Righteousness

Cleaned from the live recording. Lightly edited for reading.

*Host: What is righteousness, and is it possible for a human to truly be righteous?*

What righteousness is

Good morning. It's good to be back.

What is righteousness? It means to be declared right before God, to be justified. You're in right standing before Him. We'll unpack that as the program continues.

Is it possible for a human to be righteous? Yes. Truly righteous. I know I'm truly righteous. So I guess you want to know how.

One of the reasons I really felt this month to spend some time with the believers unpacking this is because you'll hear people saying things like, "I'm working on my righteousness. I'm trying to be righteous. All of our righteousness is like filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6). Sometimes I listen to them and look at them and want to know which gospel we're talking about. Because once we have those notions, it means we don't fully grasp the good news, the gospel.

In 2 Corinthians 5:21, let us read that. "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us." Why? "So that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). So God did something.

The legal framework of heaven

The whole gospel is centred on this: the soul that sins shall surely die (Ezekiel 18:4). All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Because Adam sinned, we all sinned in him. So the Bible declares that before Christ, none was righteous (Romans 3:10).

God our Father understood that people stood guilty, condemned before Him. Everyone sinned and fell short. They didn't meet the standard or the requirement of God's justice. God said the soul that sins must surely die. And to satisfy that justice, for us to stand before God and be declared right, justice had to be satisfied. Everyone had to die. So there was a problem.

God set the mark, the benchmark, the standard. Adam, if you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die (Genesis 2:17). And God as a king doesn't go back on His word. We read in Daniel with Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar and those kings: when a king issues a decree, it cannot be withdrawn (Daniel 6:8). The only thing that can happen is it can be modified. But it cannot be withdrawn. God is the king of the universe, over intelligent beings who understand the legal framework of the spiritual world, the legal framework of heaven.

Heaven also operates as a courtroom. We saw that in Daniel as well. The Ancient of Days took His seat. Thrones were set, and the court was seated (Daniel 7:9-10). So everything operates under a legal framework, and the penalty, the wages of sin, the Bible says, is death (Romans 6:23).

So every person born through Adam, every living soul, had a sentence of death against them. And because of that sentence of death, nobody stood in a way that could please God. Even the entire law, as the apostle Paul said in Galatians, was given as a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). The law of itself did not remove sin. The law actually exposed sin. The law helps you to understand, these are the requirements of God, these are the requirements of the law, and you stood guilty.

So every time in the Old Testament you see them offer sacrifice, it was a stopgap. Like an interim judgment, an interim way for them to appease God until the final sacrifice, the true ultimate sacrifice, was made. So if you stand outside of Christ, not just Old Testament believers, if you stand outside of Christ, let me put it that way, you're not righteous. Jesus made it plain when the Jews said, "We are children of Abraham." He said, "No, you're not Abraham's children. You're children of the devil" (John 8:39-44). You have either the nature of Christ or the nature of the antichrist. It's as simple as that.

Lost privileges

Let us go back a little further in the same passage. Many times when we get to 2 Corinthians 5:21, it's so lovely, such a powerful scripture. But let's read from verse 16. "Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer" (2 Corinthians 5:16).

We know He walked the earth. We know He died for us. But that death wasn't just, "Oh, man sinned, God decided there's a punishment for sin, so He died." Under sin, under that state, we lost certain privileges.

If you're a prisoner, you can't walk free on the road. If you're a prisoner, you can't phone your family home all the time. If you're a prisoner, you can't decide, "Hey, I want to watch a movie tonight, a particular type of movie on Netflix or whatever." No. Certain privileges are rescinded.

And even so, when Adam sinned, certain privileges were rescinded. One of the privileges rescinded right away, when we read that whole scenario, was access to the tree of life. From the time he sinned, that access was rescinded. God sent an angel to block access to the tree of life (Genesis 3:24). So we see it's not only that you died. Certain privileges were rescinded. So salvation is not only making us alive again, causing us to be born again. It's having access back to certain privileges.

Just permit me. You just got me going.

A new creature, not a refurbished sinner

We no longer see Jesus after the flesh. Verse 17: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ..." This is what we're talking about. In Christ. Not in some other religion. Not in some other faith. Not in a denomination. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

God didn't just restore you to the position you were once in. That sounds good, especially when we're talking about the doctrine of regeneration. But God didn't just regenerate the old. God made you something new. "The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come." We're a totally different creature.

