Yeshua’s Perfect Righteousness
Yeshua (Jesus), the Son of Man, was, and always will actually be, the eternal, Living Creative Word, of the one and only Living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! Yes, it’s true; the Perfect, Infinite Word of God became flesh and lived among us! But He was, and is, much, much more than a man. But, to fulfill the task His Father entrusted to Him, He had to choose to abase Himself willingly, and descend to our level of being and operating.
So, when He was acting, as our Covenant Representative in His human form, He limited Himself to experiencing our limitations. Thus He lived by faith, the way we must do. He did everything on our level, as a man. And in that form, He routed Sin and Death and triumphed over the powers of Darkness… and opened the Way for us to share in His total Freedom and Eternal Triumph and Wellbeing:
Philippians 2:5-13
“Have this attitude in yourselves, which also was in Messiah Yeshua, Who, though existing in the form of God, did not consider being equal to God a thing to be grasped. But He emptied Himself—taking on the form of a slave, becoming the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled Himself—becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
“For this reason God highly exalted Him and gave Him The Name that is above every name,that at the Name of Yeshua every knee should bow, in Heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue profess that Yeshua the Messiah is Lord—to the Glory of God the Father.
“Therefore, my loved ones, just as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence—work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For the One working in you is God—both to will and to work for His good pleasure!“( TLV. Amplification and emphasis added.)
Filling In Our Emptiness
Scripture is telling us, that Yeshua lived the only human life that was always in perfect alignment with God’s Perfect Nature! Regardless of the form in which God’s living Word appears, He is God’s Perfect Eternal Image and Likeness! And so, God Himself sent His own living Word to fill in all of our ‘blank spaces’. He became one with us, taking on our nature, to save us all from our corporate and individual state of Sin and to restore and recover to Himself, those of us who will serve as His personal human image and likeness.
In this awesome, utterly unique Blood Covenant way, Almighty God, through His Living Word, is able to become one with us, and is thereby able to fill in all of our human emptiness and inadequacies and cover us all and supply whatever we, in our abysmal corporate and personal spiritual bankruptcy, could never supply for ourselves!
Since He is the Living Word that proceeds from the Heart of God, Yeshua is Absolute Righteousness, Holiness and Perfection, regardless of the form in which God ‘speaks’ His Word to us. The Word is revealed to us… so we can know God, and His Nature, and our own situation in relation to God’s Divine Perfection. This is why the real Gospel, as it is actually revealed in Scripture, is not essentially about man. It is all about God and His Perfection and Glory as revealed through His Living Word… to and through the Word’s New Covenant Jewish and non-Jewish disciples.
Unable to Reflect God’s Image
This means that the Gospel is not essentially about us, because we were created to be God’s image and likeness! In other words, it’s not about the reflection; it’s about the One that originates and emits what we humans are to reflect back to God… His Eternal Living Word! The Word is our Originator and Creator; and we are intended to be His human image and likeness… designed and created to reflect and embody all that He is and what He does! So the Gospel is about God restoring His human image and likeness to Himself.
But now, thanks to Sin, we who are supposed to be God’s image and likeness, are born in a state of radical independence from God! That is a state of ‘living death!’ It is totally unacceptable to God. He is the perfect Source of Life; and we are born dead in Sin. So it is impossible for the living dead who are separated from God to, at the same time, be God’s image and likeness. It won’t work for such people to try to establish diplomatic relations with their alienated Source. They’ll never be able to interact with God as ‘equals’ or ‘peers’, nor will they be equipped to be accurate and authentic reflections of Him, while maintaining their radical independence from Him.
To assume that it’s about fallen, Sin-corrupted man being nice enough to ask God into ‘his life’ is metaphysical absurdity! So what pertains to God and His perfect nature is what He designed and intended for us to reflect back to Him and to share with each other (See Deuteronomy 6:4-9: Leviticus 19:33; Matthew 22:35-40; 1 Corinthians 13).
The Exchanged Life
This means that we are saved – not when we religiously try to alter or reconfigure or ‘improve’ the ways of our original radically independent impulses, passions, urges and instincts, and then try to establish religious diplomatic relations with our Creator. It’s not about saving, fixing or improving ‘my life.’ People that are born dead in Sin have no life! So the true Gospel is about us… admitting our true fallen, Sin-corrupted state, and forsaking our radically independent rebellious existence altogether. It’s about actually exchanging our original Sin-corrupted independent mortal existence, that natural state of Sin-corrupted humanity, that we like to call ‘my life’… for the Sin-less, perfectly righteous, eternal, Spirit-transmitted Resurrection Life and perfect humanity of God’s living Word, Yeshua.
Apart from the Word, who is our Creator, we can’t even exist, much less overcome our Sin state and bestow righteousness upon ourselves! God’s Word must be our Righteousness for we, who are created reflections of His Father’s will, can never have any life or righteousness of our own. Only He can be true Peace, Righteousness, Joy and Union with the Father to us. We only are what He makes us to be, and we only have what He imparts to us! So, apart from Him, we can be and do nothing! (See Matthew 10:32-39; John 15)
Misguided Human Priorities
Righteousness…peace…and joy; those are qualities that radically independent humans crave. But they want to receive them according to their own preferences. They always want to reverse that God-established order. Our natural independent instinct is to try to get joy and peace for ourselves first (as if they were gift packages that come separate and are independent of God). And we want them as soon as possible. And only then…maybe…we’ll be willing to consider the righteousness part…at some later time in the indistinct future.
