Earned Righteousness?

As I was contemplating Good Friday and watching parts of "Passion of the Christ", I realized that there are times I try to earn righteousness. As a child I learned that being perfect in everything you do was the way to avoid rejection, the only problem is that kids are experts at making mistakes. I know in my head that I am the righteousness of God "in Christ" but living in this reality seems to escape my grasp at times. Today, I needed to do a routine task of swapping my snow tires for regular tires. As I entered the tire store I realized that I was overly self conscious and focused on saying the right things. This sounds silly I know but I learned this as a child that you have to work very hard to get people to accept you but this means following an unwritten set of rules. My mom had been raised in a home with a lot of control, rules, and intimidation. She didn't feel a lot of freedom to be herself but lived in fear. In Romans 8:15 "For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to slavery again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out 'Abba! Father!" Rules, control, and intimidation are all part of the spirit of slavery leading to fear. Jesus takes the standard of righteousness to a new level when He says, "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." The Greek word for perfect is 'teleios' which means brought to its end. complete. The completion of righteousness comes in Jesus Christ, the final sacrifice. I have to admit that seeing myself as perfect (complete in Him) is difficult because it seems my character flaws are always in front of me. This kind of self-awareness is so destructive because the only view I want is how the Father of love sees me. At times it seems we have made a new religion of self-awareness and political correctness. Being in union with Christ means that we are lost in His love, His grace, and the joy of walking with Him. I still at times have an awareness of myself separate from Christ, like I am on my own in this world (what a terrifying mindset). Jesus said, "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." (John 14:18) Which means we were all orphans trying to make our own way in the world til the Spirit of Jesus Christ came into our hearts and we were born again as sons and daugthers of God. I believe each one of us have an image of what righteousness (acceptance by God and others) looks like in our minds, when we conform to this image well we feel good about ourselves but when we don't we feel yuck. God announces through the gospel that we are free from these distorted/twisted images that hold us in bondage but appear like they will give us life. Instead we are the Word tells us, "...He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren..." (Romans 8:29). Also Romans 1:22-23 says, "Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures." We act according to how we see ourselves, Proverbs 23:7 says "For as he thinks within himself, so he is." So we live according to the images that we have of ourselves. So if I have this image of a good father always being loving and patient, never being angry or frustrated, the moment I get angry or frustrated I believe I am a bad father. Yet was God involved in this at all, no He is not in this created image because it wasn't made by Him but my own mind. These images come from many sources, for example our experiences as a child growing up, what others say about me, the images that are given by culture and friends, or even the images that are painted by church as what is righteousness. I pray that God would begin to free you from these images and give you revelation of who He is and who you are in Him.

A son in the Kingdom,
Bret