Your True Reflection预览

You Are Righteous:
The Greek word for “righteousness” is δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosuné), and it describes justice, justness, the righteousness of which God is the source or author, and divine righteousness.

Generally, “righteousness” means “morally right or justifiable.” To be righteous is to be virtuous.

I will never forget the first time I understood what this word meant in light of God’s plan. Simply put, when God looks at you and me, He does not see us; He sees the righteousness of Jesus. He does not see our sin and imperfections; He sees us as whole and complete. Like Jesus, we are justified, virtuous, and right before God. This is significant; it’s hard to explain and possibly harder to comprehend as true.

It is hard to imagine that when God looks at us, He does not account for anything we have done, will do, or even believe. He sees us as perfect. Righteousness means perfection, the same perfection that Jesus lived out. Somehow, we must remember that this defies all common sense because God is not a sensical God. We all have our imperfections and are deeply impaired in so many ways, but that is not how God perceives us. He understood the plight of our situation and permanently fixed it for us! He chooses to see us this way. Psalm 103:14 (NASB) says, “For He Himself knows our form; He is mindful that we are nothing but dust.”

This is why the mirror image analogy of this book means so much. The only truth in this world is God’s Word! The only mirror that brings us clarity is God’s Word. And when He looks at us, He sees us as perfect—the righteousness of Christ Jesus.

First and 2 Corinthians perfectly demonstrates the discrepancy between what we see and what God sees: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12, NASB). In contrast, “But we all, with unveiled faces, looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18, NASB).

In all my years of following Jesus, I have learned to believe that God has a system. Everything has a system that makes it run. Some laws govern existence. Like gravity, it is a law. If you jump up, you come down. You cannot say to yourself, “Gravity does not exist;” just jump out of a plane and see what happens! We can fight against reality all we want. These are established truths, and just like any truth, it is true that you are righteous before God.

God created the universe and had to create a system to govern it. Since He is the Creator, He gets to make the rules. He gets to choose what He wants for that which He has created. We don’t have any power here except to learn to believe. We don’t have a say in the system God has created because He is the Creator and the Architect of all of life. Like it or not, it is reality. In my reading of the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly asks, “Where is your faith?” It takes faith to believe this blessing, but just because we cannot see it does not alter its reality. When God sees you, He sees Jesus, not your sin, mistakes, or misgivings. He sees us as righteous and whole. Please meditate on this and ask God to reveal this to you because it will change everything about how you see yourself.