Nevertheless, Scripture reveals that God requires us to be one with His living Word (Son) first, so that His perfect Righteousness can appear within us and manifest itself through us…even in this life! And once that righteousness requirement is truly taken care of, God promises that we will be fully at peace with Him and with ourselves. And therefore, we will be happy and fulfilled…in that order…righteousness first, and then… peace with God and the joy that comes from being in proper relationship with Him.
A Tragically False Paradigm
Modern ‘homemade’ Gospels highlight how much God loves and wants to bless people. That is true; He does love us. But should we appeal to the natural, humanistic, self-centered viewpoints and assumptions of fallen man with such an unbiblical approach? Will we not be giving them a totally false first impression if we present it in this way:
‘Jesus loves you so much, so why don’t you just ask Him to come into your life?’
That is such a dangerous, potentially misleading approach. First it is not at all Biblical; and second, it equates salvation with the idea of ‘self-improvement.’ How can you ‘improve’ something that is already dead? This ignorance causes people to assume that because God loves them so much, then, they must be okay as they are! But it’s not merely a matter of focusing on ourselves and changing what we do and how we do it. It goes much deeper than what we do. It goes all the way down to what we are… and what Sin has done to mangle our original, inherited human nature!
John 3:3-8
“Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God!”
“Nicodemus *said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ( Emphasis added.)
Exposing a Common False Gospel
We dare not mislead people into assuming that God is here to come into their lives to help them amend and improve the same ‘lives’ they currently have. That will force them to assume that Christianity is a ‘better’ or ‘new and improved’ version of the same old life they started with. That is a totally self-centered, demonically twisted, false gospel. It is false because it requires no immediate repentance and no exodus from our original identity, priorities, ties and lifestyle in this fallen world and its self-adoring, humanistic system. The real Gospel is not about changing ‘my life;’ it’s about forsaking my life entirely and exchanging it for the Resurrection Life, the perfect Humanity, of our risen Lord! We must ‘cross over’, from what we start out to be by our original nature, over to what only God can make us to become, by the Authority of His Living Word! So, notice what the real Gospel is demanding from the first moment of its proclamation:
Matthew 16:24-25
“But when he (John the Immerser) saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
“As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:7-12 Amplification and emphasis added.)
” Then Yeshua said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it!“ (TLV Emphasis added.)
Religion Does Not Reflect God
So the real Gospel isn’t about self-improvement. It’s about death to our state of living death… followed by: receiving and sharing in and reflecting out… our Messiah’s totally righteous, eternal Resurrection Life. So true Salvation begins once the death of ‘my life’ has actually taken place and has been replaced by the resurrected, Spirit-imparted Life of the Lord Yeshua. God gives us a true participation in His Son’s Resurrection Life, in exchange for the existence with which we first began! Most people do not understand this because this is not the way the Gospel is usually presented.
The fact is: as long as we’re sinners, even if we strive to be supremely religious, like Nicodemas, our Sin-corrupted nature drives us to be selfish, self-centered, rebellious, manipulative, controlling, predatory and self-destructive (See Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; John 2:23-25; Romans 3, 7) How can such gross disfigurement and enmity with God ever pass as His true image and likeness? No, this is not what God’s Word revealed. This is what our original nature assumes. We naturally think, act, react and interact out of a natural, perverted, self-glorifying soulish, earthly kind of ‘love.’
The Love of God
The danger with talking to English-speaking people about ‘love’ , is that they automatically assume that God’s love for them is the same kind of self-seeking, ‘tit for tat’ kind of love, a ‘let’s make a deal’ type of arrangement that is so common in the world’s system and so natural to all fallen, forever-needy, human flesh.
But God’s love is completely complete and all-sufficient in itself. Therefore, it is utterly pure and selfless! But to us, such selfless love is completely supernatural and beyond our reach. It is of a completely different order and dimension than anything we encounter from our fellow creatures! God’s nature is Perfect…and Perfection never has any need to change. Only what is imperfect has to change…in order to transform into the Creator’s image and likeness! So God’s Love flows out from His Perfect Nature… the Nature that needs nothing because it is already Complete. And so God’s Love overflows eternally in order to share His Infinite Abundance with all that He has created!
Psalm 50:11-12
“I know every bird of the mountains. Everything moving in the field is Mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you—for the world is Mine and all it contains!”
God’s Love Is Unlike Any Other
So God’s level of love is never to be compared with our ever-needy, natural lust for self-glorification, pleasure, material and social gain, and worldly praise and adulation. God’s ‘wave length’ is immeasurably other than the wave-length sinners naturally occupy. The world system operates in a ‘let’s make a deal’ mode.
But God doesn’t make deals with Sin-full worldly flesh, no matter how religious or cosmetically appealing it may appear to our eyes (See Genesis 4:4-8). God says that to be a friend to the world and its system is to be His enemy by default! (James 4:3-4) So we have to depend on God for our re-creation or regeneration just as much as we have to depend on Him for our original creation and ongoing daily sustenance. We are not originators…we are only reflectors of the Originator. And so, as long as we try to be ‘as God,’ God will demand that we ‘repent, and declare total bankruptcy, instead of continually assuming that we will be able to fix ourselves and ‘improve.’
