Well, good to see you all. Welcome to Mars Hill. We generally go right through books of the Bible. What we’re doing is a short series entitled Christ on the Cross, and we’re just looking at what Jesus accomplished for us through his death on the cross. It’s the centerpiece of human history; the crux of our faith. It is the heart of all that we believe, and it is the great jewel of Christianity. And like every jewel, it’s got many sides. We’re taking three months to look at the various sides of this great truth to examine it from all angles, and this week we get into this great doctrine called imputed righteousness.

So we’re all theologians. You all have opinions about God and sin and Jesus and the Bible and heaven and hell. Our goal tonight is to make you into good theologians; that’s our hope. And as we study, you’re gonna have to think. I’m hopped up on cold medicine, so I’m gonna try and keep it straight. But as you’re with me tonight, this is gonna take a lot of thinking. There’s a massive amount of theology that’s gonna flood into your minds tonight, and I hope to make it really practically applicable in the end. So I’ll go ahead and pray, and if you’ve got seats, squeeze in – we’ve gotta jam everybody in. And we’ll be adding a fifth service as well as a video service in Shoreline beginning here in January, and so we’ll open up two new opportunities for people to come. So I apologize for the crowded seats, but jam on in and we’ll cram everybody in.

I’ll go ahead and pray, and we’ll get to work.

Father God, thank you for an opportunity to come together to study your Word as your Church. We acknowledge you as a righteous and good God. And God, we also acknowledge that because of our sin we have made ourselves unrighteous. And so we thank you, Lord Jesus, that you would come to save us, to give us your righteousness to take away our sin. And God, as I study and teach these great truths tonight with these friends, I ask that you would send the Holy Spirit to lead, guide, convict and instruct so that I could be most effective in doing my job, and that they would be able to learn about you as clearly as possible. And so we thank you, Lord God, for Scripture. It’s how you speak to us. We search it tonight asking for wisdom in Jesus’ good name, amen.

Where I’ll be going tonight will be through a number of Scriptures, so you’ve got something called the Loop on the way in – that’ll just give you an overview of where we’re going. It’ll give you the references so you can study when you get home.

Our topic tonight is righteousness, and we’ll start with Job 9:2, where dear brother Job asks this very penetrating question. He asks, “God, how can someone who is unrighteous stand before you, the righteous God?” That’s his question. How can a human being be righteous in the sight of a righteous God? And we’ll spend about an hour answering Job’s question, explaining to you in great detail from Scripture how you and I, as unrighteous people, can stand before a holy and righteous God and ourselves be made righteous.

So the first thing I need to tell you, or at least convince you of, is that God himself is indeed righteous. The Bible says this repeatedly. I’ll read just a few examples to prove my point. Psalm 11:7 says, “The Lord is righteous.” Daniel 9:14 says, “The Lord our God is righteous in everything he does.” Isaiah 45:21, God himself declares, “There is no God apart from me, a righteous God and Savior.” God is righteous. God says he’s righteous. God says he’s the only God and he’s the only one who’s righteous – that’s what God says about himself.

And by righteousness, it means that God is straight, right, sinless, just, lawful, holy, good, perfect, wonderful, glorious – God is righteous. We mean all these things when we say, “God is righteous.”

And now the second issue is that God made us in his image and likeness, Genesis 1 and 2 teaches, and that includes that he made us righteous like him. That’s why in Genesis 1:31 it says that God made our first parents, Adam and Eve, and they were very good, and why it says in Ecclesiastes 7:29 that God made mankind, men and women, upright. So my first two points: God is righteous, God made humanity originally righteous and good.

But as we look at the earth we realize that there is plenty of unrighteousness. There is sin, evil, oppression, injustice, war. Some of you have been victims of terrible crimes. Some of you have done terrible crimes yourself. That’s why we have locks on our doors of our homes. We have alarms on our homes. We have guns in our homes. We have dogs in our homes. I mean, we do everything we can to protect ourselves from people in the world because people are unrighteous, they unrighteous things, and the world is a dangerous place to be. And the biggies are, like, war, and we have military, and we have conflict in an effort to deal with what is perceived to be unrighteousness, oftentimes on both sides.

So we live in a world filled with unrighteousness, and the question then is if God is righteous, and we were made righteous, and there is unrighteousness on the earth, where did that come from? Why is the world in such a sad state of affairs?

Well, the third chapter of your Bible, the book of Genesis, tells us that our first parents were not only made righteous, but they also sinned – they committed acts of unrighteousness – and because of that, unrighteousness is now part of the human equation in life on the earth. And so what it says in Genesis 3 is that Adam and Eve sinned – they did something that was unrighteous. God told them, “Obey me,” and Adam and Eve didn’t obey him. They did that which God forbid them to do. The first person to sin was Eve, but the person who was held responsible was Adam because he is the head of his family and the leader, just like all of us husbands and fathers here tonight. It’s not that our wives are not responsible, but we also bear responsibility for the well-being of our family and home.

So God came looking for Adam, said, “Adam, where are you?” Called out to him. God held him accountable, and from that time forward the human family that descended from Adam are now born with what the Bible calls a sin nature. That you and I are sinners – we are sinners by nature because Adam’s sin has been imputed – big theological word – imputed to us. Imputation means that his guilt or his transgression has been reckoned to us. It has been attributed to our account. It has been transferred to us. It’s been given to us.

Some of you said, “What does this mean?” What this means is we’re all like Adam in that we’re sinful rebels filled with unrighteousness and rebellion, okay? And this is from conception. Some of you say, “Well, what do I need to do to be evil?” Be conceived, that’s all you’ve gotta do. Once you’re conceived, you’re conceived sinful and evil. Psalm 51:5: “We’re sinful from our mother’s womb.” Psalm 58:3, same thing, “sinful from our mother’s womb.”

Some of you say, “Well, I don’t like that. How come Adam affects me? What does Adam have to do with me? What does a man who lived thousands of years ago have anything to do with me? I’m an independent person. I’m an individual. I make my own choices; no one makes choices for me.” That’s not true. The truth is that you and I are all part of the human family. Adam is our father. Biologically we descend from him, and spiritually we descend from him. And when he voted as our head to rebel against God and sin, he voted for all of us.

In the same way, if you work at a company and you have someone who is the chair of the company and they are the head of the company – if they should say, “We’re not going to make that product anymore. We’re going to shut this company down. Everyone is fired. We’re going out of business.” You can’t come to work two weeks later and say, “I am the exception to the rule. This doesn’t apply to me. I didn’t vote for it, and who are you to vote for me?” What you will find is you’re unemployed because your vote doesn’t really matter, right? (Laughter) Some of you have been there, right? And so when the person in charge votes, it affects all of us.

In the same way today, you know, the head of our country is our president. When the president decides we’re going to war, we are, in a sense, all at war. Whether you’re for or against the war, that’s not my point; the point is we’re all in it. It affects us all, it costs us all, it involves us all, and we’re identified with it for better or worse.

