Two Kinds of Righteousness

INTRODUCTION

They had been fishing all the afternoon, now they are seated before the fireplace at the camp. They were close friends. After a bit of silence, he said to his pastor: “Life has not been what I had dreamed it would be. I have never reached the goal that I set my heart upon in my younger days. I have never opened my heart to anyone about it, but I am going to tell you today.

“I have always been religious. I have been a teacher of Bible Classes. I have been a superintendent of Sunday Schools. I have been an educator since I left college, but all these years there has been a secret background of unreality. “God has never been real to me. I have read the Gospels, I have lectured about them. But all the tune there was a consciousness that I had not arrived.

“That address you gave the other night revealed to me the thing that I have needed. In the early days we were never taught about Eternal Life. It was “getting converted” and “joining the church”. We were taught a little about justification, but it was always a theological point of view It had no sense of reality in it. “When I understood that one could receive Eternal Life – the very nature of God, then I knew that this thing you have been telling us about Righteousness was real.
“Like a flash, my theology and theories were stripped away and I saw myself for the first time as I really was in God’s sight. “I had never honored what He had done in Christ. “I had never known what He had done for me. “I was a New Creation. I had the very life and nature of God. “I hardly dared to say it, “I am the Righteousness of God.” “I had never confessed it before.
“I had never dared even think that I would ever be anything like that until after death.

“Sin Consciousness had held me in bondage all these years. Whenever anyone preached against sin, I said, “That’s me.” “I knew sin. I had fought sin. I had suffered from its effects. But I did not know that when I was made a New Creation that the past had stopped being. I did not know that if I committed sin, I had an Advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ the Righteous. I did not know that when I was recreated I became the Righteousness of God in Christ. “I thank you for what you have told me.”