Righteousness it has nothing to do with your obedience

Receive Two Gifts Every Day. The Abundance of Grace and The Gift of Righteousness can be yours as one of God’s; you can be free of the bondage of sin and negative thoughts. Unfortunately, many believers are not reigning in life because they are trying to Earn the gifts of grace and righteousness, which God wants them to freely receive. You see, grace is God’s undeserved, unmerited favor towards you. It’s a gift. You cannot earn or achieve it. You can only receive it. It is the same with the gift of righteousness. Righteousness, which is you being right standing before God, is not a reward for your good conduct, it is also a gift that is received, not achieved. You don’t become more or less righteous depending on your behavior. You are either 100 per cent righteous by the blood of Christ or you are not. The truth is that the day you were born again, you were made 100 per cent righteous — as righteous as Christ Himself for all eternity, because it is His very own righteousness given to you as a gift!

The other reason many believers are not reigning in life is that they are not receiving these two gifts every day. “You might think, didn’t I already receive God’s gifts of abundant grace and righteousness when I got born again? Why do I still need to receive them every day?” It’s true that when you were born again you received God’s gifts of abundant grace and righteousness. But this receiving is not just a one-time affair.

The Greek word for “receive” in Romans 5:17 is in the present active tense. This simply means that the receiving here refers to an ongoing, continual action. It’s not something that is done once and forgotten. No, it’s something that needs to be done continually. This means that every single day, you need to receive the abundance of grace and gift of righteousness — especially when you’ve blown it!

It is especially true when you’ve missed it that you need to receive the two gifts. If you want to see victory in your area of struggle, you must realize that true and lasting change always starts with what you believe and receive into your heart.

So the heart of the matter is this: Do you believe that you are still righteous in God’s sight and that His grace is still available to you in abundant measure despite your imperfect behavior, emotions and thoughts? Or do you wallow in guilt and condemnation and say, “I’m a hopeless sinner,” and believe that God has distanced Himself from you? When you miss it, your response should be, “I am still the righteousness of God in Christ! I choose to receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness and I will reign in life!” Believing this is right believing that will lead to right living — the victorious, reigning kind of life!

“But if you think, how can I be righteous when I’ve failed? Here it is: No matter what you have done, you cannot lose your righteousness! Why? Because it’s a gift. You never obtained it by your works, so you can never lose it by your works. If you can lose it by your works, then it was never a gift to begin with!

Look at Romans 5:19For as by one man’s [Adam’s] disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s [Jesus’] obedience many will be made righteous.

You were made a sinner not because you sinned, but because of another’s sin — Adam’s disobedience. In the same manner, you were made righteous not because you did righteous deeds, but because of another’s righteous deed — Christ’s obedience at the cross.

Do you see it? When you were a sinner, your good works could not cause you to lose your “sinnerhood”. Likewise, now that you are righteous, your bad deeds cannot cause you to lose your righteousness. If it were possible, then what the first Adam did was more powerful than what the last Adam, Jesus, did! But the opposite is true — Romans chapter 5 is all about how the work of Christ is “much more” than the work of Adam!

So it is the obedience of Christ that has made you righteous. It has nothing to do with your obedience (good works). Just as Christ was made sin at the cross despite having done no wrong, you were made righteous in Christ despite having done no right. That’s why you cannot lose your righteousness even when you have failed. You have an “everlasting righteousness” (Daniel 9:24). If it’s everlasting, you cannot lose it!