Likewise Adam is our federal head and our representative – that’s what Augustine, the great church father in the fourth century taught, that he is our federal head. He is our representative, and when he voted, he voted for all of us. So now we all have been implicated in his rebellion against God, and we’re all now conceived as his descendents with unrighteousness, a sin nature filled with folly and rebellion.

Out of that sin nature, this condition, comes sinful life. All right, some of you are trying to stop eating as much, and stop drinking as much, and stop doing all of these sinful things. The real problem is not all of those effects. It’s really the cause down deep in our heart that we’re rebels and lawbreakers, and that there’s something wrong with us. That’s why we do wrong things.

And so the issue then becomes, “Well, how do we know that we’re sinners?” Well, just look at your life. The Bible says in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We’re all sinners. I need to stress this point because you have all been lied to. You’ve been told, “You are wonderful, glorious, and good. You were born morally neutral. You are a blank slate of goodness, and all you need to do is just be a good person and do good things.” The truth is you’re a bad person. You can only do bad things. Right? Now, I know you don’t believe that, but the person sitting next to you that knows you, they agree with me. (Laughter) And what happens then is we all sin, and we can’t say, “Well, I’m not a sinner. I’m a good person.” 1 John 1 says if we say we’re not a sinner, we say that God is a liar, because when God says we’re all sinners, we say, “Yes, everyone but me is a sinner.” (Laughter) God says, “No, you’re calling me a liar. That’s not acceptable.”

So God is righteous. We were made righteous. We’ve sinned. We are now all conceived in an unrighteous state. We all now live in an unrighteous state, and there is not one person on the earth – myself included – that is righteous in the eyes of God.

Romans 3:10 says it this way: “There is no one righteous, not even one.” Not one person is righteous. And by unrighteous, it means that we are absolutely antithetical and opposite of God. God is straight, we’re crooked. God is good, we’re bad. God is clean, we’re unclean. God is holy, we are unholy. God does what is right, we do wrong. God is just, we are unjust. God is lawful, and we are rebels. And we are different than God.

But here’s this point: that you and I were made to be righteous and we want to be righteous. We long to be righteous and we can’t accept the fact that we are unrighteous. It doesn’t sit well with us, so we pursue our own righteousness. And the Bible calls this the sin of self-righteousness, okay? And we pursue this in two primary ways: morality and religion. Some of you are here tonight saying, “What kind of church is this? They’re not into morality or religion?” No, we’re not. Those are enemies of God. He hates them both. We’re not into morality or religion. We’re into Jesus. So if you came here to get morality, sorry. Got something better for you. If you came here to get religion – not really religious.

But here’s what we do have for you: Jesus, okay? We have Jesus. That’s what we’ve got for you. And when it comes to morality and religion, I need to unpack these because some of you think that being a Christian means being moral or being religious. So I’ll attack morality first.

Romans 10:3 says, “Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God, and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.” This is morality. Some of you have been told wrongly, or some of you believe wrongly, “God hates bad people. He loves good people, so be a good person and he’ll love you.” Say, “Well, how do I be a good person?” “Just be very, very moral. Be very, very moral.” We’re not into morality. You can be a person who buckles up and recycles and drives a hybrid vehicle and goes to hell, right? (Laughter) That can happen. You could be really moral, just an upstanding and moral citizen.

I was a guy who honestly thought he was really, really moral until I became a Christian at 19. If you would’ve asked me, “Are you a good person?” “I’m a good person. I don’t – I’ve never smoked a cigarette. I’ve never done drugs. I’ve never tried alcohol. I’m a good, moral person – four-year letterman, Most Likely to Succeed, student body president, you know, football, baseball captain” – the whole deal. “I’m a good, moral person.” If you’d asked my ex-girlfriend, she’d have said, “Well, he had sex with me and dumped me.” She would’ve given you some other information that I sort of conveniently left out of my resume. And if you would’ve asked my buddies, “Well, is he a good person?” they’d say, “Yeah, except for when he gets angry and punches you in the mouth and cusses you out,” okay? And that’s the truth.

The truth is that we all think we’re moral, and we conveniently omit from our resumes certain things that we know are unrighteous. But we want to deceive other people and give the best impression that we really are wonderful folk. And we know in our own hearts we’re really not, and the people who know us both – know us best, rather, they know the truth. And the truth is that we are unrighteous.

And morality is a terrible thing because here’s what happens with both religion and morality. If you seek to achieve morality, and you accomplish it, and you’re a good person, you’re an arrogant jerk and no one likes you because you’re impossible to deal with. You’re a person that points your finger at everybody else, looks down on them, and then your sin is pride, which is the worst sin of all. And you go to hell just for that because it’s the sin that got Satan kicked out of heaven! And so by not smoking, drinking, or cussing, all that gets you is cuts into the line to hell, (Laughter) because being a moral person leads to arrogance and self-righteousness and pride, okay?

But some people try to be moral and they don’t make it and they fail miserably, and those people are woefully depressed. Some of you are here, you say, “I’m not a good person. I stink.” That’s right. And you’re depressed and you want to kill yourself. And so these are the two options when you pursue morality: you think you’ve made it and you’re an arrogant jerk, or you think you’ll never make it and you just want to kill yourself. Those are the options for people who pursue self-righteousness through morality. “I’ll be a good person and I’ll build my resume. And when I stand before God I’ll say, ‘God, I know you love good people, not bad people. I’m a good person. Here’s all my goodness.’” It’s not going to work. None of us is righteous. None of us can stand before God and impress him. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And not only are we sinners by choice and work in life, we’re sinners by nature. There’s something profoundly wrong with us.

So the other way that we – you know what? And it’s interesting, too, because when people pursue self-righteousness, sometimes they pick the silliest things, right? We tend to pick things that we’re good at and say, “Well, good, moral, decent people, this is what they do.” And you say, “Well, that’s what you do.” “I know. I made a list that I could do because it’s easier that way.” (Laughter) You’ll talk to dudes, they’ll be like, “Well, I know I’m a good person. I’m never late to work.” You don’t have a job! (Laughter) You can’t put that on your resume, you know? “Well, at least I’m not having sex with lots of women.” That’s because no one wants to sleep with you. (Laughter) That’s not righteousness.

But we keep pursuing self-righteousness – through morality, and if that doesn’t work, some of us try religion, right? Some of you have tried religion. I tried religion. I tried religion. I tried to be a religious boy, go to Catholic church, go to Catholic school, be an altar boy. I’m not banging on all the Catholics, but I thought religion would save me. I’ll be very, very religious.

Well, here’s the problem with religion. Religion doesn’t work. Religion is an offense to God. Religion is people trying to please God, make themselves good, stand before him on their own two feet, look him in the eye and say, “I’m a good person. I was very religious.”