God’s love is Infinitely Perfect, Just, Holy and Righteous! He is intent on delivering and saving sinners from themselves and from the world and its man-centered religious systems and ‘business deal’ kinds of ‘love.’ Notice that Yeshua and His apostles didn’t preach about God’s love in public. They focused on God’s awesome holiness, righteous judgment and just punishment against Sin and our need to repent of what we are, compared to Him. They highlighted the eternal requirements of God’s changeless holy, perfect nature and sinful man’s need to be saved from the fatal wounding and disfigurement the Serpent and Sin caused in our human essence.
God’s Love in the Bible
According to one well-respected Bible teacher, David Pawson, to whom I am indebted for his Biblical research and the following insights, there are 35,000 verses in the Bible. Only about 1,000 mention God’s Love. In Genesis – there is no mention of it. Exodus – there’s one verse. Leviticus – no mention. Numbers – no mention. Deuteronomy – one paragraph. Joshua – no mention. Judges – no mention. Isaiah – one verse. Jeremiah – one verse. Hosea, a minor prophet does discuss God’s love.
In Matthew, Mark, Luke and Acts – we see no emphasis on God’s love for man. And despite the great popularity of John 3:16, that verse is not articulating the heart or essential core of the Gospel of Salvation. What Yeshua was really stressing to Nicodemas is found in the verses that came immediately after verse 16. We will examine them a little later.
Pop religion talks in ‘New Agey’ terms about the ‘unconditional’ love of God. It speaks of His love in a Universalism sense. But if God’s love is really ‘unconditional’ in the way many Hellenized, humanistic Western people assume, the Gospel of Salvation is based on man’s current needs and their satisfaction, rather than being based on God’s perfect, righteous nature. In the pop Gospel there is no need for God to judge us, nor is there a need to consider Sin and what it is or eternal separation from God in what Scripture calls Hell.
Warnings of Hell
But of course Yeshua warned us about Hell more than anyone else in the Bible! Therefore, God, in His Perfection, according to the perfect standards of righteousness that flow out of His perfect, changeless nature as revealed in the Bible, is most definitely telling us that our salvation is based on certain conditions and requirements that must be met, and so therefore, God is most definitely ‘Judgmental!’
What Kind of Love?
David Pawson points out that in Greek there are 4 words for love:
- Epithumeo – Addictive, lustful kind of love.
- Eros – love of attraction as in male/female attraction.
- Phileo – love of affection, the love of friends and brothers.
- Agapeo – selfless love that gets into action on behalf of the beloved…it acts out of compassion, regardless of cost, to meet the present need of another. Agape is the word used for God’s love and it always acts in accord with God’s perfect righteousness. Perfectly truthful and just in nature and it never changes. It is Righteousness that loves and always produces an increase of righteousness.
But English only has one word: ‘love.’ That’s confusing. The idea of love can be grossly cheapened and blurred by such verbal poverty. In our culture, people ‘love’ their spouses and children. But they also ‘love’ their mistresses, boyfriends, dogs, cats, peanut butter, hockey, football and skateboarding. They love certain TV shows and hobbies. They love blondes, brunettes, redheads, cars, pizza, action movies, etc., etc. And, oh yes, they love God too.
But what exactly does all that mean? What are we to understand about God when people tell us that He loves us so much that all we have to do to be saved once and for all, is to say a ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ or entertain warm, fuzzy, snuggly thoughts, or be a ‘nice person?’ Is that the perfect righteous love of a holy, perfect, righteous God? Or is it the ‘look the other way’ permissiveness you get from lazy or corrupt law enforcement officials or ‘anything goes’ doting grandmothers?
Public Proclamations of Love?
Yeshua didn’t talk about God’s love in public. Perhaps this was in keeping with what He told His disciples in Matthew 7:6: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces!” (See also Jeremiah 17:9-10; John 2:23-25)
Although He did not speak of God’s Love in public proclamations of the Gospel, Yeshua did teach His disciples about God’s love in private. Scripture emphasizes God’s command to love and forgive each other, out of love for Him. We are to give to others the same love we first received from the Lord who loved and forgave us (Cf. Luke 6:20-49). But such supernatural love is beyond the reach of fallen human flesh. Natural, self-adoring humans, because of their self-focus and innate selfishness and treachery and fickleness, cannot be trusted! Therefore, they are basically unlovable because they are selfishly inconsiderate, and desire wickedness. They are changeable and predatory and manipulative and controlling by nature. So, not only are they unlovable in themselves, but they are incapable of giving the supernatural love that is natural to Almighty God.
Crossing The Chasm
God, through His beloved Son, is even willing to die on behalf of such people, even when they are His virulent enemies! He freely offered Himself for their sake, in order to save them from themselves! But we cannot, and will not receive this awesome Love… unless God first softens our hearts and empowers us to repent of our innate Self-life. So let’s ponder once again this awesome warning that our Lord gave to His disciples:
Matthew 16:24-25
“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Emphasis added.)
God’s Love can only come into us after we’ve submitted to the initiatives and Authority of God’s Word. And once we submit, He takes us across the infinite chasm that separates us from the Kingdom of God. He takes us to the Resurrection side of the Cross and gives us the right to abide there with our Messiah! Such perfect love is not natural to fallen, Sin-adoring flesh! So, when that love is seen to be clearly coming out of us, it is an unmistakable sign that God Himself is finally legally free to live and manifest the Fruits of His Perfect Finished Works of Redemption from within our yielded (crucified) flesh!
