23rd July 2025

23rd July 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Philippians 3:7-11 focus v9)


Message (Alan Burke)


From the time we are knee high to a grasshopper we are told to be good. And it’s been drilled into us by the fat man in the red suit that watches us when we are sleeping, he knows when we’re awake, he knows if we've been bad or good, and so we’re to be good for goodness sake. Ask most people and they will tell you that they are good and if you push them on it and tell them they are not they will become hostile because from an earthly perspective they are. Yet from a scriptural perspective before the Lord our God there is not one who is good. Even if we know what the Bible teaches we still find this difficult to accept but the reality is before God there is not one of us who by our nature are good, there is not one of us who are righteous.

Paul here as he wrote to the Philippians acknowledges that he himself who from a human perceptive had much to boast about acknowledges that before God he had no righteousness for the righteousness that he believed he once had from the law that had made him blameless, faultless v6, but any righteousness that comes from the law, even though it left Paul faultless, blameless, it was worthless. It was worthless because even if his obedience to the law was honourable it was the worst of sins because it meant that he was relying on himself rather than what God had done for him. 


Are you relying on your own goodness, your own righteousness before God? If so repent for it is a great sin. What is required of us in observing the law is a faultless perfection in every regard, Paul had once believed that he was faultless, blameless but now understood that it was worthless because all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. Relying on ourselves rather than Christ, no matter what it is, our heritage, our piety, observance of the law or today our good works morality, church attendance, whatever it may be do not give us right standing before the Lord, none of these things will give us righteousness because we are by our nature spiritually bankrupt we are under a curse. But Paul knew the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith, for the righteous live by faith. 


What is it to be righteous? 


To be righteous before the Lord is to have right standing with him. While we are all under the curse, while we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23) and are without excuse, those who are righteous, who have right standing before the Lord have faith (Hab 2:4, Rom 1:17). 


What Paul gained in faith was a righteousness before God that came not because of what he had done or could do but a righteousness that was imputed to him, given to him by God through faith. The only way that anyone has ever been righteous before God, throughout all of history is through faith in his Christ. In the Old Testament those who were righteous were looking forward in faith to the promised one who would come. 


This is key for us is to know that it is by grace we have been saved through faith… not by works so that no one can boast (Eph 2:8-9). No one is justified before God by the law. Yet there are many who are still think they are good because it has been drilled into us from we were knee high to a grasshopper, or we’ve be trying to rely on the law, on their deeds, but the law is not based on faith. Faith gives us life in the truest sense and for those who are relying on the law then they live by them, they find life by obeying them, by relying them, but it is not life in the true sense, it is life under a curse, because it is faith that is the means of life in God. Brothers and sisters, let us look to Christ and what he has done, knowing that through faith in him we are the righteous of God. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q28 Wherein consisteth Christ’s exaltation?
A. Christ’s exaltation consisteth in his rising again from the dead on the third day, in ascending up into heaven, in sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and in coming to judge the world at the last day.
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