Jesus talks about religious guys. In Jesus’ day, the most religious guys and the most moral guys were called the Pharisees. They were like the Yankees of moralistic, religious guys. (Laughter) These guys were – they were the dream team. This was all the studs. And they were the most religious and moral people on the whole earth. There was no one more religiously devout and moral than them. This is how religious they were. They were afraid that they would lust after a hot gal, so they wouldn’t even look up. They’d walk around literally looking at the ground, banging their head into things, just so that they wouldn’t have the opportunity to look upon a hot gal. These are guys that Jesus said they were so serious that when the Bible says to tithe the tenth of all you own, they tithed everything. They would literally go to their spice rack, take out their mint, say, “Oh, I’ve got ten mint leaves. One belongs to God. I’d better bring that to the temple.”

Now some of you never give a thing. Some of you give ten percent. Nobody brought their spice rack. None of us are that religious, right? None of us are that neatnik. Unless you have, like, the worst case of un-medicated OCD in the history of the Christian faith, you didn’t even think about tithing out of your spice rack, right?

But these guys were so religious, so devout, so committed – now here’s what’s shocking. Jesus used them as an illustration. And here’s what he says in Matthew chapter 5, verse 20. “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus brought these guys out, and here’s the drunks, and here’s the gal who’s a stripper, and here’s all the other people that have their own obvious sins, and everybody knows it. And they’re sitting there listening to Jesus, and Jesus brings up the Pharisees. And he says, “You know what? If you guys want to go to heaven, all you’ve gotta do is you’ve gotta be more moral and religious than the Pharisees.” All the guys and gals that are sinners are thinking to themselves, “We are jacked. There is no hope for us. I’m here in clear heels, the dude can’t find his pants, and they’re telling us that we gotta be better than Billy Graham and Mother Theresa to go to heaven? This is not gonna happen. We are in serious trouble.”

I’m not saying that Billy Graham and Mother Theresa are self-righteous Pharisees, but they’re the best people that we can think of, right? It’d be like me bringing up Mother Theresa and saying, “Ladies, if you want to go to heaven, all you’ve gotta do is be better than Mother Theresa, because she’s going to hell. And gentlemen, all you’ve gotta do to go to heaven is be better than Billy Graham, because he’s going to hell. Okay? There you go. Amen.” You’d be like, “That is not good news. That is not encouragement. That doesn’t help anything,” right? “If they’re not good enough, I’m in serious trouble. If they’re not righteous enough, I know I’m not.”

And that’s exactly what Jesus taught, that religion won’t save you and that morality won’t save you, because they cannot make you righteous. You are unrighteous. Some people say, “Well, I’ll read the Bible and I’ll do what it says. And I’ll be really, really disciplined. And I’ll make lots of rules. And I’ll be very tidy and very controlling. I’ll be a person that has control of their whole life and I’ll white-knuckle it, be self-disciplined like an athlete.”

Here’s what Paul says: “Therefore no one” – Romans 3:20 – “will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law. Rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” What he says is this: When you read the Bible it won’t make you feel better, it’ll make you feel worse. It won’t make you feel more righteous, it’ll make you feel less if you read it right. You will read about all the things you’re supposed to be doing and all the things you’re not supposed to be doing. And you’ll realize all the areas that you fall short and how unrighteous you really are, and how desperate you really need help.

So morality and religion don’t work. Morality and religion, in fact, are an offense to a holy, righteous God. And some of you have tried morality and you’ve tried religion. You’re saying, “Well, what do you have for me?” Jesus. Not morality, not religion, just Jesus. I’ll explain that more thoroughly in a minute.

But first let me give you an illustration. Tomorrow night the trick-or-treaters are coming to your house. And they’re gonna come, and they’re gonna get all hopped up on candy, and they’re gonna be up all night driving their parents crazy. And you’ll be their dealer. You’ll give them their fix. (Laughter) And so you will have a big bowl, and out of that bowl you will give delightful treats to all those who come, and they will think well of you. And how many of you are planning on handing out bloody tampons to all the little trick-or-treaters? (Laughter) Anyone? I – I’ll let that sit and I’ll get some water. You meditate on that. Oh, that’s gross!

Oh, and he has a verse. It’s biblical. I’ll share the verse in a minute. See, when we fill up our bucket, as it were, with self-righteousness – “Oh, I help poor people,” and, “I teach after school for disadvantaged youth,” and, “I went on a mission trip,” or, “I go to Mars Hill,” or, “I tithe five percent,” or, “I memorized a verse” – we fill up our bucket with all of our self-righteousness and we come before God. We say, “God, here. I have a treat for you.” That’s exactly how God sees the gift of self-righteousness. He sees it as a bloody tampon. That’s what he says in Isaiah 64:6, that – the commentators, the translators get a little light on it, but it says, “All of us have become like one who is unclean” – like a woman on her cycle. Some of you are going, “This is sick. I’m a dude.” I fully know. (Laughter) There’s no one that knows that this is disgusting more than a dude, right? If you meet a dude and he goes up to his girlfriend, wife, sister, “Hey, what’s going on? You look tired.” “Yeah, it’s that time of the” – it’s like she’s got Ebola. He doesn’t want to be within a mile, right? Like, I’m a dude. I get this is gross. And that’s the point. God is saying – he goes on to say, “Like one who is unclean, all of our righteous acts” – all of our self-righteousness, God says, are like filthy menstrual rags.

Some of you say, “Well, I thought I was a good person.” Well, apparently God doesn’t. You say, “Well, I thought I did some nice things.” Well, apparently God doesn’t. “Well, I thought I’d come to God with my bucket full of good deeds. Look, I have a hybrid vehicle. I recycle. I help poor people. I gave money to the hurricane relief effort.” And God says, “You wouldn’t hand out bloody tampons to trick-or-treaters, and don’t come to me with a bucket full of self-righteousness. I’m just as happy as they are.”

Okay, I know it’s gross, but you and I need to see our morality and religion as that gross, as that disgusting to God. See, because we live in a day where we are told, “If you want to be righteous, here’s what you need: self-esteem, self-improvement, self-help, self-actualization, so you can have self-righteousness.” God says, “Self? What about me? You don’t need me? Don’t need Jesus? He wasted his life? He wasted his death? He wasted his resurrection?” That’s just a grotesque thing to say. It’s a disgusting thing to say.

God’s righteous, made us righteous. We made ourselves unrighteous by nature and choice as descendents of Adam. We try to be self-righteous with self-esteem, self-improvement, self-help, self-actualization, self-worship. And it’s a holy, righteous God that declares, “That is disgusting. Don’t try religion or morality.” And again, if we try religion and morality and we think we’re doing pretty good, we’re arrogant jerks, self-righteous, impossible to deal with, holier-than-thou, better than everyone else, filled with pride – that’s the worst sin. And if we fail to meet our own objectives as moral and religious people, we get depressed. We get discouraged. We get suicidal. We’re just at the end of our rope. God doesn’t have either for us.

