“SELF-EFFORT RIGHTEOUSNESS OR SOVEREIGN-IMPLANTED RIGHTEOUSNESS?”
By J.Farrell Fisher, August 24, 2014
I want to lay a clear and solid and life-changing foundation for you out of Genesis 15:6 where the Holy Word tells us: “And he [Abram] believed in the Lord; and He [God] counted [credited, accounted] it to him for [or as] righteousness.”
But, fallen men are so assertive that they say: “I don’t need God because I can become righteous on my own – I’m able!” Self-effort righteousness is a ‘sham’ with Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary saying of ‘sham’: “False, counterfeit, pretended…” And that is so on target!
It was Sir Francis Bacon who once said in the “New Atlantis,” “The reverence of a man’s self is, next to religion, the chiefest bridle of all vices.” Oh, how true is that!?! I was really shocked when I came across a statement by Benjamin Franklin: “God helps those who help themselves.” And I had to put a huge question mark by that statement! No! God helps those who empty themselves and trust God to fill them with Holy Presence through the Resurrection Life of Christ!
Yes, it’s the Cross of Christ before which lost men are to bow, but also one better would be placing his ‘self-effort’ on the Cross in Christ or their ‘self-effort righteousness’ becomes a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the heart and mind, which leaves one eternally separated from Holy God!
Aren’t you aware of “pumped-up flesh” that readily identifies one as a ‘slave in bondage’ to “self-effort righteousness”? In Exodus 6:9 the Word says, “So Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel; but they did not heed Moses, because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage.” They weren’t even aware of their spiritual condition but had become ‘self-effort righteousness’ even in their chains.
Do you remember Galatians 4:3 when Paul said: “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.” That’s ‘self-effort’ righteousness – no freedom but only bondage and slavery to a world culture.
I’m sure you’ve at least read Colossians 2:8 where Paul said: “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” He later said in Colossians 2:23, “These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.”
Self-effort righteousness is the constancy of self-enslavement. Self-effort righteousness is pulverizing pride; it is one puffed up in himself just like Satan himself. Job 35:12 speaks of those who at least ‘cry out,’ “but God does not answer, because of the pride of evil men.”
Listen to Proverbs 1:24-33!! “Because I have called and you refused, I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded, Because you disdained all my counsel, and would have none of my rebuke, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your terror comes, When your terror comes like a storm, and your destruction comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you…
Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but they will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would have none of my counsel and despised my every rebuke..
Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled to the full with their own fancies. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; But whoever listens to me will dwell safely, and will be secure without fear of evil.”
Oh, but listen to Isaiah 54:17!! It says: “No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, AND THEIR RIGHTEOUSNESS IS FROM [OR OUT OF] ME,” says the Lord.”
Aren’t you aware of the great difference, the chasm, between “self-effort righteousness” and “Sovereignly-implanted righteousness”? A purchase price was paid for “Sovereignly-implanted righteousness” and the price paid was our Savior’s blood shed on the Cross! Is it ‘either-or’? Of course, it is – it always has been! Self in opposition to God, my righteousness opposed to God’s righteousness, righteousness earned or His righteousness implanted? That’s you proud in yourself or you humbled by the awesomeness of God’s love, grace, and mercy!
You do understand, from earthly beginnings through Adam and Eve, until this present generation, the powers of darkness until now are out to sell Satan’s lie: “You can sin and not die!”
You and I have an enemy whose goal and ambition is spiritual blindness, eternal deafness, to the will, mind, and heart of Holy God and His Son, the Lord Jesus, and the voice and intimacy with God’s Holy Spirit! But His Word speaks louder, plainer, to the point of our Lord’s love, grace, and mercy – and if one listens and responds, he/she walks away from the bondage of self-righteousness and walks free in God’s Sovereign-implanted righteousness, a new man!
Self-effort righteousness is one’s self-determination of what gives him/her satisfaction or happiness. It’s fallen man/woman living by self-rule to give ‘peace’ to his/her passions as he/she settles in to satisfying the flesh [or old sin nature]! What or who controls my passions, my desires, my longings, my temptations, my fleshly fulfillment? “Whatever silences ‘the demons’ within and gives me a sense of reward for my ‘fallen-away-from-God’ decisions!” REALLY?
Horatius Bonar put it like this: “No man can quench his thirst with sand, or with water from the Dead Sea; no man can find rest from his own character, however good, or from his own acts, however religious.”
