The Gift of Righteousness

Call to Prayer 

Title: The Gift of Righteousness

By: Daniel Peter

Date: 20.06.2023

For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! Romans 5:17 NIV

In my contribution to the Call to Prayer yesterday, I mentioned how God took humanity through a process to help us acknowledge our frailty as humans, and how true freedom is knowing that His blessing is not dependent on our ability to keep His commandments (His instructions). The access that we have to the blessing of Abraham is faith, and it’s available to all who believe (Gal. 3:14, 28-29).

Despite our access to the blessing of Abraham is by faith, included in that blessing is the gift of righteousness, which is the very nature and character of God. As possessors of this gift, God always sees us as righteous, though we may have weaknesses in the flesh. Because of this, we can boldly come before His throne without fear of being judged or condemned (Hebrew 4:16, Romans 8:1). Apart from the right of access to His throne the gift of righteousness gives to us, it also empowers us to manifest the righteous character of God. Apostle John speaking about this, said “…he that doeth righteousness is righteous (1John. 3:7)”. This means, those who have received the gift of righteousness practice righteousness.

From the above, we can see that the gift of righteousness is not just the right of access to His throne (His presence), but also an empowerment to manifest the righteous character of God. The extent to which we can manifest this righteousness is dependent on how much grace we are able to access from Him. We can discern this when Apostle Paul wrote “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me”. Therefore, righteous works is a product of grace. And it takes us yielding to the Holy Spirit to access more of this grace.

Though we practice righteousness, we do not affirm that God blesses us because of it, for we are blessed simply because we believe in Jesus Christ. However, our practice of righteousness makes it evident that we are blessed (Acts 3:26).

Payer Point 

Let’s thank God for His word today. Let’s ask Him to help us access grace to manifest the gift of righteousness that He has given to us.