Not For Sinners
God’s selfless kind of love, when seen operating within us, is the Fruit of true supernatural Salvation and Regeneration! It is the Fruit that proves we have a brand new life and Heavenly nature now operating within us. God’s Love is the manifest proof that must be flowing out of us. It is the necessary evidence that proves conclusively that the Spirit of God is free to transmit the perfect Humanity of our risen Messiah into us and through us!
So Salvation and the love it makes possible, are not for sinners! They are for those who have repented of their original state and have allowed themselves to be joined to the atoning death of our Messiah. We must first die in and with God’s living Word made flesh, and be raised up with Him. And only after that, can the nature, character and disposition of God’s Living Word be free to operate within us and prove that we are no longer radically independent agents, but are now one with God, and serving as His image and likeness.
God’s perfect, self-less love is not natural to sinners. To them it is always supernatural and beyond their reach. They must first repent of being decapitated from their true Head, the living Word of God! Then once they’re truly attached to Him… His Life’s Perfect Righteousness is then free to flow into them and produce its awesome Fruit!
So What Should We Tell The World About God?
Scripture emphasizes God’s Perfection and Righteous Holiness. The good news focuses on the righteousness that flows out of God’s perfect changeless nature. When we see God’s Righteousness, and realize that everything He does must be according to the Perfection of His nature, we have a right view of God and, therefore, we also get a right view of ourselves and our true Sin-corrupted condition. We see what the real issue is between God and us… and what has to be done about it: “He who has found his (decapitated, radically independent) life will lose it, and he who has lost his (decapitated) life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:39 Amplification and emphasis added.)
Genesis 2:17
“…but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die!” (So we are all conceived and born into a state of living death. That is the decapitated nature we inherit from the First Adam.)
Genesis 6:5-8
“Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The LORD said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.’ But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.”
Romans 1:16-19
“…I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the Righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous man shall live by faith.’ For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the Truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.” (Emphasis added.)
Romans 3:9-18
“…for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under Sin; as it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one! Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.’” (Emphasis added)
Everything God does is PERFECT, TRUE and RIGHT! The negative side of that is: God cannot do anything imperfect, false or wrong. He is absolute Perfection. Perfection never changes; imperfection must change. God will never deceive, betray or break a promise or violate His Nature, or go back on His Word, or betray His own Perfect Standards. He never misleads, cheats or cuts corners. His Perfect Holiness never winks at or ignores Sin. He must deal with every speck of it…out of His Perfection! But what God never does…all fallen humans do regularly!
Our Bankrupt State
So the difference between God’s nature and our fallen nature reveals the real issue of the Gospel – the issue is our true bankrupt state before our holy and perfectly righteous God. What chance do we have when we know God does everything according to His perfect nature…which includes having to deal with us out of His perfect Justice, all-seeing flawless Knowledge and His unchanging Truth and the infinite Holiness of His perfectly perfect laws and standards? What could we possibly do or manipulate that would enable us to raise ourselves up to such humanly impossible heights and standards? The very fact that our original nature is conceived in Adam’s Sin-corruption and is dead to God and utterly imperfect, condemns us immediately!
When we know the real Truth, we’re better able to understand and deal with questions people ask, such as, ‘Why did my child have to die?
We can deal with such issues from a deeper, wiser, level that takes our inherent mortality into account. I say this because when we know what the real issues are in the sight of God’s Truth and Reality, the real question becomes: ‘Since we are already born in a dying state, thanks to Sin, what can we do to escape our inevitable fate of disintegration, destruction, death and decomposition?’
When people are hurting and suffering because they suffer horrendous losses, they can’t help but feel rage and outrage. They know instinctively that we were not made for this. We were not designed to be suffering, losing victims of random circumstances and the evil intentions of other creatures. We were made for Life… Eternal Life… and Everlasting Joy and Fulfillment and Wellbeing!
A False Paradigm
So, when we are deprived of those things, we are outraged and shocked and we know that something is dreadfully wrong. And when humans grieve and express outrage, that is perfectly understandable.
But it doesn’t help at all when we view what is happening to us from the perspectives given by a completely false paradigm! When we are caught up in that, we are not able to see Reality as it truly is; nor are we able to ask the right questions! The question is not, “Why does God cause, or allow bad things to happen to good people?” The question is, “Why do bad things happen to people who have been corrupted by Sin and who have death already at work within them, from the moment they are conceived?” That is the real question!
The Truth is this: none of us is equipped to answer such ‘Why did this have to happen’ types of questions with comprehensive accuracy and precision! Fallen humans are not equipped, mentally or educationally, to be able to know and understand the enormous array of causes and factors that are involved in the multiple layers of Creation and how they are connected to each other and how one thing affects everything else in the universe. That is much too big and vast and deep of a subject for us to comprehend and explain adequately. In fact, unless we know the True Gospel, we do not have a clue about the powers of Darkness and how maliciously they have torn into the human race and have managed to steal our birthright and mangle our human nature beyond recognition!
Unfathomable Complexity
So, if we don’t even know what we are, and what our true state actually is… we certainly are in no shape to be able to fathom the complexity that exists in just one microscopic amoeba! There are in excess of two trillion separate things going on in each one of them per second! How much more is going on in creatures that are much more complex, that we can actually see and touch and hear?