Why? Because ‘self-effort righteousness’ is counterfeit, counter-productive and addictive like an illegal drug, not honoring God or giving glory to His Name! “Self-effort righteousness,” “self-control programs,” “self-attempts at being religious,” “self-mastery over sin and death and alienation and separation from God,” are attempts at a “new birth” that proves deathly at its inception!
What’s a “good thought” if Truth is absent? What’s a “passionate prayer” if all you’re doing is indulging and promoting and calling attention to yourself, and even the name of Jesus is completely omitted?
Robert R. Brown once said: “It is part of our human nature, but there is that within us which always wants to make self the center of its own universe and, in that selfish way, wants to tear God from His throne and deny his brother and advance his own ambition.”
I love what Sir Walter Scott wrote in “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” VI. He said: “The wretch concentered all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubling dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored and unsung.”
I’m telling you ‘self-mastery’ in one’s own determination of self-righteousness is Satan’s number-one achievement in your life if your only goal and ambition is to think well of yourself!
But I want you to look carefully at the eternal reality of “SOVEREIGN-IMPLANTED RIGHTEOUSNESS”! In 2 Corinthians 5:21 our Lord opens the heart and mind of true understanding and saving faith when He said through Paul: “For He [God] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Oh, what a strong, redemptive revelation!
Speaking of the passage in 2 Corinthians 5:21, Oswald Chambers wrote in “My Utmost For His Highest,” [p.224], “The modern view of the death of Jesus is that He died for our sins out of sympathy. The New Testament view is that He bore our sins not by sympathy, but by identification. He was ‘made to be sin.’ Our sins are removed because of the death of Jesus, and the explanation of His death is His obedience to His Father, not His sympathy with us. We are acceptable with God not because we have obeyed, or because we have promised to give up things, but because of the death of Christ, and in no other way. We say that Jesus Christ came to reveal the Fatherhood of God, the loving-kindness of God; the New Testament says He came to bear away the sin of the world. The revelation of His Father to those to whom He has been introduced as Savior. Jesus Christ never spoke of Himself to the world as one Who revealed the Father, but as a stumbling block (see John 15:22-24).”…[In closing out his understanding of 2 Corinthians 5:21, Chambers said: “It is not Christ “for” me unless I am determined to have Christ formed “in” me.”]
Don’t ever forget or even overlook Isaiah 54:17! Remember, God said, “…This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from [out of] Me,” says the Lord!
Spurgeon preached on Isaiah’s word for us: [“Spurgeon’s Sermons,” Memorial Library, Vol. 2, p.164], “Now, if I wished to test you all, and might ask you only one question, I would ask this: What is your righteousness? O, I am as good as my neighbors. Go along with you; you are not my comrade. What is “your” righteousness? Well, I am rather better than my neighbors, for I go to chapel regularly. Off with you, sir; you do not know the watchword. And you next; “what is your righteousness? I have been baptized, and am a member of the church.” Yes, and so you may; and if that is your hope, you are in the gall of bitterness. Now you next; what is your hope? O, I do all I can, and Christ makes up the rest. RUBBISH! You are a Babylonian, you are no Israelite; Christ is no make-weight – away with you. Here comes the last – What is your righteousness? My righteousness is filthy rags, except one righteousness which I have, which Christ wrought for me on Calvary, imputed to me by God Himself, which makes me pure and spotless as an angel. Ah, brother, you and I are fellow soldiers: I have found you out; that is the watchword. “Your righteousness is of Me, says the Lord.” I do not ask whether you are a Churchman, or whether you are Methodist, or Independents, or Baptists, if you do but know this watchword – ‘Your righteousness is of Me, says the Lord.” I can forgive all those other minor things, if you can sing: ‘Jesus, Your blood and righteousness, My beauty are, my glorious dress.’”
Again, Isaiah so truly educates, informs, instructs, and inspires us as he tells us in Isaiah 64:6, us apart from saving grace and mercy, “But we are ALL like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.”
And when one becomes so aware of that true condition of unrighteousness, is graciously exposed to true righteousness, and knows without Christ’s shed blood washing his life he’s hopeless, and, yes, begins to cry out, “God, be merciful to me THE sinner,” then and only then does the repentant heart begin to experience and appropriate and stand in with eternal confidence the righteousness of God!
