How wonderful salvation is! In John 3:16 we see that salvation is because of the Lord’s love, in Ephesians, salvation is by grace, but in Romans salvation is by righteousness!
In Chapter 1 of Romans we see that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation… for the righteousness of God is revealed in it. In the gospel we see the righteousness of God, and this righteousness is the very power of the gospel. The righteousness of God is the very power of God that drives the gospel!
The righteous shall have life and live by faith – it begins with righteousness and it ends with life! The gospel that we have today in the Lord’s recovery is not a cheap gospel, a shaky gospel, or a smuggled / under the table gospel – the gospel is righteous in every single one of its details!
God Himself is righteous – as a righteous God, He cant’ just “Forgive People” without having His righteousness being met! Yes, there are all kinds of ways that God can take care of your iniquity and your sin, but in order to take care of it properly, it is “not an easy way” – it has to be according to God’s own righteous standard! God cannot do something against His righteous nature!
Our standard may be low, a simple “I’m sorry…” would do – but not with God! He has the highest standard of righteousness. Christ came to fulfill all the righteous requirements of God, lived a perfect human life on the earth, and died an all-inclusive death on the cross. Christ was raised for our justification – He holds the receipt of us being justified! We owed God – but Christ came and paid our debt!
Even more, since Christ was raised from the tomb, now we know that the full payment for our sins has been taken care of! As we behold Him today as the resurrected Christ, we know that God is fully satisfied! Now that Christ died and was resurrected for our justification, it is impossible for God to change His mind about forgiving us – He is bound by His righteousness to forgive us!
He demonstrated His righteousness in the present time by judging Jesus on our behalf!
Also, redemption is not only to justify us – but to justify God and satisfy Him, so that He might be righteous! The Father is justified by all that Christ has accomplished, and our justification is also being assured!
In the Old Testament the blood of the lambs/goats sacrificed for the sins of the people would just “cover their sins”, and God would “pass over their sins” – something provisionally; now in the new covenant established in the Lord’s eternal blood, He has forgiven our sins and removed them away from us!
As we see in Heb. 10:4, the blood of goats and bulls cannot satisfy the conscience or God, rather, it is a reminder of the sin; but Christ has been sacrificed once and for all, and He satisfies God’s righteous requirements and justifies both us and God!
Today we have the surety and the assurance that God has forgiven us because of the perfect sacrifice of Christ on the cross and because God approved His sacrifice by raising Him from the dead!
Many people in the world today “hope that God’s judgement would not fall on them”, but we know that our salvation has already passed through the judgement and we rejoice because we have been forgiven of our sins! Our salvation has already been judged, “taxed” in the most righteous way, and all the requirements were met!
We don’t have a fraudulent salvation, a smuggled salvation – rather, our salvation is a righteous, fully paid debt salvation!
Because of this perfect sacrifice on the cross, we now can enjoy the Lord Jesus and His divine life – which is the blessing of the new covenant! Now Christ became the One who guarantees that all He covenanted to us will become ours; He is the covenant, He is the Mediator of the Covenant, He is the One who enacted the covenant, He is the One who executes the covenant, and He Himself IS THE COVENANT!
God gives us only Christ – Christ died for us and laid the base of our salvation in righteousness, and Christ becomes our life and our everything in God’s economy for our daily and eternal salvation in the divine life! We have been redeemed and we have been forgiven SO THAT we may now enjoy the divine life daily – God’s full salvation consummates in His life!
We now daily grow in life, are being transformed in life; we are being conformed to the image of Christ and eventually we will be swallowed up in life! We will become the city full of life – the New Jerusalem! [enjoyment from message 8 of the winter training 2010, Crystallization-study of Isaiah (2)]
Lord, thank You for the price You paid for us to justify us! Lord, thank You for dying for us and being raised from the dead for our justification! Thank You for such a sure salvation! You have been judged on our behalf, and now we are righteous as You are righteous – You became our righteousness and we are righteous in You! Lord, based on Your righteousness You are forgiving us now whenever we confess our sins! Thank You for bringing us into the enjoyment of the divine life! Keep us enjoying Your life until we become filled with life – until we are persons of life, persons of the New Jerusalem!
