of?

‘Not good enough’…’failure’…’powerless’…’hopeless’…without His righteousness we are all these and more…but we are not without His righteousness, we have been made righteous…we just need to know it.

When we know that we are righteous it acts as a breastplate, and the enemy’s attacks of accusations and lies fall away, blunt and powerless against us.

Speak this out today…..”Thank you Lord that I am righteous to my core because I have put my faith in what Jesus has done for me, and thank you for the protection that gives me”.

Ephesians 6 v 14….Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness

Advertisement

DIG for Saturday the 19th of August…..righteousness is a gift of grace through faith…..2 Corinthians 5 v 21

All of us know that there is nothing we can personally do through works and deeds to save ourselves.

We know our salvation is received as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus and His finished work.

As soon as we are born again we are made righteous (2 Corinthians 5 v 21).

So there is also nothing we can do through works and deeds to make ourselves righteous.

It also holds therefore that there is nothing we can do through bad works and deeds (in other words sin) to remove that righteousness or reduce it.

In the eyes of God a man is either righteous or he is not.

Whether we are righteous or not has all to do with what a man believes with regard to Jesus; it has nothing to do with actions.

You cannot make your self more or less righteous; you are made righteous as a gift of grace through faith.

You cannot ‘sin away’ your right standing with God just as you cannot work your way into right standing.

Righteousness, or right standing with God, has absolutely nothing to do with your works, deeds or actions.

Righteousness is a state of being rather than a state of doing, and is dependant upon what you believe about Jesus and His finished work.

Any man can be made righteous through faith because of what Jesus has already done!

Speak this out today…..”Thank you Lord that I have been made righteous as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus”.

2 Corinthians 5 v 21…..For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him

DIG for Tuesday the 1st of August…..the best ‘swap’ ever…..2 Corinthians 5 v 21

When I was a young boy I used to collect stickers of football players with the aim of filling up and completing my album.

It got harder near the end and I remember swapping and exchanging stickers with my friends at school, trying to get rid of my doubles and find the ones I’d not got.

This was great fun, and this swapping took a great deal of time and effort!

I was strangely reminded about that this evening as I was reading my ‘all time’ favourite verse, 2 Corinthians 5 v 21.

This verse shows us the most important swap that has every taker place, a swap that occurred as a gift of grace through faith.

This swap took no effort on our behalf, as it simply required faith.

At the cross Jesus took all our sin on His body, and at our salvation we receive His righteousness.

Now that may not sound like a fair swap to you, Jesus suffering for our benefit.

But that was what the finished work of Jesus was all about!

He came to bring us life in abundance, He came so that we could live in health and prosperity, and He came so that we could be made righteous.

This was the plan!

And Jesus carried out the plan to perfection.

He went to the cross once and dealt with all sin for all men for all time (Hebrews 10 v 12).

And because of that we could be made righteous as a gift of grace through faith; what an amazing swap!

Speak this out today…..”Thank you Lord that I am righteous, made righteous as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus and His finished work”.

2 Corinthians 5 v 21…..For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him

DIG for Wednesday the 26th of July…..not “you will” but “I will” and now “I have”…..Hebrews 8 v 10

I hope you are as glad as I am that we live under grace rather than law, under the New Covenant rather then the Old.

The Old Covenant was all about what men had to do in order to be blessed, however the New Covenant is not about our religious performance or our good works.

The New Covenant is all about what Jesus and the Father has done.

Hebrews provides us with a wonderful description of the New Covenant in so many ways.

Hebrews 8 v 10 is a key verse and the two key words are “I will”.

The key of this covenant that we hear about in this verse is that God will do what is required.

He says “I will” rather than “you will”.

He will deal with sin through the finished work of His Son.

He will make us righteous as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus (2 Corinthians 5 v 21).

He will provide the healing and prosperity that He desires we have.

And the really good news is that it is not even “I will” any more, it is “I have”.

It changed from “I will” to “I have” when Jesus said, “It is finished”.

The New Covenant now is not about us; it is about what Jesus has done for us, what we are made and what we have through Him.

Speak this out today…..”Thank you Lord that I now live under grace and not under law”.

Hebrews 8 v 10…..For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after these days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people

DIG for Thursday the 29th of June…..do you really believe that you are righteous…..1 Corinthians 15 v 34

Do you want to live a more holy life?

Would you like to see less sin in your life?

I hope that as a born again believer you answered yes to both those questions.

Well, I can give you the answer this morning; I can tell you how to see less sin in your life and how to live a more holy life.

And the good news is you do not need to try, strive or achieve; you simply need to truly understand a Biblical truth about your identity.

YOU ARE RIGHTEOUS!

There you have it; it is that simple.

According to the Word you have been made righteous if you have faith and trust in Jesus (2 Corinthians 5 v 17 to 21 and Ephesians 4 v 24).

According to the Word if you wake up to or become aware of righteousness you will sin not (1 Corinthians 15 v 34).

What an amazing and simple truth.

If we believe we are righteous we will behave in a righteous manner.

You see there is another essential Biblical truth that is behind this; as a man thinketh so is he (Proverbs 23 v 7).

The way your mind goes is the way your life goes.

If you think you are a sinner you will behave like a sinner, but the good news is that you are not a sinner anymore, you are a saint and you are righteous.

You need to truly believe this truth!

Speak this out today…..”Thank you Lord that as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus I am a saint and I am righteous”.

1 Corinthians 15 v 34…..Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame

 

DIG for Wednesday the 10th of May…..and whose righteousness do we get…..2 Corinthians 5 v 21

There is another amazing truth that we can read in 2 Corinthians 5 v 21

When we are made righteous it is nothing to do with what we do or have done.

Our righteousness has nothing to do with our performance, so in a real sense it is not our righteousness.