Here’s what God does have for us: Jesus. And so this is where I need to tell you how to get righteous. First I need to tell you how not to get righteous. Don’t get righteous, don’t seek to obtain righteousness through morality and religion. It’s only through Jesus Christ. And here’s the story of Jesus. Jesus is our eternal God. He looked down at us – and you won’t like this word – but he had pity on us because we’re pitiful. Me, too. And he looked down and he knew that we were unrighteous, that we didn’t seek righteousness, we wouldn’t obtain righteousness. Not one of us is righteous. We’re conceived in unrighteousness. We live in unrighteousness. Unrighteousness is multiplying on the earth, and there is no hope.

And he took pity on us. And out of love, mercy, compassion, Jesus Christ, our eternal God, comes down and becomes a man. Unlike every other man, he doesn’t have an earthly father. God the Father is his only Father. He is not a physical or spiritual descendent directly of Adam. 1 Corinthians 15:45, Paul says that he is the second Adam, that he is the beginning of a whole new humanity, that God literally begins again with Jesus. And everything that was lost in Adam will be recaptured and redeemed in Jesus.

Now Jesus lives his life, the Bible says, continually being tempted to sin in unrighteousness. But he resists every temptation. He lives perfectly, sinlessly, righteously. Jesus ultimately goes to the cross, and there he dies, sheds his blood. And what happened on the cross is the most important series of truths in the history of the world, that some miraculous, wonderful, glorious things happened at the cross of Jesus Christ. I’ll read from 1 Peter 2 and show you how they in particular relate to our unrighteousness and his righteousness, and how on the cross those two things are brought together. 1 Peter 2:24: “He himself bore our sins and his body on the tree so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.” What he says is this: “We are unrighteous. Jesus died and suffered as a substitute in our place for our sins, so that we now could be free from our unrighteous condition and we could now live new lives as new people pursuing righteousness with God.” He says the same thing in 1 Peter 3:18: “For Christ died for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”

We’re unrighteous. I’m unrighteous. I don’t want anyone here to get the thought that I’m a better person than anybody. I’m a sinner. I’m unrighteous. My deeds are as foul as everyone else in the room. And some people say, “Well, aren’t you into equality?” Yeah, I’m into equality. We all stink. That’s total equality. That’s exactly what we believe here at Mars Hill. We’re all sinners. We’re all unrighteous. We all have a sinful condition. We all have sinful lives. It’s the truth.

And Jesus went to the cross and he, who was unrighteous, died for – he who was righteous, rather, died for me who was unrighteous. So it’s the righteous Jesus for the unrighteous Mark, to bring Mark to God. That’s what Jesus did on the cross.

Now I don’t need religion. Now I don’t need morality. I need Jesus. I can’t save myself. I’m saved by Jesus. And it’s through the righteousness of Jesus that this is obtained. That’s what they say in Luke 23:47, where when Jesus died, one of the soldiers who participated in his execution looked up, and upon his death, said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” Even his murderers knew that he was righteous, saying, “Why would a righteous man die?” Well, he would die for unrighteous men and women out of love.

The point is this: that everything was lost in Adam and everything is regained in Jesus. This becomes the great theme of Romans 5:12-21. I’m gonna run it quickly. I could spend many hours on this, but I just want to highlight a few truths from this great section of Scripture to teach you about the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And as much as Adam’s sin has been imputed to us, Jesus’ righteousness likewise is imputed, reckoned, given, transferred to us.

That’s the great truth of Romans 5:12-21. He says it this way – Romans 5:12. “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man” – which man? Adam, okay? Adam sinned. “And death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” Adam sinned first, and like a virus getting into a network, we’re all connected to him. We’re all infected with this condition of sin. And then death is the consequence and result of sin. God is the living God. Sin is separation from the living God. We die. That is the result of sin. Adam sins. We’re all sinners. We all die because we are all on Adam’s team participating with him in unrighteousness.

It goes on to say in verse 13, “For before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command as Adam did, who was the pattern of one to come.” Paul here is anticipating a rejection of his instruction, because here’s where it is going. I’ll summarize it. God gives his laws – that’s the Bible, and particularly the first five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. We call them the Pentateuch, written by Moses, also known as the law. So the Bible in general, and the writings of Moses in particular, are referred to as the law. As you read the law, you will find over 600 different rules telling you, “Don’t do this. Do do this.” Lots of commands.

Now sin is when we break one of those good commands. In fact, I think that’s what 1 John 2 says, that sin is the breaking of God’s law. But here’s the problem: From Adam to the time that Moses lived and wrote the first five books of the Bible was a couple thousand years. Paul is anticipating someone to say, “Well, if there was no Bible for 2,000 years, how can we say that everybody was a sinner? They didn’t read the Bible. They didn’t know the Bible. They didn’t even know they were breaking the Bible.” The answer is they were sinners by nature. They were born in a condition called sin. And just because they didn’t have the Bible doesn’t mean they weren’t sinners, and it doesn’t mean that they necessarily were even working against the Bible. They didn’t know it. They didn’t know they were breaking it. People would argue, “Well, aren’t they ignorant? Doesn’t God sort of permit us not to be judged if we don’t know any better?” No, because we’re conceived in sin. We’re born in sin. We have a nature of sin. And we’re sinners by virtue of who we are, not just what we do. What we do is a result of who we are.

So what he’s saying is this. Even the people that didn’t have the Bible until Moses wrote the first five books, they too all died because they were sinners, and they were all sinners by virtue of their nature, their essence, their identity.

He then continues. So far we don’t have a lot of good news, but the news gets better beginning in verse 15. “But the gift is not like the trespass.” The work of Jesus is not like the work of Adam. “For if the many died by the trespass of one man” – by the sin of Adam we all died – “how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!” Again, the gift of God is not like the result of one man’s sin. The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation. But the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.

Here’s what he says. He’s saying that, friends, there are two categories of humanity. See, we divide ourselves up in lots of ways. Oh, this is my country, my ethnicity, my gender, my race, my socioeconomic background, my generational age. This is where I live. This is how much I make. The Bible divides people into two groups: those who are under Adam, and those who are under Jesus. Very simple. And under Adam there is sin. Under Jesus there is forgiveness. Under Adam there is condemnation. Under Jesus there is salvation. To be under Adam you just need to be born. To be under Jesus you need to be born again. To be enslaved to sin is to be in Adam. To be free from sin is to be in Jesus. To experience death is a result of being under Adam. To receive eternal life, that is the result of being under Jesus.

What he’s saying is this: You’re either under Adam or Jesus – no independent people, no third category, no autonomous individuals that aren’t implicated. Everyone is in one of these two categories: dead in Adam, or alive in Jesus Christ. That’s it. That’s it.

He goes on to articulate this further in verse 17. “For if, by the trespass” – or the sin – “of the one man,” Adam, “death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness” – now he’s talking about righteousness and it’s a gift – “reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Consequently, just as the result of one trespass” – or sin – “was condemnation for all – all of us, so also the result of one act of righteousness” – that’s the life, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus – “was justification that brings life for all men.”