We need to understand this when we're talking about righteousness. You're not just being declared right, justified to stand before God, as the old person, as the old you. So as I said, I don't want to hear this statement from believers: "I am a sinner saved by grace." If you say you were a sinner saved by grace, I could understand that. But God doesn't see you as a sinner. God doesn't see us as reformed sinners, or refurbished, rehabilitated human beings. He sees us as a totally new type of species. That's something I may pick up next month as we continue from righteousness, because we need to understand this. If anyone be in Christ, the old has passed away.

So when you asked me if anyone could be righteous, I understand from the Word that I'm righteous. When people look at me and say, "I know you," I say, "No, that person died. I can tell you the date of the death and the burial. You're talking to a totally new person."

I know why this creates some problems for Christians. When they look at their lifestyle and they sinned yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or this morning, there seems to be a contradiction. But we'll get to that.

Verse 18: "Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation" (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). So even though you had a past, there was a sentence of death against you, God did not put that on you. Through Christ He removed that, and placed what Christ has made available upon us and in us. Let me stop there for now.

*The co-host speaks on imputation as a credit placed on the account and the debt taken away, on Colossians 3:3 ("your life is hidden with Christ in God"), on righteousness and trust, and on Romans 8:1.*

Are you a Guyanese?

Let me ask this. Are you Guyanese? How do you know that? Because you were born in Guyana, legally documented as a Guyanese citizen. Do you always do things that benefit the nation, the Republic of Guyana? I don't believe so. That doesn't change your nature or who you are legally.

When we understand those things, you get an understanding of righteousness. Either you're born, or you're a naturalised citizen. We were born again into the kingdom of light (Colossians 1:13). And by the process of being born again, we've been granted a certain state. It means you can live in Guyana and operate because you are a legal citizen. When you go certain places you pass easily. You have access to certain things easily because you are a citizen.

We are citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20). Citizens of heaven are righteous by nature through Christ Jesus. That's a privilege given to us. That's the state we are in, and it does not change if you remain in Christ.

*Host: I asked a friend if he was righteous and he said no, our righteousness is as filthy rags. Most Christians don't understand who they are in Christ. Why did Christ's righteousness need to be imputed to us?*

Why righteousness had to be imputed

It needed to be imputed to us because there was nobody on the face of the earth who had the pedigree, the character, of being righteous. Abraham and all of these people were looking toward the cross. They were all awaiting the Messiah, to come in time and do something God had already planned and executed out of time. Christ died before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). So before time, out of time, God had already made provision for our righteousness, for our trespass. But there came a point in time when He sent His Son in the likeness of sinful men to die on their behalf (Romans 8:3).

So why did it have to be imputed? Because man was bankrupt. Simple. You're talking about credit. It wasn't just an overdraft. The Bible says we were under the control of the enemy, in bondage to sin and death. The wages of sin is death, and the gift of God is eternal life (Romans 6:23).

Man on the face of the earth was accumulating. He was getting a wage and he was saving up. But what he was saving up for wasn't a good retirement.

Every lamb, every ram, every bull in the Old Testament, when they came to appease God for sin, they were slaughtered. Like Jesus carrying the cross, carrying the weight of sin, carrying the instrument of His execution upon Him up a hill. That was the life of every human being. The weight of sin was laid upon them, and they were all on an uphill task, just to reach a point in life where they would be executed.

If we look at Genesis 6 and 7, when God looked upon the face of the earth, what did He say? It was just evil, wickedness, every imagination evil (Genesis 6:5). "Why did I make mankind?" I don't want to go into the sons of God and that whole aspect at this time. But it shows us, from Abraham and Isaac going up Mount Moriah with Isaac carrying the wood for the fire (Genesis 22:6), it is all a depiction. There is a weight, a burden, a wage, something we accumulated by virtue of our nature and our union with Adam. There was an execution coming. It didn't matter how far we ran.

God said the wages of sin is death. How can you pay it? How can you balance that wage? You need to have life. No human being had life in themselves. So you needed someone who was not dead to pay that wage. Someone who had life. And that's what Jesus said: the Father has given Him to have life in Himself, and He gives life to whom He will (John 5:21, 26).

