If holiness leads to righteousness, how does obedience fit? It may be easy to think that God focuses on our obedience. This devotion looks at how God was after the righteousness all along.
Nuggets
- God knew before He created us that we would be disobedient.
- When we are disobedient, we have to confess our sins and repent in order to earn God’s forgiveness.
- God was always planning on forgiving us.
- God’s goal has always been being reunited with mankind.
To read a devotion in the What Is Righteousness? series, click on the button below.
What Is the Relationship Between Righteousness and Obedience?
For the past few devotions, we have been looking at righteousness. In the last devotion, we looked at the relationship between righteousness and holiness. In this devotion, we looked at the relationship between righteousness and obedience.
Let's Put It into Context
“Righteousness will be ours if we are careful to follow every one of these commands before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us” (Deut. 6: 25 CSB)
God’s laws and commandments are good. Their purpose was so that we could gain righteousness. Yes, we need salvation, but obedience to the laws is how we transform to be more like God.
The laws and commandments show us the extent of a God’s love for us. They also show us God’s character.
These laws and commandments were established for a reason — for our good. That is why God is called a benevolent God.
No, mankind broke the laws and commandments pretty darn quickly. But God knew that we would.
God Never Had a Plan B
“Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be his through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before him” (Eph. 1: 4 GNT)
God chose us even before He created us. We were to worship Him. He chose us to be saints.
But God knew before He created us that we would be disobedient. If we weren’t going to be disobedient, He wouldn’t have “… already chosen us to be his through our union with Christ …” (Eph. 1: 4 GNT).
If we had been good boys and girls and always been obedient, Christ would not have had to pay the penalty for our sins. We weren’t — He did.
It has always been about obedience and disobedience.
But look at it this way. God was ready for the disobedience.
Oh, yeah. He could have squashed that bug real fast. But He didn’t. He let it play out because He had the plan of salvation set in stone. He was always going to have Jesus redeem us.
It wasn’t based on anything we did — or didn’t do. Remember, not created yet.
And what is our reward? “… so that we would be holy and without fault before him” (Eph. 1: 4 GNT). Being holy produces being righteous.
I had never thought of it this way. “But since we were chosen m (sic) Christ ‘before the foundation of the world,’ let us joy with reverence over the priority of our original nature, and not confound ourselves with any of the products of time. We are clothed upon with temporal nature, but we are not children of time. We are fallen into time, but we are from eternity” (Pulsford).
“Long before the geological eras began, long before the great chaotic age, and long before that first of all the sad changes, namely, the angel fall, God beheld His final human race, perfect in His Son. Whatever we have become through the two great falls, in heaven, and in earth, in Christ Jesus we are the holy children of eternity. Our right home is in our Father’s house, amid the first-born eternal glories” (Pulsford).
Wow! “… we are holy children of eternity.” I always knew about eternity from here on out. I hadn’t realized from creation forward.
Repentance Is Not Optional
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (I Jn. 1: 9 NIV)
So, since God knew — and still knows — we are going to be disobedient, we can skip the repentance part, right?
I mean, repentance not only means expressing sorrow for things we’ve done wrong, but it also means making the commitment to changing ourselves so that we no longer do the wrong things. That means giving up our pet sins.
Wrong. When we are disobedient, we have to confess our sins and repent in order to earn God’s forgiveness.
God has no problem forgiving us when we genuinely ask for forgiveness. But we have to ask and be active in turning away from the sin.
Make no mistake, God knows when we have sinned. He sees and knows everything.
God still makes us ask for forgiveness. It means more to us that way. We don’t grow to think we are entitled.
Forgiveness Is Guaranteed
“He will pray to God, and God will delight in him. That person will see his face with a shout of joy, and God will restore his righteousness to him” (Job 33: 26 CSB)
When we pray and sincerely ask for forgiveness and start obeying God, He will delight in us. Let’s roost a little on God forgiving us. God — in all of His mercy — forgives us when we ask.
Nothing is too big. Nothing is too small. God forgives all of our sins — when we admit that He is Sovereign God.
God was always planning on forgiving us. There is only one thing that we can do that He won’t forgive — not admitting our sins, believing Jesus is our Savior, and confessing He is our Sovereign Lord. Everything else can be forgiven — if we confess and repent.
Because we continue to sin, we have to pray every day for forgiveness. Since we have to choose every day to obey God, we have the opportunity to sin daily. While the initial forgiveness of our sins changes us from spiritually dead to spiritually alive, it isn’t a once and done for subsequent sins.
What is God looking for in repentance? He is looking for us too acknowledge that the sin was against Him. He wants us to be sorry that we committed that sin.
Righteousness Has Always Been the Goal
Look at Job 33: 26 again. “… God will restore his righteousness to him” (Job 33: 26 CSB). Righteousness has always been the goal. God always wanted us restored to holy children of eternity.
Righteousness is a gift from God. We can’t me set apart, perfect, and pure without Him.
We can’t be perfect and pure while we are in these sinful bodies. We still have the capacity to sin.
God’s goal has always been a new heaven and new earth with us having new bodies. His goal has always been being reunited with mankind.
Making the Connections
Do you feel loved? Do you feel special? God did all of this for you and me — for every Tom, Sally, and Elaine.
Doesn’t God know us so well? Some might ask, if righteousness was always the goal, why didn’t He just start with that?
Well, He did. Adam and Eve were the ones to choose unrighteousness. It was their choice.
What? If God is all-powerful, couldn’t He have created people who would be obedient?
But then we wouldn’t know how much God loves us. We wouldn’t know that He would go to this extent to get us back again.
Making the Connections to Self-Discipline
What does God ask from us? Obedience. Love. Worship.
Back in What Is Obedience?, we said obedience was “to hear God’s Word and act accordingly” (Holman Bible Dictionary).
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
Obedience to God’s laws and commandments makes us holy. Holiness brings us righteousness.
We can discipline ourselves — with God’s direction — to to be more obedient. Why do I say this? Because the bottom line is I believe it is a choice.
It is our choice to put ourselves into situations where we may be tempted to not be obedient. We choose to say something, buy something, think something, yada, yada, yada.
No, obedience is not easy. Satan wants us to think we have no say in the matter. But we do — it is called free will.
If we discipline ourselves, it is easier to control our actions and reactions. Booth, Hennessy, and Doyle wrote, “Self- regulatory skills make it easier to sustain attention, suppress emotional and behavioral impulse responses, and ultimately attain long-term goals.”
Resource
Journal of Child and Family Studies (2018) 27:3767–3781
How Do We Apply This?
Ooo, baby. Did you catch that — suppress emotional and behavioral impulse responses. That is a biggy, isn’t it? We react with our emotions full throttle, and our behavior can go way south.
A lot of times, those emotional responses sabotage our desire to obey God. We have to make sure God is in control, not our emotions.
Remember a couple of years ago, there was the whole What Would Jesus Do? movement? We were supposed to insert Jesus into whatever we were facing and determine what His response would be.
That is good advice on two levels. The first level is don’t lead with the emotional response. Catch our breaths, think about it, and then respond.
The second level reminds us to choose obedience. Jesus always obeyed God, just as we are called to do.
If we choose the obedience, we get the holiness and righteousness. It is well worth the choice.
Loving Father. If we have admitted our sins, believed on Jesus as our Redeemer, confessed You as our Sovereign Lord, and obey Your laws and commandments, we will become holy as You are. As we grow our relationships with You, we will become righteous. Our goal is to imitate You. Help us to regulate our emotional and behavioral impulse responses so that, in every situation, we will respond as Jesus would have. Amen.
What do you think?
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