The Righteous are Rescued

The righteous are rescued. The righteous.

I’ve been sitting here for far longer than I want to admit, thinking about what it means to be righteous. According to the dictionary, righteous means morally upright, or virtuous. God asks for holy living. We can’t argue that. There is a certain standard that Christ followers are supposed to uphold.

I began to think about how those of us who are professing christians aren’t all that different from non-christians sometimes. How we too destroy our neighbor with our words, how we too often walk with little integrity and little wisdom. I started to get mad.

“God, who could this verse be talking about? There are far too many professing your name and walking like the ungodly.” I was going to write about how we need to examine our life and if we profess Christianity we need to start acting like it!

But God reminded me of the way he sees us.

It isn’t fair.

It makes no sense.

The great mystery of the cross is too great for our comprehension.

Romans 4:3 says this: “For what does scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’” And skipping to verse five, “And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”

Our faith is counted as righteous.

It’s unfair.

It’s scandalous.

It’s grace.

I know theres a balance and almost a controversy of faith vs. works. Intact, I wrote a blogpost previously about that tension and about how our works profess our faith. It’s all true. BUT. How sweet it is to know that even when we mess up, even when we don’t have it altogether, when we are fully broken and imperfect; when we are hypocritical and act like the ungodly, that God still counts us as righteous. He still sees Jesus.

Romans 8:1: “For now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.”

It doesn’t give us a license to sin. It doesn’t mean that people aren’t turned off to Jesus because of the way Christians often choose to act. But it does mean that our faith is enough to be counted as righteous.

So how are we rescued from trouble? We can have full confidence knowing this:

The ones who put their faith is Jesus Christ are rescued from trouble, and it comes on the wicked (those who do not put their faith in Jesus) instead.

God, be my rescue. May you count my faith as righteousness like your word says. And may I, in return, bring to you a life that is holy and pleasing and acceptable.

Photography: @brandonnalley