When we are made righteous this is done as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus.

And we are not made of any old righteousness.

When our spirit is created new (2 Corinthians 5 v 17) it is created in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4 v 24).

And the righteousness that we have is the righteousness of God.

Yes, when we are made righteous we are made as righteous as God.

No Vic you may be thinking, you’ve gone a bit far this time!

No I have not; this is the Biblical truth if you read this passage.

Jesus takes our sin so that we can have God’s righteousness.

That is exactly what 2 Corinthians 5 v 21 is saying.

Through Jesus we are made the righteousness of God; and that is a direct quote from the Bible.

Please read this passage if you do not believe me.

If you are born again, right now in your born again spirit you are as righteous as God.

Now that’s the good news!

Speak this out today…..”Thank you Lord that I have been the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus”.

2 Corinthians 5 v 21…..For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him

DIG for Tuesday the 9th of May…..what an amazing exchange…..2 Corinthians 5 v 21

We have now reached the verse, in this mini DIG series, that changed my life.

We know that we are transformed by the renewing of our mind, and sometimes this transformation is slow and steady, sometimes it is in large steps.

My transformation took a large step once I realised that I had been made righteous.

In this verse we see how a believer is made righteous and also what type of righteousness we now have.

The first important point is how a believer becomes righteous.

It is not through works or religious performance; a believer is made righteous.

You cannot be in the process of moving to righteousness and we do not have different levels of righteousness.

You are either righteous or you are not!

2 Corinthians 5 v 21 tells us that we can be made righteous through the finished work of Jesus Christ.

We can be made righteous as He was made sin, even though He knew no sin.

He made this great exchange possible through the cross; He took our sin so that (as a gift of grace through faith) we could be made righteousness.

This is an amazing fundamental truth of the Christian faith and it will change your life if you truly understand and believe this.

I can testify that it did in my life.

I have never been the same since I understood and believed that I had been made righteous.

Speak this out today…..”Thank you Lord that I have been made righteous as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus”.

2 Corinthians 5 v 21…..For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him

DIG for Sunday the 15th of January…..we have complete and unconditional acceptance from God…..Ephesians 1 v 6

We all know that in order to be accepted by others we have to conform and perform, this is the way of the world.

We conform to be accepted by our circle of friends.

We perform in order to be accepted by our schoolteachers or managers at work.

In this world we have to do things to be accepted by others.

This is not the case in the Kingdom of God.

We have to be made accepted in order to have acceptance from God.

There is nothing we can do to be accepted and there is then nothing we can do to be rejected once living in this acceptance.

This is exactly what we read at the start of the epistle to the Ephesians.

Paul writes and says that, ”he hath made us accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1 v 6)

God accepts us after being made something.

Once we are saved, as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus we are made righteous and holy (2 Corinthians 5 v 21 and Ephesians 4 v 24), and this is why we are then acceptable to God.

We are not accepted because of our goodness or our religious performance; we are accepted because of our trust in the performance of Jesus.

In the sae way we cannot “sin away” this acceptance.

We are now always acceptable to God, unconditionally and completely.

Speak this out today…..”Thank you Lord that as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus I have complete and unconditional acceptance from you”.

Ephesians 1 v 6…..To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved

DIG for Saturday the 29th of October…..being thankful is important…..1 Thessalonians 5 v 18

In our bible study tonight my wife started praying and I thought it was really powerful.

It was not a fancy prayer, or a loud shouting prayer; it was simply a prayer of thankfulness.

I cannot remember all the things she was thanking God for but it really spoke to me in a powerful way, and got me thinking about being thankful.

There are lots for us all to be thankful for, even in the many varied circumstances that we live under

We can all thank God for the finished work of Jesus Christ.

We can all thank God for our reconciliation and forgiveness (2 Corinthians 5 v 18 and Ephesians 1 v 7).

We can all thank God for our salvation.

We can all thank God that we have been made righteous (2 Corinthians 5 v 21).

If you are born again you may be having difficulties and problems in this life.

There may be things that you cannot thank God for right now, however there are plenty of things you can be thankful for; I have just listed a number of them!

Even in hard times we can be thankful; this is what we read in 1 Thessalonians 5 v 18.

We are to give thanks in all things, and God would not ask us to do this if it were not possible.

You have plenty of things to be thankful for, it is your responsibility to recognise this.

Speak this out today…..”Thank you Lord for all that I have been given as a gift of grace through faith in the finished work of Jesus”.

1 Thessalonians 5 v 18…..In every thing give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you

DIG for Monday the 17th of October…..get the foundations strong before you build your building…..2 Timothy 2 v 15

At conference last week I heard a phrase that my wife had used in a sermon a number of years ago.

I want to share this with you tonight, as it is a phrase of real wisdom.

“The depth of your foundations will determine the height of your building”.

What this is saying is that if you want to really grow and develop in your Christian walk you need to put in place good fundamental teachings.

In order to grow you really need to understand the basic truths of the faith.

You need to know you have been unconditionally and completely forgiven through the blood of Jesus (Ephesians 1 v 7 and Colossians 1 v 14).

You need to know that you have been reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5 v 18).

You need to know that as a believer you have complete acceptance from God and the unconditional approval of God; in other words you need to know that you are righteous.

And you need to know that were made righteousness as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus and not through your own works (Romans 3 v 28 and 2 Corinthians 5 v 21).

You need to know that God loves you unconditionally (1 John 4 v 10).

As you will see all the truths mentioned above have Scripture references, this tells us that all the fundamental and foundational truths we need to know are to be found in God’s Word.

Our responsibility is to find these truths, study and meditate upon them and then believe that they are relevant for us.

Speak this out today…..”Thank you Lord for your Word and thank you for the many truths held within”.

2 Timothy 2 v 15…..Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth