06-30-13 The Righteousness of Faith Pt. 4

For 4 weeks, now, we have been chewing on a single verse

found in Phil. 3:9.

It is a verse Paul includes

as a part of his description of what it means for a person to “Gain Christ”.

To explain that concept

Paul breaks it down into 7 distinct elements,

helping us to better grasp what we receive when we receive Christ.

And the second element in that list

is found in Phili. 3:9 where Paul says:

...not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,...

In our study of this verse so far

we have seen that Paul is talking with us about both an imputed righteousness

and about practical changes

that can take place in our lives

through our faith in Christ.

The imputed righteousness

is summarized well in II Cor. 5:21

where Paul says of our God:

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

He is talking about the bargain our righteous Creator

has chosen to offer us, His sin-filled creation.

He says, “Here’s the deal - if you will return to Me,

knowing that I am your only hope,

and give all of your sin,

all your inner evil,

all your rebellion of spirit,

I will take it from you, all of it,

I will take it upon Myself,

and pay the consequences for your evil with My own death.

And in exchange I will give you My righteousness.

I will create within you a new heart,

a pure, holy, righteous heart

that loves Me and longs for My will.

And I will cloth you in My righteousness

for all eternity.”

What a deal! Our sin in exchange for His righteousness.

... not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith...

That’s the imputed part of the agreement.

But we have also seen that there is much more involved here, as well.

Paul is not only talking about

the gift of righteousness

given by God to those who come to Him,

he is also talking about

the way in which God goes about

making practical changes in our behavior.

The Christian life begins with God creating within us a new heart,

a heart that knows Him and loves Him.

But it also begins with a mental and emotional system

that is filled with suspicions

about who this God is

and what He is really like.

Our SPIRIT may respond to our Lord,

but our logic and memory and feeling systems

find Him confusing at best

and often highly suspect.

And when Paul talks to us about

a righteousness that can enter our lives

as a result of our faith in Christ,

he is revealing to us

the nature of the central battle

we are called to fight

throughout our entire Christian lives.

He is telling us that the key to all real change in any specific issue in our lives

is found in reaching the point with that issue

where we can say, “Lord, I will choose to trust YOU right here, right now.

I’ve spent my whole life doing it my way,

and quite honestly,

I’m not impressed with the results.

I know You love me,

and I understand what You’re asking of me here,

and at this point I’m going to choose to trust You.”

... the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith...

You see it, don’t you?

This is nothing mystical

or magical.

It’s very practical choices we make,

choices to trust our God

at specific points

with specific issues.

And the time will come

when what I just said

will seem like the most ridiculous statement a person could ever make,

a time when only absolute insanity

would prevent a person

from trusting their Creator,

a time when our Lord will reveal Himself

in a way that makes trust

and submission the only logical,

reasonable choice a person could ever make.

I think I’ve mentioned this before,

but as far as I can tell

there is no faith in heaven,

because, of course, none is needed.

We just happen to currently exist

in a rare little bubble of eternity

in which we actually have to choose to trust our Creator.

And they are real choices

with very real and long-reaching significance.

But the time will come

when we will look back on this phase of our existence

and wonder at all the turmoil and agony we invested in our points of trust.

Should a child not trust his or her Father?

Should created beings not trust their Creator?

And yet we do not

unless it comes as a conscious choice.

Then last week

I shared with you a common pilgrimage we often move through

in building a trust foundation in our lives.

1. The pilgrimage begins when we enter the family of God

assuming that our union with Christ is conditional in nature.

Having never known a relationship of any kind

in which we are accepted and loved

apart from our performance

we just naturally assume

that our security with God

and our union with Him is also

at least to some degree is

dependant upon our ability to perform.

#2. Eventually, however, two things begin to eat away at us.

First, we know we can never maintain the level of performance necessary

to achieve real security with God.

And second, we also know in our spirit

that conditional love from our Creator

is not the kind of love

that has the power to change our lives.

The third step in our pilgrimage often involves reaching a point of failure -

the undeniable, horrible, aching realization that we have failed to do

or be what we were called to do or be.

Then fourth, if our pilgrimage goes as God intends,

it is at this point that we first begin to discover the true nature of God’s GRACE,

because it is the first time

that we can hear our God saying, “I love you”

not because of what we have done,

but in spite of it.