So obviously we can’t know all the awesome interconnected workings of the vast universe and all the interactive laws and workings of Creation’s echelons. We can only know a tiny part of all that is involved in the interconnected workings of every level and stratum of Creation. But God, who designed and created all of these things, is operating out of His Infinite Omniscience! Therefore, His ways are most definitely not our ways, nor are His thoughts our thoughts. (See Isaiah 55.) So, the truth is, we are incapable of explaining the vastness of a cosmos, most of which we can’t even perceive, much less understand and explain it in ways that would make sense to our Sin-corrupted, highly limited perceptions and thought patterns! That truly is a task that only Almighty God would be capable of doing.
But God has revealed that His nature and character are perfect; and, even if many demonic angels and human beings refuse to believe and accept that fact, the absolute objective Truth of what has been revealed to us stands forever. So does the Truth concerning our original nature. Despite Humanism’s self-conferred sense of righteousness and completeness, we are all Sin-corrupted and mortal. Everything in our time and space dimension is fleeting and temporary. But God has assured those who believe and obey His Word, that they can rest, in the assurance that whatever He does in anything… even if it is incomprehensible to us in our highly-limited current state… whatever He says and does and allows, is always going to be perfectly and eternally RIGHTEOUS, AND LOVING AND GOOD, AND JUST!
Evil Does Not Originate From God
This is because His nature is unique. God never does anything wrong, evil, wicked or malicious. He loves what He has created, and will never do anything to harm it or put it at a disadvantage! He means it nothing but GOOD!
Therefore, we can know for sure that He is not the originator of any evil whatsoever! Sin is the culprit. Rebellion and disobedience to God’s Living Word is at fault. And, no matter how much damage that has done to us, and no matter how persistently the powers of Darkness try to defame our Creator, we can know that He means to do nothing but the very best for us. He always acts out of His changeless, perfect, righteous Love nature. Everything about Him is always – PERFECTION! (Cf. Deuteronomy 32:4; Leviticus 22:21; 1 Chronicles 29:18-19; Romans 12:21; Matthew 5:43-48.)
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it!” (Isaiah 55:8-11)
We Alone Are Unable To Fulfill God’s Will
Beloved, how could we limited beings comprehend our transcendent God, or fulfill His overwhelmingly vast Plan for His Creation, or satisfy His infinitely Perfect Standards of Righteousness, Truth and Justice? God is telling us with heart-piercing clarity that He will never depend upon us to fulfill His will or His Plan and purposes in our own strength and by our limited devices! He’s telling us that He relies only on His own Perfect Living Word to do whatever must be done on our behalf and thus, the Word will be sent to act in our stead… and to cover our shameful nakedness, at a level that is utterly, eternally, PERFECT!
God’s Perfection overcomes our limited, temporary evil with His Infinite, Changeless and Perfect Good! This is always true, even when we can’t figure it out or comprehend or explain it to ourselves. So, if God created us to be His image and likeness, we are designed and intended to enjoy God’s Eternal Perfection with Him, and to reflect it back out to whatever is around us, at all times! With God, this is a changeless fact, an eternal requirement… and a totally unmerited Gift!
Therefore, we can know, from what has been revealed to us in God’s written Word, that Sin is the thing that kills and devastates everything! Sin killed us from the moment that our first parents severed themselves from their union with the Living Word of God. The Word created and sustained them. So when they rejected Him and chose to follow the lies of the Serpent… the entire human race died with them!
God Is The Source Of All Life
So… God is not the one who kills us or our children, or any one of us! God is the Source of all Life! It was His desire and idea to bring us all into being in the first place! He doesn’t end life! It is His Nature to gives birth to life and insure its sustenance! So it is egregiously wrong and unjust to accuse Him of being the cause of the destruction, decay and death that afflicts His beloved Creation. It is the Sin of free-willed demonic and human creatures that has caused all of this!
Because of the Sin of our first parents and the children that came from their union, we and our children were conceived and born in the state of Adam’s Sin. Therefore, we’re already ‘born dead’! And God is the one who sent His Living Word to take our Death and Destruction upon Himself… so that He could free us from all of that… and restore His Eternal Life and Wellbeing to us in exchange! So if you want to know who is to blame for the evil that is devastating our world, blame the real culprit. God is not to blame! The one truly responsible for hurting, maiming, robbing and killing human beings… is the Serpent, the Father of Lies. He, and all of the creatures that he has managed to deceive and entrance and manipulate with his lies, is the real enemy and he is to blame for devastating and breaking human hearts!
The Changeless Laws of Creation
We live in a moral universe that is not indifferent to right and wrong. It operates according to God’s nature and His laws of Creation. That’s why when Jesus prayed, He didn’t say ‘Loving Father’; He said ‘Righteous Father’ (John 17:25). We get a completely different outlook when we see God this way. Nothing can compare to Him. And yet, He created us to be His image and likeness!
So because God warns us that we have fallen far below the ‘image and likeness of God’ standard, He must also warn us that the changeless laws of Creation that govern His universe will catch up with all of us, sooner or later. Why is that? It’s because God is perfectly righteous, holy and pure and perfectly just. He must judge and punish every speck of what is evil and unrighteous…every thought, word and deed, action, reaction and interaction. He must deal with all of it.