Again, Adam or Jesus? Self-righteous attempts at righteousness through morality and religion which fail and we die as unrighteous people, or righteousness as a gift of grace from Jesus so that we might receive his righteousness and the gift of eternal life, not death. It’s Adam or Jesus. Very simple.

He then goes on. Verse 19, he says, “For just as the disobedience of the one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” Adam sinned and we were made unrighteous in him. Jesus was altogether righteous and we can be made righteous in him. There are two humanities, two heads of those different categories of people, and two kinds of lives that are lived as a result.

And then he closes with this, in verse 20: “The law was added so that trespass might increase.” The Bible only came to show us how bad we were, and in fact, it helped to make us worse. Some of you, this will trouble you. You say, “Well, I thought the Bible was good.” The Bible is good. We’re bad. When we get the Bible we realize all of the bad things we’ve done, and then we think of new ways to do more bad, right? How many of you have read the Bible and thought of new ways to evil? This is what happens, because the Bible is good and we are bad, and as long as we’re working out of our endemic rebellious nature – we’re rebels, we’re law-breakers, we’re fighters – and when God says to do something, even if it’s good, we do exactly the opposite because we’re bad. And some of you have seen this, even with children. It doesn’t matter what you tell certain kids, they just do the opposite in defiance and rebellion, even to their own destruction. We, like foolish kids, disobey our Dad, too, to our own demise and destruction.

What he’s saying is this: Everyone was conceived and born in sin. They were all sinners. And the Bible came, and as they read the Bible they just were made consciously aware of all of their sins by name. Not only that, as they read the Bible they realized there were other things they weren’t supposed to be doing, and the first thing they did is went out and did those things, too. “Don’t lust? What’s that?” Think of naked people. “Oh, well, that’s what I’m doing now. I didn’t even think of that.” You say, “Well, what’s wrong with the Bible?” Nothing’s wrong with the Bible. Everything’s wrong with us. Everything’s wrong with us.

He goes on to say, “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.”

Here’s his basic, simple point. Adam, Jesus. You’re born into Adam, you’re born again into Jesus. You’ll be a sinner in Adam, you’ll be saved in Jesus. You’ll die in Adam or you’ll live in Jesus. You’ll be condemned in Adam, or you will be forgiven in Jesus. That we deserved to be in Adam and were put in Jesus by grace – it’s a gift of God. It’s the love of God at work for us. And that our righteousness is not our own righteousness, because anyone who was over in the category of Adam is not righteous, cannot be righteous, cannot make themselves righteous, particularly through morality and religion. But because of Jesus, righteousness is not something that we obtain through our self. It’s something that’s given to us from Jesus.

The question is, then, “Well, how do we go from Adam to Jesus? How do we go from self-righteousness, which is offensive to God, to the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is a gift from God?” Okay, and this will show you how profoundly sick we are. Because at this point, the question that most people ask is, “What do I need to do?” which is another way of saying, “How can I save myself? How do I go from Adam to Jesus? What do I do to get me from Adam to Jesus?” And the answer is we don’t do anything to get us from Adam to Jesus. We just trust Jesus; that’s it, and Jesus does all the work. We’re saved not by our good life, but by Jesus. Not by our death, but Jesus. We’re saved by Jesus. And that’s received by faith – that is, trusting Jesus.

Martin Luther got this right. He said that faith is the looking away from ourselves. See, today all we’re told is, “Look at yourself. Look at yourself. Look at all the positive things. Have self-esteem.” You know, “Think highly of yourself. Get a motivational coach. Take the right pills. Go to therapy. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps. Be a good person. Live a good life, and then you can be a good person and be all you can be. It’s all about you.” And faith is saying, “You know what? It’s not about me. It’s about Jesus. And I’m gonna stop looking at myself and I’m gonna start looking at him. I’m gonna stop hoping in myself and I’m gonna start hoping in him. And I’m gonna stop trusting in myself, I’m gonna start trusting in him. And I’m not gonna work in myself to drum up some self-righteousness, I’m gonna fix my eyes on Jesus and I’m gonna receive his righteousness.” And that is faith. Faith is looking to Jesus, trusting in Jesus, believing in Jesus, loving Jesus.

Faith is about Jesus. It says it repeatedly throughout Scripture. I’ll give you many examples – I’ll read quick. Genesis 15:6 – Abraham is the pattern for all believers. He was an unrighteous man, but “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited to him as righteousness.” Some of you say, “I would like God to say that about me like he did Abraham. ‘You’re righteous.’” Great, then believe God. Paul quotes this in Romans and Galatians. This verse is quoted throughout the New Testament. “But the righteous will live by faith,” Habakkuk 2 says. If you want to be righteous, “What do I do?” Nothing, Jesus did everything. He lived a righteous life, died for your unrighteousness, rose, will give you his righteousness as a gift – trust Jesus. Believe in Jesus. Have faith in Jesus. It’s not what you do, it’s what he does. Pressure’s off you.

Now here’s the good news. You can give up on morality and religion, and walk with Jesus. It goes on to say this in Romans 3:21-22: “But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God” – righteousness from God, not from self, not from self – “comes from faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” The righteousness from God comes to me through Jesus if I believe in him. To all who believe – what that means is there’s no one in this room that need not have the righteousness of God imputed to them through Jesus Christ. If you repent of your sin and trust in Jesus, the righteousness of Jesus Christ will be given to you. Some of you say, “But I’ve done some very bad things.” I understand that. Jesus died for all your sins, past, present, and future, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. That’s what the Bible says. By faith you believe that, you trust that. You take God at his word. You take God on his promise.

There is no one here that, if you turned to Jesus, he will reject you. There is no one that, if you want the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ, that he will turn you away. To all who believe – do you believe in Jesus? Do you believe in Jesus?

And this believing is not even something that we could boast about. This, too, is a gift of God. Ephesians 2:8, 9, and 10 – saved by grace through faith in Christ. Not of ourselves, gift of God, so that no one could boast. Even the faith to believe in Jesus is a gift from Jesus, so we can’t even brag about our faith. It’s all Jesus. That’s why Paul says, “If I’m gonna boast, let me just boast in Jesus Christ. Let me boast in his cross, not in myself.”

Now, let me tell you what this does. This will help to shape your identity. It just breaks my heart today that people are running around trying to feel good about themselves and think good about themselves. And they don’t know who they are and they want a good identify. You know what’s better than self-esteem? The righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. What this will allow you to be is confident and humble at the same time. See, morality and religion, it leads to either arrogance or despair, but it doesn’t lead to humble confidence because it’s still about you. The imputation of the righteousness of Jesus allows me to be confident. Jesus lives in me. And I work by his power, and I come in his name, and I am his possession. “Oh, so you think you’re better than me?” Actually, I think I’m worse. This was grace. This was a gift. I can’t boast. It was all Jesus from beginning to end.

