Thomas Thurston - SLAVERY: ANNUAL BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUPPLEMENT (2006)

Your Right-Standing With God

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:17-21).

Any person who is in Christ is a new creature, or a new creation. (The literal Greek says he is a new species of being which never existed before.) He has been completely recreated. Old things are passed away, all things are new, and all things are of Godnot part of God and part of Satan. Some people think that a man is a schizophrenic when he becomes a Christianthat he has both the nature of God and the nature of Satanbut this is not so.

In the new birth, a man's spirit is completely reborn; then it is this man's responsibility to renew his mind to the Word of God and use the Word to take control of his body.

Paul wrote to the believers in Rome, who were born-again, Spirit-filled Christians, and instructed them to renew their minds with the Word (Romans 12:1-2). Their faith was known throughout the world, but they had not learned how to control their minds and bodies with the Word. He wrote to the church at Ephesus along this same line and said, "You have put off the old man and put on the new man, so quit lying and cheating and acting ugly toward one another" (Ephesians 4:24-25). All these people were believers. They had been recreated. They had been made the righteousness of God, but most of them didn't know it!

You Are the Righteousness of God

Second Corinthians 5:21 tells us that God made Jesus, Who knew no sin, to be sin for us

"that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." As believers in Jesus Christ, we are the righteousness of God Himself!

What is righteousness? It is not a "goody-goody" way of acting or something which can be attained. Righteousness is a free gift of God, provided by Jesus at Calvary through the grace of God. I am not referring to our own righteousness.

The Bible says that in the eyes of God "all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags..." (Isaiah 64:6).

However, we have been given the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. Through our traditional thinking, we have confused righteousness with holiness. We think righteousness is the way you act, but this is not true. Holiness is your conductrighteousness is what you are.

The word righteousness translated literally means to be "in right-standing." We have been put in right-standing with God. Jesus is the mediator between God and man. When a man accepts Jesus, he moves into a position of new birth. He enters into the kingdom as God's very own child and a joint heir with Jesus Christ. Consequently, there are certain privileges, rights and freedoms that we have as children of God because we are in right-standing with Him.

We didn't get in right-standing with God by being good and acting right. We got there through faith in Jesus Christ and His redemptive work at Calvary. When we accepted the sacrifice of Jesus and made Him the Lord of our lives, then God accepted us. He had to! God had already accepted His Son's work on the Cross. He judged it as good, glorified Jesus, and set Him at His own right hand.

He called Jesus "God" and inaugurated Him into the highest office in the whole universe. Therefore, the Father is obligated to accept us when we accept Jesus. Our conduct has absolutely nothing to do with it!

"To wit [or to know], that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them..." (2 Corinthians 5:19). This verse is saying that God does not hold our sins and trespasses against us. Very rarely had the whole gospel been preachedonly pieces of it!

We have heard that God will not forgive a sinner until he confesses his sin, but this is not true. God has already provided forgiveness and is not holding our trespasses against us.

This teaching about confession of sin stems from 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us...." However, this letter was written to Christians for the purpose of their maintaining fellowship with God. The Apostle John wrote in 1 John 2:1-2, "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."

John was referring to the sins of a Christian and was instructing his fellow believers to partake of Jesus' advocate ministry.

John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son...." God loved us and Jesus gave Himself for us while we were in sin. God is not holding our trespasses against us, He is calling us to make Jesus our Lord. He accepted us on the basis of Jesus' right-standing and, in turn, made us in right-standing with Him.

The only sin keeping anyone out of the kingdom of God is the sin of rejecting Jesus and what He has provided (John 16:9).

Sin Consciousness

"For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect" (Hebrews 10:1). Under the Levitical Law, an animal must be offered every 12 months to atone for the sins of the people. The word atonement means "to cover." Actually, this word is not found in the Greek New Testament when it refers to the sacrifice of Jesus. The word which we translate as atonement really means "to remit," or to do away with. These sacrifices could not completely do away with sin, they simply covered them for a year. The blood of Jesus did not just cover sin, it remitted sinit did away with sin completely!

With these thoughts in mind, read Hebrews 10:2. "For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins." If the blood of calves and goats had cleansed them of sin, then they would have had no more conscience of sin, or a sin consciousness. This sin consciousness produces defeat and a false sense of humility. It attempts to be humble by defrauding itself and pushing itself back. The Lord did not say, "Deface yourself." He said, "Think of others more highly than you think of yourself." This means that, even when you are standing tall as the righteousness of God, you should elevate your fellow Christian above yourself, making both of you stand tall. When you deface yourself, you make yourself lower than you are. If you asked most Christians, "Are you righteous?" they would say, "Me? No!" They are trying to be humble.

They are afraid God wouldn't like it if they said they were righteous. Actually, they are speaking from the way they feel, the way they have been trained, and from ignorance of God's Word.

This type of sin consciousness has caused us to center on and preach sin instead of righteousness. Actually, we have preached a form of condemnation on ourselves. Romans 8:1 says,

"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." We have carried "sin tags" with us which are stumbling blocks in the growth of a Christian. Every time we start toward the righteousness of God, Satan will jump up in our path and say, Remember the ugly things you've done? Don't expect God to forget all that! Who do you think you are? You're too unworthy to approach God! But the Word says that the blood of Jesus purged our sinsthey no longer existso we should take the Name of Jesus and drive out this sin consciousness.