So you needed somebody like that, who has life in Him and can give life, which means He can pay into an account that is bankrupt. An account cannot come into credit unless there's somebody, another account, with the required amount to bring it out. We had nobody on the earth who was able to bring us out of debt, to offer life to God in exchange. You couldn't go and say, "I'm going to give my life in exchange for the other person." You're dead too. You're in the same boat. That's why Jesus said, "Let the dead bury their dead" (Luke 9:60). Everybody walking outside of Christ is dead. So there's no way anyone there could have paid the price God required.

*The co-host reads Romans 5:18-19: as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.*

Living on death row

Go back to verse 18. "Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men" (Romans 5:18). What was the trespass? God set a boundary. You can do this, you can do this, but a trespasser will be prosecuted, and the prosecution was death. The day he ate, he died.

Condemnation. Something hanging over you. A death sentence. Every time somebody looked at you, there was a death sentence. You can feel the weight of it, like the cross laid upon Jesus and the wood laid upon Isaac. It depicts somebody waiting on their life to be taken. Like a person on death row.

I was watching a series the other day that showed how they torture some people. Every time they go to execute them, there's a phone call and the sentence is delayed. So there's a waiting period where the person is afraid to die, and the torment is that the weight is hanging over them all the time. They don't know when they'll be executed.

Every human had that weight upon them. That's what the cross depicts. That's what the wood depicts. You carry it every day of your life, knowing one day this very thing you're carrying will be the instrument of your execution. So it's not only the idea that you're going to be killed because you sinned. It's that every day you're carrying a weight. "The time is going to come when I'm going to be judged. I don't know the date. I'm going to be executed, but I don't know when." So all of that person's life they're in fear. Death has power over them (Hebrews 2:15).

So you find people try to do all kinds of things not to die, to prolong life. What they're trying to do is prolong the sentence. But even that in itself is a torture. It still must be paid. So when the Bible talks about Jesus removing the sting of death (1 Corinthians 15:55), imagine you're on death row and you know you have to be killed for your actions. It's certain. But they didn't give you a date. So when they come and handcuff you and take you out today, you don't know if they're taking you to see a lawyer, or taking you to be killed. That torment, over and over and over.

Ministry: freedom from the weight

And we have many persons living like that right now. The enemy is tormenting you. You're afraid to sleep. You're sick in your body. You don't know when it will be your turn. Some of you went to bed last night just praying that you'd wake up this morning, because of illness, because of demonic torment. For some of you it's the torment of suicidal thoughts. You don't know when this thing is going to push you over the edge. For some persons it's various demonic attacks.

I remember the nights when I was afraid to close my eyes, because of the type of dreams, the type of torment. You just don't want to have them anymore.

So we have many persons carrying a weight over their life. Whatever weight it is, whether it's a financial weight, an ancestral curse, a demonic issue, or you're in prison and you're watching this program from prison, whatever weight you're carrying while you look toward a day of reckoning, we say to you today: you can find freedom in Jesus' name.

There are many who have been in prison who still need to walk out their physical sentence. But the spiritual prison they found themselves in, inside that physical prison, Christ was able to set them free. And He's able to do the same thing for you. Whether you're in prison in your mind or in your body, whether it's cancer, Parkinson's disease, dementia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, whatever it is, we speak freedom to you right now in Jesus' name. I declare, as you're watching and hearing my voice, you're finding reprieve. You're finding ease. Make it permanent by accepting Jesus as your Saviour. Accept His righteousness. Accept His freedom. Accept His yoke. For He said His burden is light (Matthew 11:30). That burden you're carrying right now, lay it aside and take His yoke upon you. I'm going to pause here.

*Host: Is righteousness our behaviour or our standing?*

Standing and walk: righteousness and holiness

Very good question. I would say it's our standing. And this comes to the question of the difference between righteousness and holiness. That's why I use the analogy of a citizen.

As a citizen, we are Guyanese. You could be an American, or whatever it is. That's your standing, your nature. But holiness is being set apart for a particular purpose. It carries the idea of sanctification: this is what you're consecrated for.

I ask the question. If I do good things, am I a Guyanese because I do good things? Am I not a Guyanese because I do bad things? No. I can be a terrible Guyanese. So I can be a righteous person who is not living up to his state, his nature.