So I’m very confident in what Jesus can do through me and in spite of me, and I’m very humble because I know if it’s good, that was Jesus. So many people today vacillate between arrogance and despair. Through the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to those who believe, we have confidence and humility. We walk forward boldly, knowing that it’s not us, but Christ, who gets things done.

This is all received by faith. Paul goes on in Romans 4:4-5: “Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift but as an obligation.” When you go to work and you get your check, you don’t say, “Thank you. I can’t believe it. I didn’t deserve it! I never had any idea I would get a check!” You say, “I have earned it. I worked a job and I earned a check. This isn’t grace. This is merited favor. This is result that I should have.”

But salvation isn’t like working a job. “However, to the man who does not work but trusts God, who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.” Trust God, have faith, he’ll give you righteousness. You say, “Well, I don’t deserve his righteousness.” That’s right, it’s grace. “Well, what did I do to deserve this?” Nothing, you’re wicked, he said. “Well, why do wicked people get the righteousness of God?” because God’s good, even though we’re bad. “Oh, so it’s not about me?” No, it’s not about you, it’s about God. “But God loves me?” God does love you. “God forgives me?” God does forgive me. “God gives me his righteousness and takes away my sin?” Yes, he does. “All I need to do is trust Jesus?” Yeah, with the faith that he gives you.

See, this changes everything. Your identity is then in Jesus, not self-esteem. See, we don’t need to pull out our resume and say, “Here’s who I am and here’s what I’ve done, and I’m a really good person.” We could pull out our sin and say, “This is how bad I am. This is how good Jesus is. And he traded me. He took all of my sin, he gave me all of his righteousness. And I’m loved by God. And I’m changed by God. And I belong to God. And praise be to God. Look at what God has done for me.”

It goes on to say in Romans 10:4, “Christ is the end of the law so there may be righteousness.” For who? Everyone who believes.

1 Corinthians 1:30: “It is because of him, Jesus that you are – it is because of God the Father, rather, that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness.”

Coming in here tonight, if I would’ve said, “Are you a righteous person?” those of you who have been here for a while would’ve said, “No.” Those of you who haven’t been here for a while would’ve said, “I’m a pretty good person. I think I’m pretty righteous.” You both would’ve answered wrongly. Those of you who have been here for a while and you’re a Christian, when asked, “Are you righteous?” you should say, “Yes, I am righteous.” They say, “Well, why?” You shouldn’t pull out your resume. You should pull out Jesus’ resume. Say, “He was born of a virgin, and he was not a descendent of Adam. He’s the second Adam, Father of the new humanity. He lived without sin. He died for my sin. He died to take away my unrighteousness. He gave me his righteousness. He’s reconciled me to God. Jesus Christ is my righteousness. I am righteous – but only with the righteousness of Jesus.”

Those of you who came in and would’ve pulled out your resume and said, “Well, these are all the good things I’ve done. I’m moral. I’m spiritual. I’m religious. I’m a good person.” No, you’re unrighteous. That’s an offense to God.

But, beloved, both are true. Both are offensive to God. The non-Christian who thinks they’re righteous, and the Christian who doesn’t think that they’re righteous in Jesus Christ. Both are not what God wants us to hear and know. He wants all of you Christians to know that you are righteous in Jesus Christ. He wants you to rest in that, be secure in that, be confident in that – not be arrogant in that, but be humbled saying, “Oh, my goodness, Jesus Christ has given me his righteousness and taken my unrighteousness. This changes everything.”

Paul says it this way. Speaking of himself personally in Philippians 3:8-9 – and he was – he was the moralist, he was the religious guy, he was the self-righteous guy. He says, “What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish.” Paul says, “I was building quite a resume – came from a good family, knew Hebrew, memorized the whole Bible, was zealous, devoted, graduated top of my class, very religious, very devout, very devoted.” Paul says, “And now I know it’s all junk. It’s just all garbage.”

Say, “Well, Mark, is it garbage to help poor people, and give money to hurricane victims, and recycle?” No, it’s not garbage, but if you’re doing it to make yourself look good, if you’re doing it to be self-righteous, if you’re doing it so you can stand before God and say, “You and I are a lot alike,” that’s garbage – that’s what that is. That’s just rubbish. That’s junk. That’s nonsense.

Paul says, “All that I did was just garbage. Trying to be righteous through morality and religion” – he says – “But I may gain Christ, be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law” – being a good boy – “not having a righteousness of my own.” Not coming before God with my hands full saying, “God, I’m a good person. Look at all that I’ve done,” but coming to God with my hands full of sin saying, “God, I’m an evildoer; look what I have done.” Emptying our hands to Jesus and receiving his righteousness, not a righteousness of our own, but which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God, and is by faith.

Our unrighteousness, Jesus’ righteousness – faith is what connects us as we trust in him, not in ourselves. Look away from ourselves and look to him. And you’ve read it here in the Bible: Believe the Lord. Have faith in Jesus Christ. Trust God. Faith believes. Being in Christ Jesus through faith in Christ Jesus. By faith.

Some people will tell you that Christianity’s the easiest religion in the world because all you need to do is trust Jesus. I will tell you it is exactly the opposite. Every other religion will tell you how to be self-righteous and how to be a good person. And we will tell you that your only hope is Jesus, and that you cannot fix or save yourself. That you need him. And the prerequisite for our faith is humility and repentance, not arrogance and self-righteousness.

To allow you to see this, I summarized it into a small chart that’s on the back of our Loop notes and I’ll throw it on the overhead projector. This is the great doctrine of imputed righteousness. And I know I’m not supposed to talk about this. This is theology, for the seminary. We’re a big church. I’m supposed to tell you you’re all wonderful, give you a water bottle, you know, tell a story about the Easter bunny, you know, and three principles to be victorious. And then have the band come up and you all just work into a lather and we take four offerings. I know that’s how it supposed to go. (Laughter) All right? I want you to be good theologians. I want you to think biblically. I want you to understand the depth of what Jesus has done for you, because it’ll change your life.

Okay, on one side there is us and our unrighteousness – our sin, our shortcomings, our folly, our condition from Adam, and our life on the earth by our own volition. On the other side is the righteousness of Jesus – his virgin birth, sinless life, substitutionary death for our sin, his glorious resurrection, the perfectly, wonderful Lord Jesus. Okay, and here is what connects our unrighteousness to the righteous Jesus: faith in Jesus. And then our sin is imputed or transferred to him, his righteousness is imputed or transferred to us. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says it this way. “God made him” – Jesus – “who knew no sin” – perfectly righteous – “so that in him” – Jesus alone, not other religions, philosophies, moralities, other opportunities. That in Jesus Christ, we might become the what? “The righteousness of God.”

That is so much better than self-righteousness. That is so much better than self-esteem. It is the righteousness of Christ imputed to me, as my sin is imputed to Jesus.

