God's Wisdom In A Nutshell

Hello,

The word righteous is a Christian word that can be confusing but it’s simply being in right standing with God or we can think of it as being a member of God’s team. It’s important to be a member of God’s team so to speak for many reasons- the first and foremost is to bring glory to God.

Here is an analogy. Let’s say you are a tennis player. Tennis players are ranked from 1.0 – a beginner to 7.0 – a world class player. Your ranking is 3.5 so you are far from the world class stage of Wimbledon or the French Open. But, amazingly enough, a team of world class players decided that they wanted you on their team and you accepted the invitation. They put you in their uniform, included you in the team picture and gave you the team handbook full of  how to behave and act in public, how to represent the team through appropriate language and dress, and what was required of you as far as workouts and lifestyle.

Other benefits included receiving care from world class doctors when you got injured,  eating healthy food prepared by the best chefs and body guards making sure you received help if and when you needed it.

Jesus has given us the same opportunity to be included in all of the benefits of being on His team called “the Kingdom of God.”  We can never earn this position nor will we ever be worthy of it. We were already chosen by God to be on this team the day we were born and all we need to do is accept the position by accepting that Jesus died for our sins.

The next step then, is choosing if we want to follow His handbook to life in order to receive all of His blessings. If so, we must turn away from every sin including not supporting the sin of others and commit our lives to following the teachings in the Bible. Everything the Lord calls a sin is off limits for us. As humans we will still sin occasionally but it’s not a lifestyle. This puts us in the Kingdom of God and on God’s team so to speak- what Christians call being “in Christ.”

It is an honor that our past sins in life aren’t even noted after we repent-only our current placement is what God sees. No one can take this standing away from us as believers in Christ- but we can walk off this team here on earth by our choices.  We choose whether or not we want to stay within the “team culture” and live obediently to God’s perfect guidance. And just like a tennis team member who needs to give up other things in life in order to spend hours practicing and traveling all over the world to tennis competitions, we too must give up areas of our life in order to live this new Christian lifestyle.

Not everything is good for us, not everything is within the team “ideals”. We can’t participate in everything the rest of the world does because we are on a different team and we choose to live within it’s life giving guidelines. We need to stand out in the world, turning away the enticements (sin) to live a better life. To live in this abundant Christian team culture that supplies all we will ever need, requires us to follow the Holy handbook .

²³ “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive.”(1 Cor 10:23)

No one forces anything on a Christian, it’s a simple choice of free will. Do you want to be on the best team in the world- protected, provided for and blessed, or do you want to go at it alone and decide for yourself what rules you want to follow? We can’t have it both ways. We must accept the Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts and turn away from the worldly way of doing things or live life on luck- choosing for ourselves what is right and wrong and thus suffering the consequences of our choices.