According to Genesis 9, Noah was a “righteous man” and that’s why God chose to save him and his family from the flood. Thus the natural conclusion is that if we hope to be saved from God’s 
judgment we too must be “righteous.” There was several others pronounced “righteous” in the Old Testament; Enoch, Job and Boaz are a few. These three involved some kind of deliverance as well and it’s still natural to see that the salvation was dependent on their being “righteous.” I am hard pressed to count myself among “the righteous.” I know I’ve fallen short a lot of times in my life. Just yesterday I said unkind words to my wife and harbored ill will toward others. If I am to have any hope I have to understand the declaration of these people and others being “righteous” in a different way. If it doesn’t mean one must be righteous to be saved, what does it mean then. Jesus, Himself, said that if we want to go to heaven our “righteousness must be greater than that of the Pharisees.” Ouch! Is that what it means?
I’m so glad that it does not mean that any of these men, including Noah, were sinless. Clear passages in both the Old Testament and the New Testament make that clear. Paul quotes from the Old Testament in Romans 3:10-12 and says, “…as it is written: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” He is quoting from Psalm 14:2-3. It says, “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” Isaiah 53:6 also says, “All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own.”
The cleanest resolution of this apparent problem can be reconciled by acknowledging a “declaration of righteousness” versus an actual living state of righteousness in the individuals. There is much Bible support for this as well. One of the strongest passages comes from the Old Testament. In Genesis chapter 15 we come to one of the high-water marks of Old Testament revelation, summarized for us in verse 6: “Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” None of these Old Testament folks were delivered from their particular circumstance because they were sinless. No, it was because they had faith. This is played out in Hebrews chapter 10 as the writer goes through what we know as the “hall of fame of faith.” Each example explains that it was by “faith.” There is more doctrine from Paul regarding this truth. Romans 1:16-17 says, “For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile. This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, ‘It is through faith that a righteous person has life.'” Then Paul points this truth at us! In Romans 5:1, he says, “Having been declared righteous, then, by faith, we have peace toward God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” If personal righteousness is a requirement for salvation, no one could truly have “peace with God.” That only comes when our faith in Christ gains a deposit of His righteousness into our bankrupt accounts. Only then, through faith, can I truly experience “peace with God.” This is why the Gospel is good news to sinners like me.
daydream. Whenever I was bored, I would simply imagine myself as a hero in one of these tales, slaying dragons and rescuing princesses.
two sides to the Gospel of Jesus and they are alluded to in Kennedy’s statement. Both of them are “Good News” indeed! First, Jesus died for my sins! He was perfectly holy and righteous! I am a sinner of a pretty bad variety. I don’t think I was as bad as some, but it doesn’t matter. If you’ve fallen at one point of the law you have fallen at the whole law. That’s the way James put it in 2:10: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” One blogger explained it this way, “If I break a speed limit I have broken the law of the land, if I murder I have broken the law of the land in the same way it doesn’t matter which of God’s laws you break you have broken his law and are guilty in his sight.” Wikipedia says that repentance is “sincere regret or remorse.” I disagree! I believe a biblical understanding of repentance is to acknowledge the reality of my own sinfulness. It’s not just admitting a particular sin, but acknowledging my true sinful nature. As the cliche puts it, “I owe a debt to God that I cannot pay! Jesus paid the debt that He did not owe!” That’s Good News!
our relationship with God the father is by God’s grace. It is God’s grace that saves sinners. He writes in Chapter 1, verses 3-5, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” It is a true gift as Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:8-9, “it is a gift of God. It’s not of yourself. It’s not of works lest any man should boast.” But like the Galatians it’s so easy to turn from Grace to Works again. It appeals to our human nature and seems to be the default setting for mankind. Commenting on the radical grace of God Bush and Due write in their commentary, “The gospel’s radical negation of ceaseless striving and hard work is unfathomable to us. Our thoughts can’t produce it; our will doesn’t originate it. It’s otherworldly, ‘according to the will of our God and Father’ (Gal 1:4). Christ suffered not because we are worthy, or because we moved him to act, but only because it was the will of God.” They quote Peter’s sermon in Acts 2:23 then, “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” Their conclusion is, “It’s hard to imagine a statement better calculated to oppose the intrusion of human will in salvation.”
without a doubt, those with incurable ailments and diseases paid the most attention. As He enters a village on the border between Galilee and Samaria, He sees ten lepers crying out to Him from a distance “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Leprosy was a highly contagious life-threatening skin disease that had plagued the region for centuries.
sister!” Or she’d say, “for the Love of God, stop picking on your little brother.” More than once I heard her say, “for the Love of God, please do your homework.” Yep, my mother thought that the love of God should have been a motivating force in my life for good. But honestly it didn’t really motivate me at all. I never was very nice to my sister. I never stopped picking on my little brother and seldom did I do my homework.
give us rest for our souls. In Jesus’ call to us who are overburdened, He speaks of taking His yoke upon us. Now we all know that a yoke in that agricultural society was a wooden press that bound two animals together who would then contribute equally to the pulling of the plow by putting their strength together. Some yokes were extremely heavy according to some commentators and some were lighter but all involved some kind of a burden. But the yoke that Jesus was referring to was the heavy burden that the religious leaders had placed around the necks of the people binding them to a law that was unbearable. That yoke, the Yoke of the Law, only drove us to the recognition of our true sinfulness. Jeremiah made this clear when he used the idea of a yoke in his lament. In Lamentations 1:14 we read “…My transgressions were bound into a yoke…they were set upon my neck.”
while on Saturdays. I was 15 at the time turning 16 on January 15th of 1963. The City Golden Gloves Tournament was held on January 25-26. I just made the age cut off by 10 days. There were two requirements we had to meet. We had to be 16 years of age and we had to weigh at or below our weight class. I was a flyweight the lightest of all the classes which was the class of everything up to 112 pounds. I weighed in at 110 ¾ pounds. That was my sophomore year of High School. Now you know why I didn’t do well in football. I met the requirements! Interestingly enough I was the only 16 year old that weighed less than 112 pounds that year. I think I might be the only one, or one of a very few, that hold a Golden Glove Championship title without every throwing a punch or receiving a punch!