If you don’t read and pray the word of God, you are subjecting yourself to a lifestyle of fainting When you live by Godly principles, you honor the truth and you don’t lie to people You can never have right practices with wrong information.

How then can man be righteous before God?. Or how can he be pure who is born of sin?.

Job 25:4.
We serve a God who has created us in His image and in His likeness. The above scripture portion speaks to us about righteousness. Job’s friend Bildad is questioning Job, how then can man be righteous before God or how can he be pure who is born of a woman. Job was a rich, righteous man of great faith, he was a man of great wisdom and understanding, he wrote more about the Creator, creation and universe than any other Bible writers in the Bible, but deep down inside of him somewhere there was some self righteousness in him, that is why his friend Bildad is asking him the above question.

Righteousness is right standing with God. Adam the first man on this earth was created without sin, he was created perfectly perfect by God without sin, sickness, poverty and death, he fell because, he welcomed sin with his own hands, after the fall sin entered and the righteous Adam became unrighteous, so God had to send His only Son Jesus into this world, so that we who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God would become righteous through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus. We don’t become righteous, because of what we have done or what we will do, we are righteous, because of what Jesus had done on the cross of Calvary. He took away our sins and made us righteous, Jesus gave us the right standing before God. We don’t do good works to know God, but because we know God we do good works. We don’t do good works to become righteous, but because we are righteous by the grace of God we do good works. In Christ we are called to be righteous, we cannot and should not put our hands and feet in righteous works and unrighteous works at the same time. Job was a righteous man after his losses his wife asked him to curse God and die and she might have left him, but Job made a covenant with his eyes not to look upon a young woman, and in the end he was rewarded for his righteousness.

The reason for Jobs testing and misery was his self righteousness (Job 32:1) and fear (Job 3:25) he thought that his sons would have committed some sins, so he offered burnt offerings to God. It was not God, not the devil for the cause of his misery and sufferings, but his own acts of self righteousness and fear, he opened the doors with his own hands, what he feared came over him.

It is the nature of man (inborn) to speak and act self righteous (I’m always right and everyone around me is always wrong) and put the blame on others especially God (because He is in heaven and He is freely available). Adam fell and when God questioned him whether he had eaten of the fruit Adam replied “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate” Genesis 3:12. Adam the first created righteous man who became unrighteous after eating of the fruit is blaming God for the woman that He gave, Adam is not blaming himself but God for his fall (self righteousness).

In a couples fight no one will accept their faults and mistakes, but they will always shift the blame on the opposite person (self righteousness, I’m right and everyone around me is always wrong). Lilly Mary will blame John David and John David will blame Lilly Mary, and in the end both will come together and blame God. John David will ask God why did You give me this nagging wife? and Lilly Mary will ask God why did You give me this drunkard husband?. What did God do, He is in heaven both of them agreed to get married, they came before Him and entered into the covenant of marriage. What did God do, nothing, He is only a witness to the covenant of marriage ( booked and made to be together for eternity, which cannot be broken), instead of blaming God for anything and everything wrong in our lives, we should learn to repent, correct ourselves and allow God to work in our lives and marriage and let our lives and the covenant of marriage bring glory and honor to God.

Self righteousness is a blessing blocker, it will lead to pride and spiritual pride. There are many in the body of Christ who say I gave my life to Jesus (they forget that He first loved us), I prayed, I fasted, I read the Bible, I went to church, I gave to God, so God answered my prayers and performed a miracle in my life and in others lives, always I only and no Jesus in the talk and walk. The day we are saved and born again, it is no longer our story, our story ends and the story of Jesus in and through us begins not for a day or two, but for our entire lifetime till we reach heaven.

God is always a prayer answering and a miracle working God, whether we are praying or not, Jesus is interceding with the Father on our behalf. We don’t read the Bible, pray, fast, go to church, give to God and do good works, so that God can love and bless us. We do all these, because we love God and He has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3). We don’t give to get blessed, but because we are already blessed we give. Love for God should be our goal and motto otherwise the focus will not be God, but on our works, slowly without our knowledge the focus will be shifted from God to us and on our works.

Job was a righteous man and God certified of him that he was a righteous person, but Job became and entered into self righteousness by offering burnt offerings to God for the sins that his sons did not commit. Fear brought him misery and sufferings. Fear is false evidence appearing real, when you fear you give it permission to come to pass in your life. What Job feared came over him. Self righteousness and fear brought misery and sufferings in Job’s life, when Job kissed self righteousness and fear goodbye he became humble and fearless then he prayed for his criticising friends and then God restored him back, all that he had lost came back searching for him, exactly double for all his trouble.

The secret for an early restoration in our lives is to pray for our enemies, instead of criticising and cursing them, pray for them. Pray for the drunkard husband, pray for the nagging wife, pray for the wayward children, pray for the torturing mother in law and daughter in law, pray for the friends who persecute you, because you believe in Christ, pray for all the people who stand against you and spread false rumours about you and see God restoring you back in every area of your life. What God did for Job, He will do it for you, what He did for others, He will do it for you.

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

2 Corinthians 5:21.
And therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness.

Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.

Who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.

Romans 4:22-25.
Heavenly Father thank You for the word, thank You for making us righteous through the sacrifice of Your Son Jesus. Give us the grace not to enter into self righteousness and boast about our works. Give us the grace to always boast about Christ the hope of glory living in and through us and nothing else, all the days of our lives, in Jesus name we ask and pray.
Amen and Amen.
God loves you
Blessings

Alfred Joseph
Hyderabad Telangana India
[email protected].