The Church grew and flourished but stayed in Jerusalem until the martyrdom of Stephen. There are rules concerning Sanitation (Leviticus 13), both as it touches the life of the group and of the individual; laws whose mastery begets emphasis, not merely upon external consequences, but upon the inner result in the life of the individual (Psalms 51:3); and prohibitions which would indicate that morality, at least in its plainer decencies, had come to be valued on its own account. As seen in chapter 3, God is righteous in that He has condemned all, and in Christ, those who are justified have been punished and then raised to newness of life. Should God stand before the bar of human judgment? 7 Righteousness belongs to Thee, O Lord, but to us open shame, as it is this dayto the men of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and all Israel, those who are near by and those who are far away in all the countries to which Thou hast driven them, because of their unfaithful deeds which they have committed against Thee. But God is also just in saving sinners. Robert L. (Bob)Deffinbaugh graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary with his Th.M. WebSo they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed unto Seleucia; and from thence they sailed to Cyprus. What He purposed to do was righteous and just. It is interesting to note that this word is used to describe only one man in the whole Old Testament: Noah. His concern was for the righteous in those cities. This is an error of thinking as well as of speaking, for it postulates a principle of justice outside of God which compels Him to act in a certain way. In addition, the righteousness of God is virtually synonymous with His justice: While the most common Old Testament word for just means straight, and the New Testament word means equal, in a moral sense they both mean right. When we say that God is just, we are saying that He always does what is right, what should be done, and that He does it consistently, without partiality or prejudice. Salem Media Group. Since God is free to bestow unmerited blessings on any sinner He may choose, God is not unrighteous in saving some of the worst sinners, while choosing not to save other sinners. When the Old Testament prophets sought to sum up the essence of the Old Testament teaching regarding mans conduct, it was that men practice righteousness or justice: 21 I hate, I reject your festival, Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. What becomes certain now at the start of Chapter 15 is that Bible verses showing that righteousness is an action that, by faith, should come forth in our day-to-day lives. Following the martyrdom of Stephen, the Church spread to Phoenicia, Samaria, Cyprus, and then to Antioch. And when they had gone through the isle unto Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, Of course, in moral progress there is a reciprocal effect; the thought of God affects the thought of human life and the thought of human life affects the thought of God; but the Hebrews no sooner came to a fresh moral insight than they made their moral discovery a part of the character of God. When summarizing the very essence of what the Old Testament Law was about, Amos and Micah both spoke first of justice and righteousness. Topics and verses are auto-generated from user searches. The influence of the individual touches others at more points than we had formerly realized. Who has announced this from of old? God is interested in men seeking to know the heart of God and pleasing Him by doing that in which He delights and that which He does. The church cannot claim she has attained any righteousness on her own. In Hebrews 12:11 we read of the peaceful fruit of righteousness. The distinctive note in emphasis upon righteousness in our own day is the stress laid upon social service. Jesus did not reject sinners who came to Him for mercy and salvation; He rejected those who were too righteous (in their own eyes) to need grace. This conception of what God must do as an obligated Being influences profoundly the Hebrew interpretation of the entire course of history (Isaiah 10:20,21). To point out its inadequacy, however, a better statement would be that from the beginning the social group utilized the native moral feeling of the individual for the defense of the group. According to the story from the Bible, before Jesus, righteousness was a function of obedience and adherence to the law. He is righteous in saving sinners, as well as merciful and compassionate. This latter meaning in terms of doing God's will is of course also found in the Old Testament. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; 7 neither are they all children because they are Abrahams descendants, but: through Isaac your descendants will be named. 8 That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. Scripture is full of commands that humans act justly. WebRighteous Acts, Their works do follow them 2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. The hope of salvation of nations and individuals rests at once upon the righteousness of God. Of course not! However, conformity to his own teachings presupposes that he is the Messiah, that he fulfills the Law and the Prophets, and that what he declares is the morality of the kingdom of God relating to the totality of life, inward and outward, seen by God. 29 If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him (1 John 2:29). 