Holiness, "be holy as your heavenly Father is holy" (1 Peter 1:16), is the idea of putting that into practice. Because I am a Guyanese, I carry myself as a national. You don't see me walking on the flag. You don't hear me bad-talking Guyana, bad-talking the president and the cabinet and the opposition. When you speak, you speak a certain way. You carry yourself a certain way. Your rapport, your posture, your walk, it's a certain way.

So our righteousness, we must walk it out. The process of walking it out is holiness. We are set apart in holiness to do what? Please God. So we do the things that are pleasing to Him.

But if I wake up today and decide, "Hey, I'm going to use some indecent language, I'm going to watch some pornography, I'm going to do this," that doesn't remove your nature. Your righteousness doesn't come from the things you do. It comes from who we are connected to, whose we are. That's why the Bible says work out your salvation (Philippians 2:12). It never said work out your righteousness. We're going to get to some scripture on that just now.

You receive righteousness. It's like salvation. It comes with salvation. It's part of the package that comes with receiving Christ Jesus. When you receive Christ Jesus, you also receive eternal life. Some people are waiting to die to experience eternal life. I'm living it here. There will come a time when this body will change and I'll have an immortal body (1 Corinthians 15:53). This is a temporary housing right now. All these things were made possible when we accepted Jesus Christ. The gift of Christ is the gift of life, the gift of righteousness, the gift of salvation. It's a total package. So you have it.

Are you your father's son?

Are you your father's son? Then his DNA is running in you. Does that change depending on how you behave? No.

Say you wake up this morning and you and your father have one big tussle in the house. He says, "Move out. I don't want you living here anymore." You move to the other house. Whose nature are you carrying? Did your father change? It did not change. You're on bad terms. The relationship, the fellowship, is broken. That's why you have a lot of Christians with a broken relationship, a broken fellowship, with God the Father.

*Host: Last Sunday you spoke about believers who always begin their prayer with "God, forgive me." Can you go deeper into that?*

Daddy, forgive me

Yes. I would feel terrible as a father if every time I wake up in the morning, my children come to my bedroom and say, "Daddy, forgive me. Daddy, forgive me." No smile, no greetings, no jumping in my arms, no playing with my chin, playing with my beard, rubbing my head, "Daddy, how are you doing?" If every time your children meet you it's fear, if every time you go to touch them they're shivering, "Daddy, sorry, sorry, sorry," that's not relationship. That's abuse.

Jesus is not an abusive big brother. Yahweh is not an abusive father. He said, come boldly before My throne (Hebrews 4:16). In the Old Testament they called it the mercy seat. In the New Testament it's called the throne of grace.

Every time you went in, in the Old Testament, you had to shed blood. The high priest had a rope tied on him, and the bells made noise. If there's no movement, he's dead; pull him out, you're the next high priest. God told Moses to bring the children of Israel to the mount so He could talk to them. From the time they saw the smoke and the fire and the thunder, they said, "You go on. You hear what He says and come back and tell us. We ain't going there to die" (Exodus 20:18-19).

That is an Old Testament works relationship, where every time you go before God, you smear blood. If every time you go before God you have to smear blood, it means the work of that blood was temporary. When you get into Hebrews, you see it talking about how we now have an eternal High Priest who made a sacrifice once and for all (Hebrews 9:12; 10:10-12). His blood was shed one time. He's an eternal High Priest.

If every time you have to go and plead the blood, wash yourself with the blood, put on the armour before going to the Father, it means that whatever your faith is resting on is temporary. It means you're looking at a judge and not a father.

When Jesus taught us to pray, He never said, "Judge of all the earth, hear me, accept my prayer, accept my petitions." The Old Testament prophets prayed that way. But Jesus taught us: when you pray, pray like this, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name" (Matthew 6:9). It didn't start with "forgive me."

We need to understand these principles, and we need to get believers out of that. Because the Father loves us with the same love He loved Christ Jesus with, as Jesus said in His own words (John 17:23). John 17 is a powerful chapter, where Jesus prays for the apostles and for those to come.

