Are there memories in your life which draw out your emotions more than other things? Perhaps there was the sudden death of a friend when you were young, and, now, any time that person returns to your mind, the tears return to your eyes. Or it might be something wonderful, like that unforgettable vacation you took twelve years ago. There may be things in your life which automatically draw out some sort of raw emotion from your soul. How wonderful it would be if it was your conversion to Christ which stands out above all other things.
We have read these verses so many times recently that perhaps their impact on you has softened just a little. None of the things mentioned here has softened for Paul. It seems to me that these references opened wounds that refused to heal completely. For three decades of his life, here were things which characterized the life of Saul of Tarsus: Like himself, his closest friends had all been circumcised on the eighth day. To him it was important. And he wasn’t just a son of the tribe of Benjamin; he was a “Hebrew of the Hebrews.” He wasn’t merely a child of Abraham; he was a “Pharisee.” And “Pharisee” to him went back to its original meaning – “purity.” As touching the righteousness of the law, he considered himself to be blameless. Were their any women in his life – any girl friends? He may have forsaken the hope of marital joy, in order to be a tool in the hands of the priesthood. And I would guess his parents gave him the resources to become wealthy, but money was nothing to him. For a few years, his primary purpose was to persecute the disciples of that hated Jesus of Nazareth. These few things characterized Saul of Tarsus. They WERE the old Saul, before he became Paul the Apostle.
But then, within a few seconds, out there on the road approaching Damascus, everything that had been important to him was ripped away by the power and sovereign grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Like the blindness that temporarily robbed him of sight, all the glory and light of his previous life became black. Previously, he loved to hate Jesus the Nazarene, but instantly he hated that he used to hate Christ. Instantly, he began to fear, love and worship the One whom had been denying for some time. “And what things I had considered to be my most prized possession, I counted loss for Him. Verily, and I continue to consider all those things loss but for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss everything, and I continue to consider them as filth.”
I wonder if we fully understand the depth of the anguish which Paul’s past precious things had caused him. In some ways he still grieved over them. When mentioned they touched a raw nerve. Again, Paul wrote, “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.”
Here lays my theme for this morning: Paul’s life had been filled with “righteousness.” The righteousness of obedience to the law; the righteousness of a well-disciplined life. The righteousness of the flesh. The righteousness of the scribes and pharisees. The religious righteousness in which only the best of the best could every hope. But he came to admit all of that was worse than garbage, worse than vomit, worse than excrement. The only thing which really matters in the light of eternity is “the righteousness which is God by faith.”
Let’s think about RIGHTEOUSNESS this morning. I’d like you to consider the DEFINITION of righteousness, its IMPORTANCE and its ACQUISITION. We’ll come back to this in a moment, but what Paul tells us in verses 3-8 declares HOW important it is. Paul was willing to sacrifice everything he was and had – in order to be blessed with GOD’S righteousness. The pearl of great price was nothing compared to the value of God’s righteousness.
But first, WHAT exactly IS righteousness?
Despite the fact that this is a huge subject in the Bible, I, for one, have not considered it as well as I should. By huge, I mean that “righteous,” “righteously,” “righteousness” and other related words are found more than 500 time in the King James Bible. Almost exactly 75% of those references are found in the Old Testament. But that still leaves us with 375 references from the lips and pens of Jesus and His Apostles.
Studying the lexicology and etymology of the English word, I was surprised Merriam-Webster’s synonyms. My mind has always – perhaps improperly – thought that “HOLINESS” was a synonym for “righteousness.” Where God says, “Be ye holy, for I am holy,” I’ve often substituted “Be righteous.” And when Paul says, “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord,” I’ve again equated in my mind “holiness” with “righteousness.” But the modern dictionary suggests: “morality,” “virtue,” “goodness,” honesty” “integrity” and “rightness” as synonyms for “righteousness.” To my mind morality is not the same as righteousness, neither is honesty or goodness. But synonyms are not definitions.
W.E. Vine’s “Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words,” begins its definition by saying, “Righteousness is the character or quality of being RIGHT or just.” Then the next sentence adds, “It was formerly spelled ‘RIGHTWISENESS’ which clearly expresses the meaning.” And to that Noah Webster agrees. To be righteous is to be RIGHT. But don’t sinners often argue about what is right? To one person one thing is right, but the next person doesn’t agree. Where can we find the absolute standard of rightness?
We find it in God and His Word. Dozens of scriptures tells us that “God is righteous” – “the Lord is righteous” – “Jehovah is righteous.” God is always right and He always behaves in righteous ways. To discover what is right we only have to look at the Lord. Nehemiah says, “Thou art Jehovah Elohim, who didst choose Abram, and broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gavest him the name of Abraham… and hast performed thy words; for thou are righteous.” David said, “Righteous art thou, O Jehovah, and upright are thy judgments.” Later he added, “the Lord is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.” A different Psalmist said, “The Lord is upright; he is my rock and there is NO unrighteous in him.” Jeremiah says that during the Millennium God’s will be known by the name: “The Lord our righteousness.”
As modern societies change, and sin is sanctified, and wickedness becomes worthiness, righteousness will remain the same. Because it is rooted and grounded in the eternal, unchanging, impeccable God. And for us that means that sin in the days of King David is still sin today. What Paul said was sin in the Corinthians is still sin in us today. God’s law does not change and therefore the transgression of that law is still sin.
So it is at this point where I justify in my mind the conjunction of holiness and righteousness. They are not synonyms of one another, even though I usually think of them as such. “Righteousness” is the condition of being perfectly right. “Holiness” is the expression and application of that condition. I have already give you one, but there are other scriptures which put the two words in the same sentence separating them and yet joining them together with the word “and.” For my own clarification: “Holiness is the practical expression of the condition of righteousness.” God is holy BECAUSE He is righteous. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” And Christians are commanded to be holy because as God’s saints, the Lord has granted to them the condition of righteousness. I will come back to this, but God’s saints are“declared righteous” which is the meaning “justification.” Vine rightly ended his definition by using the word “just.” “Righteousness is the character or quality of being right or just.”
