TSP DAILY DEVOTIONAL
THIS IS THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD
17th August 2020
Dr. Phil Ransom-Bello
KEY SCRIPTURE/MEMORY VERSE: Romans 3:25-26(NKJV)
whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Another way to explain the fact that God demonstrates righteousness on the cross by making us righteous is that the cross is the coming together of separate feelings. The cross is a place of mixed feelings because it is in the cross that you see the love of God but a hatred for sin at the time.
It is on the cross that you see the demonstration of righteousness and justice at the same time.
That is to say, God makes you righteous and at the same time, it doesn’t make Him unrighteous to make someone who doesn’t deserve it, righteous.
In fact, God will be unrighteous not to make you righteous despite the fact that you are undeserving.
Why do I say so? Because He punished Jesus!
And if He punished Jesus, then there’s no reason for Him to punish you again.
So God cannot but make you righteous because your punishment has been borne by another person.
Let’s bring it home using an example- Mr. A stole my money, one million naira to be precise and now he has to pay, Mr. B comes along, gets wind of it and asks for his debt then writes a cheque of one billion dollars as a repayment.
Guess what? If I see Mr. A tomorrow, I will be happy with him because if he didn’t owe me a debt, I wouldn’t get more.
You and I owed God because scripture says the wages of sin is death, right?(Romans 6:23)
You and I were sinners and the payment was death but someone who is worth more than you and I died in our place and now we’ve received more, so much more than if we were the one who died.
So God is righteous in making the sinner righteous and because you know God is completely just, i.e He won’t accept 99% or quarter-to-almost-there, if Jesus died for you and righteousness is credited to you because of what He did on the cross, then God was just in doing that and that’s something to rejoice about.
I’ll say it again- The highest level of the demonstration of the righteousness of God is on the cross.
It is there you see justice and love coming in one place.
The cross is God saying;
“I love the sinner so much but I hate the sin. Therefore, I will punish myself for the sinner to enjoy what he couldn’t get by himself.”
Oh Hallelujah!
Hear me, anyone who makes you feel that the grace of God is weak or foolish hasn’t been to the cross. You cannot come to a revelation of the cross and not see the powerful two-sided expression of both His love and His justice at play.
This is the righteousness of God.
This is how you are made righteous.
What a gift!
REFLECTION
Is my understanding of God’s righteousness a product of the two-sided display of His justice and love on the cross?
DECLARATION
-I believe in the good news of the gospel. That in the giving of Jesus, I am now a beneficiary of God’s grace.
-The gospel is the grace of God. I am thankful for the grace of God.
-I have come into a progressive revelation of all that the grace of God reveals.
-The cross is the proof of God’s love for me.
-The cross is the highest demonstration of the righteousness of God.
-Because the cross happened, I have been made righteous.
-The cross is two-dimensional. Because of the display of both the love of God and justice at sin, God is righteous in making me righteous.
-The dying of Jesus has credited righteousness to my account.
-I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus!
-Thank God for the cross.
HEARING BY THE WORD
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