You Need to Start Thinking of Yourself as Righteous

From: CHURCH RESET | JACK WILKIE 

If you are a Christian who’s been saved by the blood of Christ and have not turned your back on Him, you are righteous. I am, too.

David claimed his righteousness (and others’ wickedness) plenty of times in the Psalms. But even reading those, it feels uncomfortable.

Can you say it and mean it? “I am righteous.”

Seems strange, doesn’t it? It certainly feels like arrogance. Some might say it’s the most literal form of self-righteousness. But it is neither of those things. It is simply accepting what the Bible says as true.

Two reasons why you should get in the habit of thinking of yourself as righteous.

God called you righteous.

To insist you are a broken sinner who is no different than anyone else is to call God a liar and to call the Holy Spirit entirely useless as a transforming power.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21, NASB95

This is literally the best news the world has ever heard. Denying it to feel less threatening or judgy toward the world doesn’t make it untrue.

This is also why what I’m advocating is not self-righteousness. “All these things are from God,” Paul says. This section is filled with things He did, not what we did. So, when we say we are righteous, it is not some Pharisaical back-patting. It’s pointing to Jesus, acknowledging what He’s done for us, and giving Him all the glory. To do otherwise is to steal His glory.

God called your fellow Christians righteous.

If you still struggle to think of yourself as righteous, at least do it for your fellow Christians. Can you call them righteous?

If I’m not allowed to think of myself as righteous, and you’re not allowed to think of yourself as righteous, we’re not allowed to think of each other as righteous. This means you are functionally no different than Jeffrey Epstein. That little old lady who has been coming to church for 80 years, helped raise Godly Christian children and grandchildren, and still faithfully serves God? Broken sinner. That elder who has faithfully shepherded his people to maturity in Christ for decades?Broken sinner.

Some even do this retroactively, seeing saved saints like Noah, Moses, and David in the worst lights. We don’t need to pretend their sins didn’t happen, but neither do we need to slander men who are currently resting at Jesus’ side as “just as broken as the rest of us!” If God counts them righteous, so should we.

If you’re walking in the light, Christ’s blood cleanses you and you have fellowship with all others who are in the light (1 John 1:7). If you can’t say: “yes, amen” to that, you’ve been conditioned. A desire to blend in with the world and never make them uncomfortable and never call them to God’s standard leaves us always downplaying the righteousness God gave us.

Why it matters

We need assurance

If Christians are righteous, they should receive regular assurance that they are. When we keep telling ourselves we’re no different than the world, it’s no wonder so many Christians struggle to truly feel saved and approach their death with apprehension as to where they’ll end up on the other side.

Let me remind you: if you are in Christ and are not willfully forsaking him (Hebrews 10:26-27), you are righteous.

We can’t help people if we’re the same as them.

“The church isn’t a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners!” I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to check in to a hospital where somebody went in with a broken leg 8 years ago and still can’t walk.

“Such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 6:11) is one of the most beautiful phrases in all the Bible, but if we can’t consider ourselves righteous, then we don’t believe it. And if we don’t believe it, we don’t offer any hope.

We can’t call balls and strikes if we’re blind, too.

As we continue to be inundated with stories of the evil in the world, many Christians’ first instinct is to turn and start shaming other Christians. “If we were more loving, they wouldn’t mock Jesus!” Essentially, “If the church just did her job, nobody would ever do anything wrong ever again!” First, Jesus told us that’s false (John 15:18-19).

Second, the implication that the church’s sins are the church’s fault and the world’s sins are also the church’s fault means we have no moral authority to speak on right and wrong. And if we don’t, nobody does. And if nobody does, then speaking up is prohibited. Then XY chromosome bearers can beat up XX chromosome bearers in a boxing ring and Christians are supposed to look the other way.

Objective, Biblical truth is not “you say to-may-toe, I say to-mah-toe.” People who know what sin is, know what it cost Jesus, and know what is right are obligated to say these things. Even though we’re imperfect, we’re still firmly planted on the solid ground of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. In a drowning world that desperately needs solid ground, we can’t keep ceding it to coddle the world as they sink further and further.

I have a hard time saying: “I’m righteous.” I have an even harder time believing it. But God said it, and I’m not going to call Him a liar. And if I can be made righteous, so can anyone else. Because it is of Him and not of me, I have no reason to feel superior to anyone. But I absolutely should feel that I’m different from them.