So it's not the Father's heart and it's not the Father's will. Doctrinally, positionally, there's something we don't understand. Relationally, there's something broken, if we're going to come every morning before God saying, "Lord, forgive me, forgive me for my sins of commission, forgive me for my sins of omission, forgive me for the things I remember and the things I don't remember."

What about coming before God early in the morning and saying, "I love to be in Your presence"? Like David: "I was glad when they said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord" (Psalm 122:1). "When You said, seek My face, my heart said to You, Your face, Lord, I will seek" (Psalm 27:8). When we understand righteousness, we start to understand this elementary principle of the gospel. We'll have that kind of confidence. I can go before the Father. My Father.

Be very careful here. I can go before the Father even though yesterday I stole fried fish, and the day before I went in His wallet and took His money. All He requires is that I make those things right. If I say, "Daddy, I went in your pocket and I took out some money," He may talk to me sternly, whatever it is, but that's over with. God doesn't come back tomorrow and say, "You remember last week when you went in and did this? Remember the week before?" No. The Bible says He chooses to remember our sins no more (Hebrews 8:12). That's what "justified" is. Blotted out. Erased.

Why this foundation now

I know time is going. This is the whole reason I wanted to deal with this topic. There's a move of the Spirit coming in this nation, in Guyana, and I believe we will be a catalyst for this. But I wanted us to lay a foundation, so that when God starts to move and starts to use people powerfully, people won't be puffed up. They won't think it's because of their goodness. They'll understand how gifts operate. And righteousness is a gift.

*The co-host says believers often confess one thing and live another, and what we profess must align with how we walk.*

What you profess, you become. That's why I wanted to change it. If you say all your righteousness is like filthy rags, that's the way you're going to live. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Luke 6:45).

*The co-host connects this to believers who take their own lives while walking under a standard they could never meet, and reads Romans 6:16-18 on being slaves of sin or slaves of righteousness.*

The accuser in the courtroom

So it comes back again to what you see and what you speak. Life and death are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21), and the scripture says to us, choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19).

If you walk around the whole day saying all our righteousness is like filthy rags, that's what you're declaring over your life. The enemy is the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10). He stands in the courtroom of heaven and accuses you, and you're saying he's right. "I agree. I agree."

And your advocate, your lawyer, is saying, "No, you're righteous. You're justified. There is nothing there. What he's bringing up doesn't exist. There's no evidence. He's lying. He's a liar from the beginning" (John 8:44). And you're pleading guilty. You're pleading guilty to evidence that doesn't exist.

So it comes back again to whose voice we are listening to. Who are we listening to?

We either believe that if we sin, not when, if we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus (1 John 2:1), or we don't. We either believe that when we confess our sins, when we repent, and let me say repent, we confess and then change direction, that God is telling the truth (1 John 1:9), or He's a liar. Either God is keeping a record of it, or He has blotted it out by the blood.

Did God really say?

So it comes back to the Genesis predicament, the Genesis problem. The serpent asked Eve, "Did God really say?" (Genesis 3:1). And that's the question he keeps posing to every believer. Did He really say that?

So the issue is not whether God washes us from all unrighteousness. The issue isn't whether God is telling the truth, or whether He has the power to do it. The issue is whether the enemy can get us to doubt it.

This is the issue of righteousness. If he can get us to doubt it, then every time you do something wrong, he brings it up and asks you, "Are you really saved? You're going to pray this morning after what you did last night? You're going to talk to the Father? Who can come into His presence? Didn't you read, clean hands and a pure heart?" (Psalm 24:3-4). And then you do the very thing Adam did. You run from His presence (Genesis 3:8). You stop praying. You stop talking to Him. And gradually your relationship with Him slips away. Not because He didn't make provision for your shortcomings. It's because people constantly believe the lies, the whispers of the enemy.

*Host: My friend still holds that he is a sinner and must always ask forgiveness, because he may slip or sin without knowing it.*

You were dead: past tense

Ephesians chapter 2. Let us read from verse 1. "And you were dead," past tense, "in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience" (Ephesians 2:1-2).

These are things we need to understand. They once walked there, controlled and empowered by a different spirit. And that spirit produced a work in the sons of disobedience. It produced offspring.

Verse 3: "Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others" (Ephesians 2:3). I'm trying to bring out these things. As believers, we once walked in the passion of the flesh. This comes back to control, to whom we yield ourselves, the spirit that is controlling us.