It is obviously clear to us that the laws of physics that our Creator established are never going to deviate or change. And the same is true of His moral laws. They too remain ever constant. It matters not if some of God’s creatures choose to disagree with the laws that govern gravity or entropy or electricity! Those laws will remain in effect nevertheless! They apply equally to one and all, without exception. And it matters not if we like or want God’s Word to govern us, or not; God will have the last Word nevertheless, because His Truth will always remain in effect!
Nothing Is Acceptable But Perfect Righteousness
So too is it with God’s moral laws. Every speck of what is sinful and wrong must and will be punished and barred from God’s Righteous, Perfect Presence! No one will be able to ‘get away with’ anything! Every sin of omission or commission must and will be atoned for and made right, in one way or another! God is perfect and He must judge according to His Perfection. And our offenses, even the most minute particle, must be dealt with and redeemed PERECTLY!
So, either we, in our abysmal personal bankruptcy and inability will choose to try to answer to God for our own transgressions and imperfections… or… we will abide under the Covering that God provided for us. The one who is here to cover us is our Messiah, Yeshua, the Perfect, Sin-less, Lamb of God. If you put your faith, hope and trust in Him, Yeshua will be your Perfect Justification and Redemption in the sight of God… and you will most certainly pass His Judgment! But if you dare to try to stand before God on your own merits… you will not stand a chance of passing!
Already Accomplished
Whatever God does is done in and from His Perfect Wisdom, Eternal Truth and Infinite Justice! And that is why only our Messiah, God’s living Word made flesh, has the Righteous Authority and Ability to recreate and restore us. Only He can remove all Sin and stain and impurity from us. And He already has done whatever will be necessary to accomplish this for each one of us. It is finished! He has already made all things right in the sight of God in our name! And all that remains now, is for each of us to believe, trust, embrace and submit to… HIM, so He can apply to us personally, the wonders of what He has already accomplished!
MORALLY AND SPIRITUALLY BANKRUPT
But apart from Him, we are exposed and shown to be morally broken and spiritually bankrupt and unable to atone or escape guilt and condemnation under God’s perfect Law. So if we do not come to God’s beloved Son, the Word, to be our Covering… we will not be redeemed, and the Law will automatically expose our shameful nakedness and condemn us! And this is why our fallen flesh NEVER has anything to boast, crow or strut about.
People may deny that God exists, or that what He says is true. But they are not the creators or lords of the universe. Therefore no creature ever has any authoritative ‘right’ to ‘edit’ what our Creator says or to try to change His Reality and Truth around to mean what they want them to mean or to change into what they would do and say and choose, if it were possible for them to take His place. No creature will ever take the place of Almighty God! This is what He has revealed in His written Word…
Isaiah 41:21-24
“Present your case,” the Lord says. “Bring forward your strong arguments,” the King of Jacob says. Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place; as for the former events, declare what they were, that we may consider them and know their outcome. Or announce to us what is coming; declare the things that are going to come afterward, that we may know that you are gods; indeed, do good or evil, that we may anxiously look about us and fear together.
“Behold, you are of no account, and your work amounts to nothing; he who chooses you is an abomination!” (Emphasis added.)
But Now Comes The Good News!
Because God is utterly Perfect…by that reason He is also Perfectly Gracious, Merciful and Tenderly Compassionate! If He only dealt with us as we deserve, none of us would have a chance! But in His Perfect Wisdom and Mercy…He knew our past, present and future before we were created! He knew that Sin would render us spiritually bankrupt, mortal and helpless. And He knew our limitations and inability. So, even before Creation happened, it was always in His mind and heart to overcome our evil with His Infinite Good!
Therefore, He commissioned His perfect, eternal living Word…Yeshua, to become one of us so He could act as our Covenant Representative, Kinsman Redeemer, Perfect atoning Sacrifice and Eternal High Priest. God’s Blood Covenant pattern enables God to deal with Yeshua as if He were us, with perfect legality, Truth, and Justice. Yeshua lived and interacted with His Father – in our name – as ‘The Son of Man.’
And because He willingly identified and became one with us, to represent us, God did not spare His own beloved Son. He judged Him and dealt with all of our Sin that He took upon Himself. Thus this is how God covers our ‘nakedness.’ He deals with all of our Sin completely, according to His perfect Justice, through our perfectly righteous, holy, Sin-less Substitute sacrificial Sacrifice, Yeshua, The Perfect Lamb of God. He identified with us, so completely, that He was able to represent us perfectly on the Cross. So His atoning death was also our corporate execution. He embraced Death in our name! Thus He Perfectly satisfied God’s Perfect Justice!
Our Covenant Representative
So, once we believe and accept Him as our Covenant Representative and submit to His terms, our state of living death, and the Sin, guilt and condemnation that came with it, all dies with our Messiah! His Death takes all of that away from us and thus there’s nothing left of our original state and fallen nature for the coils of the Serpent to continue to legally dominate and crush in us and keep squeezing us to death. The death of our Sin and its penalty of living Death, sets us free entirely. And then God can begin to reveal and impart Yeshua’s perfect obedience, faith, love, compassion and righteous human nature from within those of us who put our faith and trust in Him and what He did on our behalf.
