Day 17

Self-righteousness is unrighteousness dressed up.

‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ (Matthew 5:48)

One of the hardest things for many of us to realize is that all our best efforts actually count for nothing when it comes to the question of what makes us right with God. Jesus affirmed this strongly when He said in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48). He was saying in effect, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, would you please be as perfect as God?’

How did they respond? Matthew tells us they were ‘amazed at his teaching’ (Matthew 7:28). Of course they were! What He was asking of them was impossible, if not ludicrous and humiliating. If the standard of perfection is God Himself, then the only one capable of perfection is God Himself! To be what human beings were created to be, takes not only a disciplined effort but God Himself. First, He credits us with His righteousness (read Romans 4), and then He imparts His righteous life to us by the gift of His life to live within us. It is filtered through our corrupt fallen nature, but the measure to which we live in dependence on Him is the measure to which aspects of His character may be seen in us. True righteousness is found in an exchange of what I am for what He is. ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Corinthians 5:21). My sin is His, His righteousness is mine.

Are you working for righteousness or accepting the free gift of God?