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Sinfulness versus Righteousness - the awesome truth

by Jack Vorster  
2/05/2015 / Christian Living

MOVING MOUNTAINS
There is an incredible revelation in the Bible that most of us have perhaps read over and over, but have missed the awesome impact of the truth therein. It deserves to be examined very closely until it penetrates our hearts to the point of rejoicing and jumping for joy. It is a mind-blowing piece of information and forms the very foundation of our salvation. Furthermore, once we grasp this truth the act of moving mountains will seem like child's play. Ready?

THAT FIRST MAN
The first man, Adam, plunged the world into a cauldron of soup of which the ingredients are all the forms of wickedness imaginable. The short name for this soup is sin. Regardless of who we are, we all have an imbedded nature of sin. "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:" (Rom 5:12)

This is what that one man brought about. Yes, an old story. We all know it, as well as the rest in that Jesus came along and died for our sins and that as long as we believe in Him we are saved. The problem is, many fall by the wayside or into a severely backslidden state trying to live by the truth of this fact simply because of the difficulty of maintaining a practice of obedience to a new way of life as laid out by our Lord and Saviour. In other words, to put it simply we try to be good, but fail miserably. This is what is known as self-righteousness that is, even though God has given us His righteousness, we feel we need to earn acceptance by our own righteousness, but it is impossible. "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God." (Rom 3:10,11)

Indeed, there is "none that understandeth" the fact that we just cannot please God in any way whatsoever with a sense of self-righteousness. We just don't have God-pleasing righteousness, no matter how hard we try.

There is an easy way of getting to an understanding of exactly what God requires of us in order to be set free once and for all and to stop pursuing futile little acts of goodness, thereby believing that we "seeketh after God " with our attempts at pleasing Him. Want to know how? Well, buckle your belt and concentrate. Here it comes.

You have to die. Yes, you heard right you have to die before the day comes for you to finally leave this planet. And when you leave this planet you are not going to die again in order to leave this planet, for you have already died. You will simply move on - be on transfer - to another place where you will continue to live forever. No, no, I don't mean that you're going to heaven because of your Christian faith. I mean that if you die now you'll experience heaven here on earth before you go to heaven because of your Christian faith. Okay, so what then? Your belt still buckled?

UNTIL DEATH DO US PART
When Adam disobeyed God he not only became a sinner, but he also passed that sin nature on to us. As a consequence, he died spiritually - and so did we. Okay, so now we're spiritually dead. So what do we have to do to reverse the process? Don't get me wrong, Jesus reversed the process for us on the Cross. I'm talking about what we should do to turn that reversal process into a reality so that we can appropriate the righteousness given to us by God and not to struggle with the issue.

THE SECOND MAN
This is what you have to do. You have to BELIEVE the following. You have to believe that you were made a sinner by one man and that you were made righteous by another man. If you were made a sinner by the first man (Adam), but you were made righteous by the second man (Jesus Christ), then you are no longer a sinner. You are now righteous. You are now the righteousness of God, whereas before you possessed the sinfulness of Adam. Righteousness is the opposite of sinfulness. "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." (2Cor 5:21)

So you see, we were made the righteousness of God. If you get promoted from lieutenant to captain in the army, then you are no longer a lieutenant. You are a captain. You are no longer a sinner. You are righteous. You have the God kind of righteousness, not your own.

Now I'm going to take you to that "incredible revelation" mentioned in the opening line of this article. And you've probably read it many times without thinking. "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. (Rom 5:19). There you have it. You are no longer a sinner. The first Adam made you a sinner. The second Adam (Jesus) made you righteous. You now have the righteousness of God.

Now what will it take for you to really get this fact into your soul and to start living like a righteous child of God? Let's look at that reversal process.
Adam sinned and first died spiritually, which was followed by death physically. The second Adam (Jesus) took upon himself Adam's sin (and ours) and first died physically, followed by our spiritual death, but He regained our spiritual life when He was raised from the dead so that we may also, once again, come alive spiritually. Your status as a sinner is gone forever. You have a new status, which is that of righteousness. And this is the place where you have to die. You have to die to the fact that you were a sinner.

If God made you righteous, then why on earth would you want to hold on to your former status and piously declare to everyone, "I am but a sinner saved by the Grace of God!"? For goodness sake, you are no longer a sinner. God made you righteous. Of course you are saved by the Grace of God, but you are no longer a sinner. You have the righteousness of God. You are a brand new creature. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2Cor 5:17)

You are a new creature a new, righteous, creature. Your status as sinner died away and you rose from that death having obtained, as a gift from God, His righteousness. That is your new status. You did not earn it. It was given to you so why try to develop a righteousness of your own in order to gain favour from God? You can now ask God for anything seeing that you have His righteousness. God does not hear sinners, but the new righteous you He will hear. "Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth." (John 9:31)

Well, you're no longer a sinner and you're a worshipper of God. And you are doing His will because you have died to sin. You are a new creature in Christ and, therefore, God hears you.

Isn't it much easier to behave in a righteous way when you know it is the righteousness of God being applied in your life? And the reality of this fact certainly makes you want to sin no more. It makes you want to bask in the sun in the glory of His Son and make your petitions known to God without a care in the world. Righteousness was imputed to Abraham, as if on loan to him, but to you it was imparted as a gift from your heavenly Father under the banner of Grace. It is yours to keep and to enjoy all of its benefits.

Now, by faith, go ahead and finally die as a sinner - and awake to a new life of righteousness. Then you can unbuckle your belt.

Now retired, Jack Vorster has a background in marketing in the field of newspaper advertising. As a result of a life-changing experience he turned his attention to the study of the human make-up and the realities connected to human behaviour based on the Word of God.

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