49 And the word of the Lord was being spread through the whole region. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness The Gospel of Matthew makes clear that from the beginning Jesus' mission is to fulfill God's righteousness ( 3:15 ). 1 Blessed is the man[ a] who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; 2 In the Gospel of Luke, we read of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Simeon and Joseph of Arimathea being called righteous ( 1:6 ; 2:25 ; 23:50 ) because they embody genuine religion according to the norms of the Old Covenant. What a shock to the self-righteous who thought they had box office seats in the kingdom. No one is too lost to save; there are only those too good to save. WebRighteousness is essential to his very being and characterizes all that he does: God is morally and ethically right, and he acts only in keeping with what is right and just. Proverbs 10:22 The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. 2 Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. Unfortunately, in this world, we have all sinned and fallen short of the laws of God. Then it utilizes every force working for the increase of human happiness to set on high the meaning of righteousness. WebActs 16:13-15. Paul first rebukes the one who dares to judge God and pronounce on His righteousness. Christianity deepens the sense of obligation to do right. Further, Jesus does allow that conformity to the norms of the scribes and Pharisees is a certain kind of (inferior) righteous living, but he contrasts it with the proper righteousness he exhibits, proclaims, and looks for ( Luke 5:30-32 ; 15:7 ; 18:9 ) in the disciples of the kingdom. In all thought of consequences the chief place has to be given to inner consequences. It is no wonder then that Jesus was not regarded as righteous by many of the Jews but was considered a sinner: 16 Therefore some of the Pharisees were saying, This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath. But others were saying, How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs? And there was a division among them. 24 So a second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner. 25 He therefore answered, Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see (John 9:16, 24-25). Bob is a pastor/teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel in Richardson, Texas, and has contributed many of his Bible study series for use by the Foundation. We still insist that all idea of earthly righteousness takes its start from heavenly righteousness, or, rather, that the righteousness of man is to be based upon his conception of the righteousness of God. All unrighteousness is sin, and sin is the transgression of the law, therefore, those who are breaking the law of God and teaching others to break it, will not be covered with the garments of Christs righteousness. Proverbs 16:20. Divine grace, the grace by which God reaches out to save men from their sins, is meted out not on the basis of mens merits but in spite of mens sin. Webright hand of the Father | Grace Bible Church Acts 2:38 atonement baptism baptismal regeneration bring us to God context God's patience Jesus made alive in the spirit Noah once for all preacher of righteousness resurrection right hand of the Father spirits in prison substitution suffering symbolism victory victory over death victory over Satan victory over sin There is an abstract conscientiousness which leads to barren living: the life gets out of touch with things that are real. There is no injustice with God, is there? Those blessed were not the scribes and Pharisees, but the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the gentle, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted on account of their relationship with Jesus (Matthew 5:3-12). God is His own self-existent principle of moral equity, and when He sentences evil men or rewards the righteous, He simply acts like Himself from within, uninfluenced by anything that is not Himself. 31. All Gods reasons come from within His uncreated being. 15 O LORD God of Israel, Thou art righteous, for we have been left an escaped remnant, as [it is] this day; behold, we are before Thee in our guilt, for no one can stand before Thee because of this (Ezra 9:15). 32 Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers. In the Gospel of John, God is righteous ( 17:25 ) and the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, has a specific role with respect to righteousness ( John 16:8 John 16:10 ). In the sermon on the mount, Jesus says that righteousness is more than just following the law. Thus, Gods laws, as There was increasing realization also of what God, as a moral Being, is obligated to do. WebActs 8:15-20 When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 33 See, for example, Matthew 23; Luke 16:15; Philippians 3:1-11. Moral worth is not conceived of as something that is to be paid for by external rewards, but if God is moral He must not treat the righteous and the unrighteous alike. WebFootnotes. The chief channel through which that holy love is to manifest itself is the conscience and love of the Christian believer. 23 Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. They are and will be righteous because they are in a covenant relation with the living God, who is the God of all grace and mercy and who will bring to completion what he has begun in them by declaring them righteous for Christ's sake. 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