Martin Luther calls this the wonderful exchange. He’s absolutely right. This is wonderful. I don’t need to make myself good in God’s sight. I don’t need to please God. I don’t need to cause myself to be acceptable to God. Jesus has done everything. And on the cross when he said it was finished, it was all taken care of. And now by the grace that he gives, I trust Jesus and Jesus’ righteousness is given to me, and my unrighteousness is given to Jesus who suffered and died in my place to pay the penalty for my sin.

Friends, this changes everything. This changes everything. Now the righteousness of Christ is in each Christian. So first things first, here’s what I need to tell you. You need to be a Christian to receive the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. If you’re here tonight and you’re not a Christian, you give your sin to Jesus – in your seat, tonight. You just give your sin to Jesus. It doesn’t mean to be a profound prayer, it just need be sincere. “Jesus, I am an unrighteous sinner. You died for my sin. Take my sin, give me your righteousness. Be my God.” He will do that. Thousands in this church would testify that that’s what he does. That’s what Jesus does. He trades us sin for righteousness. That’s why it’s grace. This is a deal that doesn’t make any sense. This is not a trade that anyone else would make except for a gracious, loving, merciful, righteous, good God.

First thing, you become a Christian by trusting in Jesus and giving him your sin and receiving his righteousness. The Bible calls that justification; we’ll tease that out more next week. But then the rest of our life is spent in what the Bible calls sanctification, which is Jesus’ righteousness is imputed to us – justification – and then we live out ever-increasing, growing in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That is sanctification.

Okay, here’s where it changes everything. I know we’ve done massive theology. Let me break it down to you real practically. You say, “What does this have to do with anything?” This has to do with everything. This has to do with absolutely everything. Give you an example. I recently turned 35. My wife and I met when we were 17 – we’re high school sweethearts. Loved her, adored her, married her at 21. We’ve been together half my life. We recently celebrated 13 years of marriage. And I’ll be honest with you, two sinners in marriage does not equal eternal bliss, okay? (Laughter) Those of you that are married – you guys that are single, you’re like, “Well get married, that’ll fix it.” (Laughter) No. It’s like plugging all your flaws into an amplifier. (Laughter) It just makes it bigger and louder. That’s what happens. And my wife and I, we get married, and here’s what happens. She needs me to change to be more like Jesus to her, and I need her to change to be more like Jesus to me. We both have a lot of work that needs to be done on both of us. And I’ll be brutally honest with you. Though I love my wife and she’s a wonderful gal, there have been seasons in my marriage where I’ve lost hope. I’ve actually said that to my wife and done great damage. “Honey, I don’t think you’re gonna change. I think that we’re stuck and this is where we’re at.” And that is – that is the natural result of just looking at a sinful person. You lose hope. You don’t think there’s an opportunity for change.

My wife, actually being a much better practical theologian than me, she often would look at me and say, “Do you believe Jesus lives in me?” “Well, yes, I do.” “So do you believe that even though you don’t have faith in me, if you have faith in Jesus and Jesus lives in me, is there a chance that I would change? Not because I’m a good person, but because Jesus Christ has given me his righteousness and he is changing me.” Terribly convicting, thinking, “I have not applied any of the doctrine that I have taught my wife, and now she’s correcting me with my own verses that I gave her because she’s a good practical theologian.”

The truth is when I look at my wife I don’t have any hope in Grace. I don’t look at her and say, “I know deep down you’re a good person – deep down, you’re a wonderful person,” because I know the verses. I look at Grace and I say, “I know that the righteousness of Christ is in you, and my hope and my faith are in Jesus. And Jesus is in you so I have hope for you. But I don’t have hope in you.” I need to nourish and encourage the righteousness of Jesus in my wife, and not be disappointed and frustrated – which is my perennial sin.

Likewise, my wife would tell you I have many flaws. Her job is far more complicated and difficult than mine. I love to argue. I love to debate. That’s why I love this job. I get to fight 1,000 at a time. I love that. (Laughter) It’s a debate. And I look at it like a boxer, like, “Oh, I’m gonna get ‘em! The tampon one, they’ll all throw up!” You know? (Laughter) And so here’s what my wife has learned. My wife has learned not to have faith in Mark, because when she looks at Mark she sees an obstinate, rebellious guy who’s got that fleshly part of him that still likes to be like Adam. And so here’s what my wife has learned: don’t argue with him, don’t fight with him, don’t cuss at him, pray for him. That’s her secret strategic weapon. She’ll say, “Honey, I just need to go pray.” D’oh! (Laughter) And I know what’s gonna happen. She’s gonna go, “Jesus, I know you live in Mark and you’re bigger than Mark. Get him!” (Laughter) Right? And she prays something like that, and then she sics Jesus on me. And her hope isn’t in Mark; her hope is in Jesus, and by God’s grace, Jesus and his righteousness are in Mark. And so she appeals to that, not my endemic fallen, sinful, rebellious identity as Mark, but Jesus Christ and his righteousness that has been imputed to me. And I get convicted of my sin. I feel terrible. I go to her, “Honey, I’m so sorry. I’m a jerk. Were you praying again?” “Yes, I asked Jesus. If he’s in you, I asked him to change you.” “Wow, you have faith in Jesus.” And if it was only her looking at Mark, and not looking through Mark and seeing the righteousness of Christ, divorce would have been certain. And as it is, we’re happily married.

See, this changes everything, even the raising of my kids. I’ve got a six year old son, Zach – real stubborn, like his old man. Real stubborn kid. It doesn’t matter what you tell him, sometimes he’ll just rut up and rebel. And here’s what I’ve learned with Zach: the more I push him, the more I try and coerce him or shove my will on or intimidate him, the more he just gets defiant and endemic in his heart. He’s just a – he’s a stubborn little guy. So here’s what I’ve learned to do with Zachy. I’ll look right at him. “Zachy, are you a Christian boy or a non-Christian boy?” We have this conversation occasionally. He’s six. He is a Christian boy. He’s actually a good theologian. He says, “Daddy, I’m a Christian boy.” And he gets that look, like, “Mmm, I know where this is going.” (Laughter) And I’ll say, “Okay, now you’re disobeying your mom or your dad. Is that coming out of your rebellious nature, or is this coming out of Jesus in you?” He’ll say, “It’s coming out of my rebellious nature. Jesus doesn’t want me to do this.” “Okay, so it’s not between you and Daddy – I love you – but it’s really between you and Jesus. So let’s not argue and fight anymore. Go up to your room, spend some time talking to Jesus, come back down, tell me what he said.” My six year old boy, he does this. He’s actually a good prayer kid. Goes up to his room, shut the door – often slam it. (Laughter) Slam the door, and he’ll talk to Jesus. And sometimes I sneak and I listen outside to double check, and he really is talking to Jesus. And then invariably he comes downstairs, usually crying, looks at me, said, “Daddy, I am a Christian and Jesus does live in me, and I’m sorry that I sinned against you and I won’t do that.” I say, “You know what, Zachy? Jesus is in you and that’s where I get my hope. My faith is in Jesus, and Jesus is in you.”