Don’t you find it so amazing that Almighty God, author of His Holy Word, God of the Cross, practically informs us of who true believers are, and gives us a picture of both the righteous and the unrighteous? For example, Jesus tells us about a wedding in Matthew 22 and opens our understanding of who is refused entrance for the wedding and who enters! This is Jesus telling, informing, revealing, yes, the ‘righteous’ who enter the wedding and the feast: Verses 11-13,
“But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Tell me about your preparation of attendance at that awesome, glorious, sacred, celebrated wedding of Christ Jesus and His bride! Are you the called, the chosen, the true faith-full bride of Christ who daily prepares for the wedding celebration? Or do you “seek to enter” on your own terms?
‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And you’re unsure what it is? Do you even consider, think about, put on, God’s gift of mercy and grace? But, you are aware that the independent soul takes on Frank Sinatra’s famous song, “I did it my way”? “Your way” is that distinguishing mark that shuts the door to your entrance to the eternal wedding!
‘Friend, you are not clothed in a wedding garment! Is there no respect, no acknowledgement in you, no desire to honor the King of kings and Lord of lords, or no appreciation of submission to His way?’
‘Friend, this is the prince’s wedding – not yours.’ And the wedding we’re seeing is a picture of Christ and His bride, but the ‘friend’ came dressed in rebellion, disobedience, self-assertion, a breed of independent walks of life that only pours out contempt on the Crucified Christ and spits on His empty tomb!
Consider also that many are of the opinion that there is more than one way to find acceptance with God – and multitudes are of the ‘opinion,’ “it’s what I believe, it’s how I feel, and God should accept my offering and share my way with His way!”
Where in God’s Holy Word do you ever find reconciliation with Him by man’s activity through that man’s personal wisdom, practical efforts of flesh efforts being the sole remedy of his ‘salvation experience’ which is better called ‘evil evolution’!
I remind you again of what Paul preached in Romans 10:2-3! “For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.”
Are you familiar with the terms, IMPARTED, IMPUTED, IMPLANTED righteousness which comes out of the mind and heart and will of God only? Have you failed or neglected to read the words of God Himself through Isaiah the prophet? Isaiah 1:18-20 tells us: “Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword;’ For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” Oh, how powerful, but look also at His convicting word in Isaiah 1:27-28:
“Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and her penitents with righteousness. The destruction of transgressors and of sinners shall be together, and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.”
Spurgeon spoke of “the insolence of self-righteousness” which so easily, emphatically, denies the righteousness of God through Christ! Oh, and then, of the ‘self-righteous’ religious crowd, he said: “Spiritually he [they] is a very well washed corpse – that is all.”
Haven’t you witnessed it, seen it, been astounded by the discomfort and denial of the chorus that speaks of: “Oh, the blood of Jesus” – and many want no part of it because it doesn’t highlight “what I do, what we do”!! And that’s outward religious appearance without an inner heart-change! “Born again” to them is offensive bible-babbling!
Irving Peake Johnson once wrote: “Righteousness as exemplified by Christ is not merely the absence of vice or the presence of virtue. It is a consuming passion for God which sends you forth in His name to establish His kingdom.”
Church attendance without recognizing your calling to establish His kingdom, bow to His rule daily, and practically to embrace Him in submission to His eternal purpose of reconciling a fallen world to Holy God, and seeing yourself brought in to His divine intent in YOU LIVING THROUGH HIM A RIGHTEOUS LIFE, and touching our world with His grace and mercy, is to be a participant on a playground pretending to be something or someone we’re really not!
In I Corinthians 15:34 Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote: “AWAKE TO RIGHTEOUSNESS, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.” And have you overlooked Romans 5:17? “For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more, those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.”
He went on to say in Romans 6:13, “And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.”
Oh, I pray, that you’ve rested in Paul’s words in Romans 10:9-10, “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” YES, a heart matter! And one “believes unto righteousness” not “I’m able”!!
Self-effort- righteousness or Sovereign-Implanted Righteousness? In Philippians 3:8-10 Paul defines the surpassing value of knowing, receiving, and resting in Christ Jesus: “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, NOT HAVING MY OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS FROM THE LAW, but that which is through faith in Christ Jesus, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” WOW!
In closing, remember that “wedding” garment? Revelation 19:5-9 tells us, Then a voice came from the throne, saying, “Praise our God, all you His servants and those who fear Him, both small and great!”
And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, “Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.”
And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen IS THE RIGHTEOUS ACTS OF THE SAINTS.” Then he said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!” And he said to me, “These are the true sayings of God.”
True sayings? IMPARTED, IMPUTED, IMPLANTED RIGHTEOUSNESS or your works of the flesh?