What does righteousness mean to you? What does faith mean to you? Does righteousness include faith? Does faith lead to righteousness? Is righteousness something you can achieve in this life? Are you pursuing righteousness? Have you taken time to ponder these questions?
Righteousness can be a contentious topic to discuss. There are many opinions, and all of them are based on one Scripture or another. However, to fully understand righteousness we need to take a larger view of Scripture. We cannot point to one single passage to fully define it.
We know that God is righteous. That is undisputed. The dispute comes when we start talking about people being righteous. We start dissecting it and identifying different forms of righteousness. We may hear someone say we are viewed as righteous through the blood of Jesus, and that is true. We may hear that we cannot attain righteousness on our own, and that is true.
We wrestle with whether we can become righteous during our lifetime or not. John Wesley believed we could. He lived his entire life striving for it. He believed that through our faith and love for God we could become righteous. Not because we are inherently righteous, but because the closer we grow toward God, the closer we come to being righteous. He believed it was possible to grow close enough to become righteous.
Paul tells us that Abraham’s faith was reckoned or credited to him as righteousness. Does that mean we can be credited with righteousness, too? Sure. But we need to understand that Abraham’s faith was not simply belief in God. He put it into action. He got up and left his home country when God told him to do so. He went where God told him and believed what God told would happen would, indeed, happen. He lived his faith out in real life.
I pray we all believe we can become righteous. I pray we seek to be righteous. I pray each one of us will put our faith into action, living it out in our everyday life. Believe you can be righteous. Seek to be righteous. Strengthen your faith. Put your faith into action.
Romans 4:20-22 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.”
Marty Pressey 