Getting Life Right

[HKHaugan]

Getting Life Right

 Everyone wants to get life right. It’s built into us. But do we realize that it has already been done for us? Paul puts it simply, “This righteousness (being right) is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile (or any distinction we make), for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus (Rom.3:22-24).”

 To start with, this righteousness is new. It’s not what we think is good. It’s what God thinks is good. “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness (Gen.15:6).” We don’t start with ourselves trying to figure out what good things we can do, you know, working at being what you define as good. You’ll never get there. It’s not that it is bad trying to be good. The desire to do good is built into us at birth. Rather it is who you trust to be good that makes the difference.

 It’s not a list of things other people tell you are good. It is personal faith in God who leads you to do good, His good, by trusting Him leading you into every next moment. His will for you and me is faith in Him to guide us in each relational experience. It’s believing Jesus was sent to me and everyone to do something good through us. It is reading the moments we are given in His spiritual prompting. This is what makes righteousness new. Every next moment is new and makes a new demand on us to be spiritually proactive.

 When you look historically at Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, David and all the prophets, they were being obedient to God’s leading every next moment of their lives. If you want to list goodness you have to see it biblically. Hebrews 11 gives a list of people whose lives were always looking forward to what God was telling them to do from one day to the next. They trusted God to do what He wanted through them. When they fell flat, He corrected them. When they repented and got back to Him, He led them on their next steps. Every next encounter, event and situation was new and demanded a decision to believe and be faithful or not. Each of their lives was recorded to show that faith is the nature of God and we, His images, are created to function like Him. Jesus. His Son, came for that purpose; to be an example of what a human being can become in Him.

 All those mentioned in Hebrews were part of God’s plan to enter the human fray Himself. They were forerunners, preparers for the coming of the Messiah, the Righteous One, the Perfect One, the exact image of God, God the Son, taking on a limited human body to live by faith in His every next moment. He would take away the shroud of sin that covered the world. Sin, that subtle self-centeredness that makes us preoccupied with our selves. He would bear the aloneness that sin brings, all its conspiratorial control, fear and tragedy, on the Cross and die to end its power. He did it all through faith in His Father and His will. When He rose by the power of the Holy Spirit the world’s power of self-indulgence was defeated, eternal life given to those who believe and death was neutralized forever.

 But the key to the whole of God’s process was faith and is faith for each of us. Faith is being right. Righteousness was defined not by man but by God. Righteousness was defined as what happens when you believe in Jesus and act with Him in mind. It is dying to the old self and being born to the new life He gives day by day and moment by moment through the Holy Spirit. Being right with God is being right inside and being right in the world is by letting Jesus be right through us. That’s what faith is all about.