And so my faith isn’t in Zachy, to tell him, “You’re a good boy. You’re a nice boy. You’re a smart boy. You’re a gifted boy. You’re a talented boy.” Puff him up with pride and self-esteem, but to look at him and say, “You have something better, buddy Zach. You have the righteousness of Jesus in you, buddy. And when you yield to the righteousness of Jesus, I see Jesus come through you.” That’s so much better than self-esteem and pride. That’s so much better than morality and religion. It’s Jesus.

Some of you have lost hope with friends. Some of you keep trying to change your non-Christian friends and family. Don’t try and change them. Until they have the righteousness of Christ, they can’t be righteous people. And if they are righteous people, they’ll just be arrogant about it so you’re not helping. That’s why morality is not what you should push on people. You should share with them the love and the work of Jesus so that they would put their faith in Jesus, that they would give their sin to Jesus, that the righteousness of Jesus would enter into them. And then you could nourish and encourage the righteousness of Jesus and you could see more of Jesus and less of them and you could see Jesus change them.

I had this conversation with a guy recently. His wife was whoring around on him, sleeping with multiple men – their marriage was headed for divorce, and God saved them both in about two weeks. And I said, “Are you gonna leave her?” He said, “I can’t.” I said, “Why?” He said, “I see Jesus in her.” That is where the hope is. He said, “Jesus is changing her heart. Jesus is changing her mind. Jesus is in her, and I believe that we’re gonna make it. And I see Jesus” – he tells me this – “I see Jesus in me, I see Jesus in her, and we’re both changing. We’re gonna make it.” His faith is still in Jesus – not in himself, not in his wife, but they’re both in Christ, Christ is in them. And by faith in Jesus he’s trusting the righteousness of Christ to change them both and to overcome all their unrighteousness, to make them righteous, to give them a new life.

This changes everything. This is the basis for our counseling. This is the basis for our discipleship. This is the basis of our marriage and our parenting and our friendships. This changes everything.

Three things that God has given to nourish the righteousness of Jesus Christ in us, and I’ll close with this. First, God has given Scripture. Jesus puts his righteousness in you – that’s justification. You grow in the righteousness of God, yielding to it, working it – that is sanctification. Scripture is a gift that God gives us. 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is God-breathed, useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in” – what? Righteousness. You want to grow? You say, “Okay, I’m a Christian. I want to grow in righteousness.” Read your Bible. How are you doing at reading your Bible? It’ll train you in righteousness. It’ll show you the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It’ll show you your unrighteousness. It’ll allow you, by God’s empowering grace, to become more righteous like Jesus. How are you doing at reading your Bible? I have this big fear that because we’re a Bible-believing church and I’m a Bible-teaching pastor, that some of you get lazy and leave all the heavy lifting to me and you’re not just reading your Bible. Read your Bible. Read your Bible. Read your Bible. If you don’t have a copy, there’s one out there. Take it, right? Just read the Bible. If you don’t know where to start, start in John and read the Bible. It is how God will train you in righteousness. It’s how God speaks to you, and informs you, and transforms, and renews your mind – through Scripture. We are a Bible-believing church. We’re a Bible-teaching, Bible-memorizing, Bible-reading church. We’re big on Scripture. Read your Bible. Not that you have to, but you get to. Not so that God will love you, but because he already does. Not so that you can earn God’s favor, but because he’s already given it to you through grace.

Second thing that God has given as a gift to help us grow in righteousness: confession and repentance of sin. 1 John 1 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So as you’re living your life, when you sin – and you will as a Christian – you stop, you repent, confess, you give it to Jesus. “Jesus, I have sinned. Please forgive me of my sins and cleanse me of all my unrighteousness. I don’t want to have sin between you and me, Jesus. I want the sin to be removed so that you and I can have intimacy, and friendship, and love. And when I sin, I’m throwing up barrier and separation; please forgive my sin. Thank you for dying for it and please cleanse me from my unrighteousness so that I might be brought back into this position of righteousness where I can continue to live and be more like you, by the grace that you give.”

And the third thing that God gives us to grow in righteousness is the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:4 says, “The righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the sinful nature” – that rebellious, fallen, endemic part of us – “but according to the Holy Spirit.” That the Holy Spirit will lead us and guide us, that the Holy Spirit is more powerful than our endemic nature, that the Holy Spirit is able and willing to humbly serve us and to make us more like Jesus – more righteous.

See, Jesus is righteous; we’re unrighteous. Some of us are real self-righteous with religion and morality. But Jesus died to forgive our unrighteousness and give us his righteousness as we trust in him through faith. And he puts the Bible in our hand, and he says, “Read, and I’ll train you in righteousness. Repent of sin, confess your sin, and I’ll cleanse you from unrighteousness. And I’ll send the Holy Spirit in you, and he’ll lead you and guide you so that you could be righteous by my power, not by your own, for my glory, not your own, for my praise, not your own.” That’s all about Jesus. That’s what it’s all about.

Now is your opportunity to respond. Some of you will become a Christian tonight. You’ll ask Jesus to forgive your sin and give you his righteousness. For all of you who are repentant Christian, you can come take communion, which is remembering Jesus’ body and blood on the cross – he who was righteous, dying for our unrighteousness, to bring us to God. We’ll give of our tithes and offerings so that the work of the good news of Jesus can go out. And then we’re gonna respond with singing and celebration and gladness and joy. Why? Because we are the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ, and that is something to delight in, to rejoice in, to sing about, to celebrate, and to come to God with great gladness and gratitude. That we who are unrighteous have been made righteous, and to answer Job’s great question: “How can an unrighteous person stand before an unrighteous God?”

The answer: Jesus. Jesus Christ. Now you know that. You respond to that, and you should be filled with joy and worship.

Lord Jesus, as we come to you, we thank you that you are righteous. You are good, holy, perfect, wonderful, and glorious. God, we thank you that you originally made us and you intended for us to be righteous. We acknowledge and confess of our own unrighteousness, the nature that we possess from Adam and the life that we live of our own accord. And Jesus, tonight we empty our hands of all of our self-righteousness – our morality, our religion, our attempts to please you in and of ourselves so that you will be impressed by us. And Jesus, as we empty our hands of our filthy self-righteousness, we come to you with empty hands, needing you to give us righteousness as a gift. We thank you that you died on the cross for our unrighteousness, and that you gave us your righteousness. We thank you for the wonderful exchange. We thank you for the Scriptures. We thank you for the gift of repentance. We thank you for the power of the Holy Spirit. We ask that you would cause us to yield to you and to grow by faith in righteousness, that people would see you in us, through us, in spite of us. And that in our relationships with our friends and our family, that our hope would not be in people, but it would be in you. And that, Lord God, we wouldn’t puff people up with pride, appealing to their arrogance and self-righteousness, but instead we would seek to have them trust you, Lord Jesus, and that we would nourish and encourage your righteousness in them so that you might do a good work in spite of them and in spite of us. Jesus, you are altogether good. Amen.