There really is nothing quite like failure

and defeat for learning about our God,

especially failure and defeat

that comes after our submission to Him.

It is one thing for us to hear our God saying,

“My child, I forgive you for all those sins you committed before we ever met.”

But it is a very different thing,

to be faced with failure and defeat

after we have known His love

and His care

and His kindness to us in Christ,

and THEN to hear Him say,

“My child, this sin, too, is fully covered

by the death of My Son.

Nothing ever can or ever will separate you from My love.

Having be justified by your faith in Christ

you now have peace with Me forever.”

OK, there’s one additional observation I want to add right here

about a response that takes place

in the life of some Christians

when they finally begin to see the true nature of the grace of God.

One of the best illustrations I’ve seen of this response

is found in one of my all-time favorite movies, Groundhog Day.

The movie is about an arrogant, self-centered weather man

who is sent to cover the Groundhog Day celebration

in this small town on the east coast.

He hates the assignment,

he hates the town,

he hates the people around him.

He just wants to get in,

get out,

and get back to real life.

But an unexpected snow storm

traps him in this small town over night.

The problem comes when he wakes up the next day

and discovers that it is Groundhog Day all over again.

He remembers perfectly

what happened the day before,

but for everyone else its as if the day never existed.

He gets trapped in this little time warp

with no way out,

living the same day over and over and over.

After he’s been stuck in this day for a while it suddenly occurs to him

that if tomorrow never comes

it means there are no consequences

for anything he does today.

NO CONSEQUENCES!

He starts eating anything and everything he wants,

he steals money,

he parties,

he does all the things he’s always wanted to do in the past

but not done because of the consequences.

And I have seen a similar response

in the lives of some Christians

when they first begin to discover

the true nature of God’s GRACE,

especially it they are coming out of a heritage

in which they have been held in the grips

of a heavy religious system of rules

and requirements

and regulations.

A Christian who has been held tight in the grips of legalism,

or has been frantically trying to crank out

the life

and performance level they felt God demanded of them

in order to maintain their good standing with Him,

and then begins to discover the true nature of the grace of God,

will sometimes do exactly what that fellow in Groundhog Day did -

they will latch onto their own personal concept of what they think they really need in order to be happy

and run wild with it.

And their banner affirmation to themselves and to others

is, “I’m no longer under the law, I’m under grace!”

Those who follow that process will ultimately discover two things.

First, they will discover

that their God really doesn’t leave them

even if they run wild.

And second, they will also come to realize

that true freedom

is not having the right to do whatever we want,

but rather true freedom comes from

having the wisdom,

the courage,

and the strength to do what is right.

They will discover that it is not the grace that sets them free,

it is the truth -

the truth given to us by our God

about what really works and what does not

in life and in our relationships with one another.

Every boundary our God has ever established for us as His children

He has done so because He wants us to know

what true, deep, fulfilling love really is.

He wants us fully equipped

to both give and receive love from those around us.

Among the many remarkable statements in Scripture

I rank these two,

made by Paul to a group of Christians

who were severely abusing their freedom in Christ,

very high on the remarkable list:

1 Cor. 6:12 All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.

1 Cor. 10:23 All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify.

He didn’t tell them to shape up

or they would go to hell.

He didn’t tell them to change their behavior

or God would kick them out of the Kingdom.

He affirmed their freedom from ever again having to attempt to earn God’s acceptance through the law system,

but then went on to encourage them

to open their eyes

to the destructiveness

and bondage their behavior was generating.

And the last thing I want to do

before we leave Paul’s comments about

the practical changes that God can bring into our lives

through faith in Christ

is to share with you just a few thoughts

on some of the tools our Lord uses in our lives

as He brings us from fear into faith.

And the first one I will mention

is one we’ve already talked about repeatedly in this study.

It’s stated for us with such simplicity and clarity

in the book of Hebrews

where, quoting God Himself, the author says,

Heb. 8:10 "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel After those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their minds, And I will write them upon their hearts. And I will be their God, And they shall be My people.

That’s a statement the Lord made to His people before the arrival of Christ on this earth,

a promise He made

as He looked at the arrangement He would be able to make

between Himself and His people

once the debt for our sin had been paid

through the death of Christ.