This is the type of language a believer should have. Past tense. Were. Once was. Once had. Even when we were dead. Past tense.

Rich in mercy

Go back to verse 4. "But God, who is rich in mercy" (Ephesians 2:4). Go and tell your friend: God is rich in mercy. He ain't bankrupt. There are no shortcomings. He's rich in mercy, "because of His great love with which He loved us."

That's what I was talking about. If we understand how God loves us, we'll start to operate differently. When you go to pray, when you live, you won't walk around wondering when God is going to punish you. He loves me. He's looking over me so I can have the best future. And because He loves me so much, I love Him too, and I don't want to displease Him. So I'm not focusing on not sinning. I'm focusing on pleasing Him. This is a love relationship.

A wife can be tempted as much as you want. But if you love your spouse, you wouldn't want to go and sleep with another. Not only because it's wrong, but because you know you have to look on the face of that person you love, and you know the heartbreak you'll bring into their life. You can't see them hurt like that.

So a relationship with God is not built upon dos and don'ts. God is love (1 John 4:8). Anyone who does not love is not of God. Love is the eternal thing.

So my Father says to me, "I love you, and I give you a righteous nature. You're righteous. You can come before Me justified, knowing nothing stands against you. And if you do something wrong, you can come and have it erased by the blood of Christ, acknowledging it and asking forgiveness. And when you come to Me and I look at you, I'm going to throw My arms around you. I'm going to love you. I'm going to do My best for you. Because all that is happening in your life is not guided by what you do or don't do. It's guided by My love." And all we are doing as Christians is responding to that love.

This God who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loves you. You who are watching, He loves you with a great love. This is what the apostle Paul would pray many times for the churches: that we could comprehend the height and the depth, the far reach of this love (Ephesians 3:18-19). If we could only comprehend it, we would walk in such a way that we don't want to displease Him.

Made alive and seated with Him

Next verse. We've got to wrap up. "Even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:5). You had been dead. The soul that sins must surely die. God sent His righteous Son, took the debt you had, placed it upon Him, and He took on the penalty of it, for you, for us. That's mercy. That's grace.

So every time people keep saying their righteousness is like filthy rags, they're negating what Christ did. You're making little or nothing of what He did. I want to be very careful here. That's the nature of the spirit of disobedience, the prince of the power of the air, working and speaking.

Verse 6. I want to wrap this up quickly. I'm not giving you guys a chance to talk. "And raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6). Giving you a seat, a place of authority, of reign in His kingdom.

Verse 7: "That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:7). Toward who? Us. In the ages to come, when we look at one another and at our lives and all that we are, everywhere in the universe there will be a display, billboards. We walk as displays of the immeasurable riches of His grace.

This is not just mercy now. This is the imputed, enabling power. Not just to become, but in the ages to come we will have become. We will be in a permanent seat, not waiting for certain things to happen, but the full expression of it. Imagine walking around and people say, "You are like God." You are the righteousness of Him. This is why this foundation is important. When they look at you, they will see God.

That's what Jesus came to do. His death, imputing righteousness, all of these works, is just the beginning of something great. God is making a great family of sons, and Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29).

You get an idea of it in Revelation, when John goes to bow down and worship this being, and he says, "Don't worship me. Worship God. I am one of your fellow servants, of your brethren" (Revelation 19:10; 22:8-9). What did this being look like, that it would cause John, the great apostle, to want to bow down and worship him? The Father is doing something extraordinary. When you look at beings like that, all you can see is the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us, because of what He made us. And the Bible says a time will come when it will be fully revealed. All you can say is, "God was gracious to me, and I can't measure the depth and the weight of it."

By grace, through faith

Verse 8. This is where I wanted to get to. "For by grace you have been saved through faith" (Ephesians 2:8). In that grace is righteousness. "And that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God." Not your own doing.

So if you want to work out His righteousness, tell him he's going to get the wages of it. The Bible says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If he's going to work it out on his own, he's going to get the wages of sin. Instead of waiting to get wages, it's better to receive a gift now.

I hold my peace there for this morning. Over to you guys.

*The co-host closes on transformation, the renewing of the mind, and 2026 as the year of manifestation, confessing, "I am the righteousness of God in Christ." The host thanks the panel.*