God employs strange means to reveal His glory and righteousness among mankind.
Certainly the strangest, is that God’s perfect righteousness is reflected through the testimony of unrighteous sinners.
In this world when you want want to espouse the Glory of something, you use the best models don’t you? I’ve never seen a toothpaste commercial declare their Glory by using people with rotten teeth.
Yet In God’s wisdom, He does just the opposite of the toothpaste commercials. He reveals His Glory through the Gospel and saves sinners who have not just rotten teeth but rotten hearts and He undertakes to make them point to His perfect Glory and righteousness.
No true Christian could ever say ,“ I am the poster boy or girl of righteousness” God accepts me because “I am Good”.
in fact the Gospels very clearly illustrate that it is the broken hearted the “sinners” and the “Poor in spirit” who come into proper relationship to God through the redemption that is in Christ.
A Christian can and should say, “ I am a great sinner and God is a great savior”.
We should make it a practice to never stand in the way of God’s light by pretending to be better than we are. Instead we should be intentionally Stepping aside from taking glory onto ourselves and point to God and behold God who is truly Glorious.
Beware of trying to make people “believe in you” it is a fools venture.
By saying this I mean that God will be seen in our life as we know and trust in Him and as we look to Him and are changing, admitting our weakness and need of Him. There will be fruit of growth toward Christ likeness but only as we trust in Him.
Others as a by-product will see that God is real and will see through us the Glory of God Himself, even though we may appear smaller to those same people because we have stepped out of Hypocrisy into reality. And the reality is we are not righteous according to God’s standard.
Jesus accuses the Pharisees ( A very proud and good works oriented people) of keeping people out of the Kingdom and of refusing to enter into the Kingdom themselves!!!”
The Pharisees did everything to be seen by others as being righteous. They actually did do many “good Deeds” but they blocked the way. Indeed many looked at them and said, “wow I could never be like those people they are very devout and I could never be accepted”
The Pharisee loved to see this kind of reaction because it made them feel artificially secure in their own Righteousness. The more “self- righteous” they became ,the further they went from God and God’s true Glory was darkened as they stood in the way.
Thus the Charge from Jesus in Matthew 23:13
“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.”
As soon as we recognize the true Holy Righteousness of God we will not even dare to think of a “self –righteousness”.
Instead we see what God has provided in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and as we trust only in His righteousness that is given to us by God as a gift through Jesus Christ, God will rightly receive all the Glory due His name as the only righteous one and as a merciful Savior.
It is this relationship based on salvation ,that we both get out of the way and also point to the Way.
If fact we perfectly testify to the truth that Jesus Christ declared when He said. “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but through me”
And none of us who come this way block the righteousness or glory of God from others sight when we confess that we are sinners saved by grace.
The first outward note of our faith is that we no longer wear a mask before God and it then follows (sometimes slowly) that we no longer wear a mask before men.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is Glorious precisely because God Himself is Glorious.
* “In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.
Praise be to Jesus Christ the author and finisher of our faith.
(*In Christ alone- written by Stuart Townsend and Keith Getty)
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