God’s righteousness and me
Plead my cause and redeem me;
Give me life according to your promise. Psalm 119:154
Read Romans 3:19—22
Whenever I have tried to prove myself — the whole business of trying to prove myself before God and the watching world — I have been degraded to the status of a mere show-off. I’ve finished up not humbled but humiliated. That’s what the attempt to justify myself ultimately does. I am, and I need to be, finally deflated. My self-righteousness has needed to be pricked like an inflated balloon. But the great thing about God is that God justifies me. It’s his righteousness that does that, his putting-me-right. This is a complete work. It’s all about Jesus. It’s all his doing. It’s all the love he lived, the price he paid, the death he died, the life he won. Now the big thing is, it’s so freeing! I’m as free as a little child, who doesn’t have to prove a thing. I know I belong because I haven’t been able to do anything about it myself. It’s all God’s own doing.
God my Father, I live in your sight. And here I am this very night, loved in your sight. I am loved because your Son has taken me to himself. He has fully paid for all my sin. And as you look upon him, you see me, and you love me! You love me as though I were very, very good, as you looked upon your creation at the very beginning and called it all good.[1] You love me now as though sin had not interrupted our relationship. Your Spirit assures me of this. So, in this free relationship, free to me though so, so costly to you, what would now stop me from living as your child? In the freedom of it!
[1] Genesis 1:31