He says simply,

when you come to Me,

when you turn to Me as your Savior and your God,

I will place a new heart, a new spirit within you,

a spirit that knows Me and loves Me

and longs for a life of trusting submission to me.

Before we come to God

we think we should be good.

That’s the working of the that moral conscience within each of us,

poking at us, accusing us,

and yet keeping us from total self-destruction

long enough for God to reveal Himself to us.

The conscience can never make a person righteous,

any more than the external moral law of God can,

but it does hold back the human race from total self-destruction.

But after we come to God

we wish we could be good.

It’s not just that we feel guilty when we get involved in immorality,

but rather we find within ourselves

a deep heart longing for a life of true moral integrity.

That’s what that new heart, that new spirit does within us -

give us a longing at the spirit level

to live a life that honors our God.

It is the foundation upon which all of God’s work within us is built.

And then, once that work has been accomplished within us,

the next step in God’s design for bringing into our lives

the righteousness that comes through faith

is His renewing our minds - the way we think,

the way we view ourselves, our priorities, our life goals,

our need-meeting techniques, and most of all our relationships.

Step by step

He literally begins to build into us

the mind of Christ.

This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 12:2 when he says,

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Now obviously this is a process that we are immersed in

throughout our entire life.

It certainly involves our gaining truth, content

about the way God designed our lives to work

through Scripture.

But just that content

will never in itself bring the changes.

And one of the great wonders of this rebuilding process within our lives

is the way in which the Spirit of God

so skillfully takes that content

and then gives us eyes to see where He wants us to build that truth into our lives.

This is where practical faith, trust in God comes in,

and it is a very active process in our lives.

And frequently the most powerful tool God has for this rebuilding process within us

is the love relationships He has placed into our life.

I’ll give you just one example out of my own life

to show you what I mean.

When our daughter, Joni, was 4 years old

Sandee, Joni and I moved to Dallas, Texas.

I got a job with a company that sold modular office furniture -

interlocking panel systems that could enable a company

to transform an empty floor of a high-rise office building

into several hundred highly efficient work stations

in a matter of a few days.

I was hired as one of their installers.

I loved the product,

I learned it fast,

and I quickly became very good at what I was doing.

The company was growing very fast

and they put me on salary

and then quickly put me in charge of more and more of their work.

One of my installations was at a relatively unknown

but fast-growing little company called Apple Computer.

I was in my mid thirties,

and I’d found myself a career slot that seemed like a perfect fit.

But it wasn’t long before my 40 hour work week

became 45 and 50 and 60 hours,

with more and more evenings and weekends.

And I remember coming home from work one night,

walking in the door of our apartment,

finding my 4 year old Joni Sue standing there waiting for me.

As soon as I came in

she grabbed my finger in her little hand

and then pulled me into her bedroom.

And then, as soon as I was inside,

she ran around behind me, closed the door, and then stood in front of it.

In the only way she knew how

she was telling me she wanted her daddy back.

I knew right then that no career was worth the loss of my daughter.

OK, at that point my God was clearly calling me

to take another step toward the righteousness that comes through faith.

He was asking me to choose between my flesh-driven priorities

and the life priorities He was offering me.

Now I didn’t go in the next day and quit my job.

But I did make a conscious choice of faith in Lord,

a choice to rebuild my life

in a way that was consistent with placing my family above my career.

It wasn’t long after that

that I received a letter from a few families in Alaska

who wanted to organize into a local church fellowship

and were wondering if I would consider serving as their pastor.

And from the earliest days of our church fellowship

I made it clear to our people

that I would rarely be away from my home in the evenings,

a commitment I kept as long as my daughter was in our home.

OK, we’re out of time,

but that’s just one tiny example

of this process through which our Lord seeks to bring into our lives

the righteousness that comes from Him on the basis of faith.

Every step of the way

He’s the one who gives us the truth,

who gives us the eyes to see it and the heart to respond to it.

But it also requires an ongoing, very active response of faith - practical trust on our part

in what He has shown us.

And with that we’ll leave our study of this righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith

and next week we’ll move on

to the third part of what it means to gain Christ...that I may know Him.