By the end of this fallen world’s allotted course, this Salvation/Redemption/Restoration process will be complete. God will have created for the redeemed a brand new Sin-free Heaven and Earth and new, glorified, Sin-less, eternal bodies for His own…and there will be absolutely no evil, temptation, unrighteousness, decay or death attached to us from then on. We will live and operate in our new glorified bodies in God’s Perfection and Righteousness forever. We will once again be God’s true, perfect, image and likeness. That’s the Good News of the true Gospel as God has revealed it to us in Scripture.
Choosing Sin Over Righteousness
But sadly, Sin-full people continue to disrespect God – they ‘refashion’ or ‘morph’ His Word and its revealed Truth and Reality to suit themselves. They choose the temporary, fleeting pleasures of Sin over God’s unchanging eternal standards of Righteousness! Giving into the demonic allurements to strive to live radically independent lives and pursue alternative agendas, they ignore and reject God and His Word…and continue to do as they think best. Such people back away from God and keep Him at a distance. They choose to remain in the Darkness that comes when you are ‘decapitated’ from God’s Word. They think the Darkness will prevent their deeds from being exposed.
So they gravitate to texts like John 3:16. But they avoid like the plague, the real Gospel that the prophets and the Messiah and His apostles proclaimed. As we said earlier, we will go beyond John 3:16 to see what the real issue of the real Gospel is all about:
John 3:17-21
“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the Name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the Darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the Truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God!” (Emphasis added.)
To Whom Are We Comparing Ourselves?
Worldly people remain ‘Head-less’ and do not believe they need redemption. They compare themselves to each other. Each one considers himself to be ‘a good person’ – better than most. Therefore, they see no need for a personal Redeemer.
But God compares all of us to Himself and His perfect standards! And that exposes and devastates us all…just as Isaiah and Saul of Tarsus and the Apostle John were devastated when they received a glimpse of His Presence (Cf. Isaiah 6; Acts 9; Revelation 1). As soon as the Living Word of God appeared to them, they saw the Truth of His perfect selfless love – The Lamb as slain…and how far above and beyond us His Love Nature and Standards of Righteousness really are. The Truth about God’s Perfect Love is His Perfect Righteousness; and it exposes our sinful self-adoring corruption and devastates and destroys our delusions of self-righteous ‘goodness and sufficiency’.
Freedom
But the Truth concerning all of this also sets us free! It disentangles us from all the satanic deceptions that separate us from God and drive us to take matters into our own hands. When we see the Truth, we’re freed from our slavery to self-deception and are then forced to declare spiritual bankruptcy. Then we can cry out to God for His Mercy. And then, He is legally free to impart Yeshua’s Perfect Righteousness to us and saves us, according to His eternal Blood Covenant pattern.
That can’t happen unless we hear the Truth, truthfully. The Truth must pierce and penetrate our granite-hard hearts with the realization that in Adam, we all died! In that dead state into which we are all conceived, we have no righteousness in ourselves, nor can we achieve it by anything we do, or try to stop doing, by our dead, ‘decapitated,’ soulish, self-driven works and efforts.
One Source for True Righteousness
Only God, through His Gospel, as it is applied to us through our child-like faith, can be our Righteousness. Only He can impart His Life, Righteousness, Purity, Perfection and Rest to all men. And He does it in and through Yeshua, our True Head. That’s why we must exchange our worldly Sin-corrupted, independent, living death life for the eternal Life of God’s holy living Word. The Word made flesh is our only Salvation and Covering and Righteousness. What our religious human efforts to keep the Law cannot do…The living Word of God did!”
We can’t make ourselves or others to be good; but God can; and He has…through His Son and His Finished Work of Redemption. He transforms repentant people into His image and likeness, always and only on His terms. And this is what God yearns to apply to each one of us and continually calls to each human heart to come to Him, while there is still time for them to repent and be saved.
Deep inside, we all wish we were better persons. We regret what we’ve done and wish we would have done what we failed to do. We want to be good but we know we’re far from perfect. That’s why we need to hear the real Gospel, the Good News about true Righteousness. By God’s perfect mercy, WE CAN BE GOOD! Because He will give us HIS Goodness… when we come to Him just as we are… ON HIS TERMS! What He gives us in Christ, when we put all of our faith, hope and trust in Him and His Perfect Finished Work, will most definitely cover us and we will most certainly pass the awesome Judgment of the living God!
Not Good Enough
It’s easier to preach this Gospel to people in moral gutters and dens of iniquity than it is in many synagogues, mosques, ashrams, churches and highly-intellectualized academic settings. Why is that true? It’s true because sinners readily admit they’re sinners and that they desperately need a Savior to come to their rescue and cover their nakedness.
But self-righteous, ego-centric intellectual and religious people, on the other hand, labor under demonic delusions of self-righteousness. They judge themselves to be better than most. Therefore they conclude they’re able to become ‘good enough’ and achieve some kind of ‘special status’, because of their natural origins or personal accomplishments or because they belong to certain religious organizations, or because of the theologies with which they agree, or because of the assumed value of the religious works they do.
But they do not know the living God as He really is. Instead, they put faith in the false gods of humanism and false religion and ethnic superiority or their religious creeds and rituals and man-made organizations and traditions into which they are born or enrolled. Others put faith in some decision they once made, or a prayer for salvation they decided to say. In that case, they put faith in something created…something they decided to do.