With that under our caps, how IMPORTANT is righteousness?
Paul has told us that the “righteousness which is of God by faith” was more important than any thing in his life. It was more important than everything in his life put together. “Yet doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”
Are there other scriptures which highlight the importance of this righteousness? There are many of them. For example, in the Lord Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, He speaks several times of righteousness. Matthew 5:6 – “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be FILLED.” Paul hungered and thirsted after righteousness, but despite what he thot, it wasn’t God’s righteousness. He admits to having his own righteousness and what other verses call righteous of the flesh or the law. But only those who hunger for God’s righteousness shall be filled with that righteousness – filled for ever. Later in Matthew 5, Christ taught that keeping every principle of the law while breaking any single point, made the keeper/breaker guilty of everything. “For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Paul was one of those Pharisees before He met Christ and was given a new heart. Can any of us say that we are be more righteous than Paul had been? We can’t – and that is just the point. In Matthew 13 the Lord said, “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the RIGHTEOUS shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father…. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.” That scripture makes it pretty clear that only righteous people – people who are righteous like God – will enter the Kingdom of God the Father – and the rest will be cast into Hell. That makes righteousness really important. Psalm 11:7 says, “For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.”
Paul adds to the kingdom theme by saying, “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Remember, Paul had once believed that the Kingdom was all about proper eating and drinking – and the ritualistic washing of hands. To him, a man could NOT enter God’s kingdom without wearing appropriate clothing, and if he had been circumcised. But he came to understand that these external things were not genuine righteousness. The kingdom of God begins with God’s own righteousness. And it produces those things in the citizens of Heaven which are in themselves righteous.
The Apostle John adds to the conversation in his first epistle: “In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil; whosoever doeth NOT righteousness is not of God…” “Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God…” There is not a single child of Adam of can successfully “DO righteousness,” because we are all sinners. But, once a sinner is “justified” – that is – “declared righteous” by the righteous God, then he can DO righteous things. And in that same light, Peter declared before the very non-Pharisee, the Roman soldier, Cornelius, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness is accepted with him.”
So here is the one thing which is absolutely necessary to be accepted by God. There is nothing more important than this: It is not among any of the things Paul listed earlier in Philippians 3. It is not a flawless lineage and genealogy. It is not religious zealousness. It is not blameless in the light of the Ten Commandments or any of the rest of the Jewish law. The thing which is absolutely necessary to be a part of God’s kingdom or to enter God’s glory – is to possess God’s righteousness.
Christ told us in a parable of the separation of two kinds of people, which He described as “sheep” and “goats.” At the end of His lesson, He pointed to the goats and said, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the RIGHTEOUS into life eternal.” The essential criteria for God’s eternal life is perfect righteousness.
But again, the righteousness which is of Heaven – and righteousness of these verses – is called the “righteousness of GOD.” Paul told his friends, “I no longer want to be found by God standing in my OWN righteousness.” For most of his life Paul had boasted of his legal righteousness. There is a righteousness which is of the law and in that Paul was an expert. But when he was driven to the ground with his face in the dirt before the holy God, he knew those righteousnesses in which he had been boasting were useless. No one, in his flesh and efforts, is capable of perfect rightness under the law. “We have all sinned and come short of the law and the glory of God” even in our personal righteousness. ”We are all as an unclean thing, and all our RIGHTEOUSNESSES are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” – Isaiah 64:6. And as Paul said in Romans 8 – “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
My point is this: righteousness is essential to fellowship with the holy God. But – the “righteousness of the flesh” is fleshly, faulty and doomed to utter failure. And the “righteousness of the law” is unattainable by sinful creatures like us.
But there is such a thing as having the RIGHTEOUS of GOD.
Again Paul said, “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the RIGHTEOUSNESS which is of GOD by FAITH.”
It isn’t confined to just one book – but the major theme of the Book of Romans is “justification by FAITH.” And by “justification” the Bible speaks of God’s declaration and imputation of righteousness upon sinners.
Romans 1:16 – “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed (or transferred) from faith to faith; as it is written, the just shall live by faith.”
Romans 3 – “As it is written, there is NONE righteous, no, to one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight… But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifest, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe for there is no difference: For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus… To declare, I say… his righteousness; that he might be just, and the justified of him which BELIEVE in Jesus.”
Chapter 4 – “To him that worketh not, but BELIEVETH on him that justified the ungodly, his FAITH is counted for RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Chapter 5 – “Sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through RIGHTEOUSNESS unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Chapter 10 – “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of GOD’S righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that BELIEVETH.”
I could go on and on, but I’ll stop with another scripture from Romans 10 – Neither you nor I have the righteousness necessary to have eternal fellowship with God. It cannot be found in obedience to the law, even if that were possible. It isn’t to be won through the religious works of our flesh. And yet that necessary righteous IS available.
Romans 10:9 begins by saying, ”The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto RIGHTEOUSNESS; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Again, going back to Paul’s letter to the Philippians… He says that he does not want to stand before God “having my own righteousness which is of the law.” His own fleshly rightness is not right enough for the righteous Judge. But in his case, he now had, “that (righteousness) which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.”
And that, my friend, is set before everyone of us in the good news of the gospel. As the Lord graciously and sovereignly speaks to your heart, listen to Him. You must have righteousness, but you have no righteousness of your own. Christ Jesus, the holy Son of God, died on the cross, making His righteousness available to you. If you will humbly repent before Christ, and put your faith in Him as Lord and Saviour, you too will be “found in him, through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.”