God as He Really Is – Not as We Think He Is
But when anyone receives a glimpse of God as He really is, they are instantly stunned senseless and they instinctively fall before Him and humbly beg for mercy. And then… God covers their shameful nakedness with His Son’s Robe of Righteousness and gives them His eternal Life – thanks to the infinite Perfection of what His living Word has already DONE! That’s when God begins to transform them into disciples (images and likenesses) of His living Word, Yeshua our Messiah.
Superficial evangelism says: “God loves you so much that all He requires you to do is say this prayer and you’ll be saved.” That beloved, is pure delusion! It is a lie that omits the deep, heartfelt repentance and lifestyle changes and the disciple-level transformation of life that God actually requires. You can see this if you ponder what God said through Jeremiah in chapter 17:5-10 and Luke 18:9-34. And you also see it in the parable of the Wedding Feast and the man who refused to put on the wedding garment that was freely given to him, and was therefore cast out into the Darkness (See Matthew 22:11-14).
Sloppy Standards
Many people say the ‘Sinner’s Prayer’, assuming they don’t have to change their Sin-loving lifestyles or begin to take God’s revelations, commandments and promises seriously. Instead, they indulge in magical thinking that tells them that the prayer they said that one time in the past, is all it takes to save them and make everything right between them and their Holy Righteous God. Therefore, after they’ve said that prayer, which is more like a magical incantation, they think they can afford to remain negligent and sloppy in their attitudes toward God and the Law (Torah) which clearly reveal His perfect standards of Righteousness. Scripture warns that such people are in for a huge shock. The day will come when they will hear the Lord say to them,
Matthew 7:21-23
“Depart from Me you who practice Lawlessness.(Torah-lessness) I never knew you!” (Emphasis added.)
Unless we’re spiritually regenerated or ‘born again’ as new creations, we will not become partakers of God’s Righteousness. And if we do not share His Righteousness and live in obedience to His Word, we will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven! (John 3:5)
“Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith; to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be the Glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 16:25-27 Emphasis added.)
Imputed Righteousness
In theological terms, God imputes righteousness to us if we enter by the narrow gate of exclusive faith in Yeshua and His Perfect Finished Work. And then, after we enter the gate, He must also actually impart His righteousness into us as the Holy Spirit leads us along the narrow path of obeying and embodying Yeshua’s indwelling presence by living as one with Him and from Him from that point forward.
Then, the Spirit of God can empower us to obey God’s holy commandments (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 36:25-27). We are required to follow Yeshua and receive from His Holy Spirit what is impossible to us… step by step along the narrow path throughout the rest of our lives on Earth (Matthew 7:13-29; Deuteronomy 28; Philippians 2:12-13; Colossians 3:1-4).
As we allow Yeshua to live His perfect Life in and through us, the Holy Spirit trains, disciplines and teaches us to work out (express) the Righteousness of our Master’s Life in us. His Life transforms our thoughts, words, actions, reactions and interactions with other people (Philippians 2:12-13). This is the true, authentic disciple life that He desires and requires us to embody. Disciples must demonstrate the unchanging fact that all flesh must hear and obey what the living Word of the living God says to the Sin-murdered children of Adam and is here, ready to supply whatever they lack, for them!
Live In Yeshua’s Holy Spirit
God requires us all to embody Yeshua His beloved Son. And if we do that, God can prove, through our obedient flesh, that He has truly raised His Son from the dead and that Yeshua is now present, operating in righteousness from within the flesh of those whom He has saved. And His Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, Goodness and Self Control will then be seen to be operating within us by the obvious proof of His supernatural Fruit that we suddenly begin to bear in His Name. Such supernatural righteousness is the evidence that the risen One lives in us and is, even now, able to produce His fruit in and through our lives.
Everything man-made, no matter how ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ it appears, is a cheap, soulish, man-made counterfeit substitute! But to live in and from Yeshua’s Holy Spirit is Almighty God’s authentic, Spirit-given Eternal Life.
Matthew 10:22
“You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.” (Emphasis added)
So beloved, remember this:
Nothing bad that we have done can keep us away from God’s salvation. But nothing ‘good’ that we may try to do, will be able to get us into it!
Only our Perfect God can meet His Perfect Standards Perfectly! And He must be free to do it in our name. (Cf. the Pharisee and the Publican in Luke18:9-17). God must do it all, from start to finish. And He has done it.
The Gospel of Righteousness
This is The Good News that I believe Scripture equips us to proclaim – not only through our words, but most importantly through visible fruit in our personal lives and relationships amid this demon-possessed world. Only this proof…the manifestation of Yeshua’s supernatural Fruit coming through our flesh… can convince unbelievers that we actually are living ‘branches’ of God’s New Covenant ‘Vine,’ and that He truly is risen from the dead and alive within us (Cf. John 15; 1 Corinthians 15:12-19; Galatians 5:16-25)!
So according to what Scripture really says about New Covenant disciple life, Salvation is not a matter of good or bad behavior, or ignorance vs. education, or being correct vs. being incorrect. It is a matter of who lives in you? Is it the First Adam, or is it the Last Adam? Are you decapitated and dead? Or are you ALIVE – with the Life of the risen Lord of Glory?
This is the life or death issue about us that God, in His perfection, must – and will – deal with when the time for our individual and corporate Judgment finally arrives!
“And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven!” (Matthew 18:2-4 Emphasis added.)