Episode 73:  The Critical Difference Between True Righteousness and Self-Righteousness

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the truth and love podcast with your hosts Kimberly Faith and John Mack. The truth and love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: Well, dad, this is an interesting topic. We’re talking about the difference between true righteousness and self righteousness.

John Mclarty: Sounds like it might be a topic right out of the Bible.

Kimberly Faith: Well, is. It kind of came to be I wanted to kind of study this because I don’t know about you, but there are so many people I encounter who say something like, I don’t go to church because all the Christians are hypocrites. Exactly. They’re judgmental. They’re standing on their high horse and they excuse their own sin and they and I don’t know.

Is that something that’s They’re self righteous. They’re self righteous. Yeah. Standard

John Mclarty: go to. Well, they don’t take the word of God or Christians seriously. And it’s true.

Kimberly Faith: And they miss out.

John Mclarty: There’s some truth to it.

Kimberly Faith: That’s absolutely right. There is some truth to it. And I think it challenged me to really examine myself in the mirror of God’s word. And so I kinda just wanna start out by giving everybody an idea of where we’re going. We’re gonna talk about what is righteousness, what is true righteousness according to the bible, and then how do you get it.

John Mclarty: Mhmm.

Kimberly Faith: And there’s two kinds there’s two two types of righteousness that we we can receive. And then how those two types of true righteousness, if we have them, we do not have self righteousness. It eliminates. Then just kind of a little bit of how we get them, it’ll be kind of worked in.

John Mclarty: Sounds like a good progression.

Kimberly Faith: Okay. Great. So when we talk about the biblical meaning of what the word righteousness means, I know you teach the basic bible concepts, you know, and I I teach that. And how how what’s a good way just to give people an idea? We talk about this word righteousness.

According to God’s word, what does that mean?

John Mclarty: Well, I just think of kind of the root of that is righteousness is right. What is right? Yes. And the answer is God is right. He’s the source of righteousness.

And how he thinks is righteous. Fortunately for us, God is a good God. Because he’s all powerful. What if he was evil or capricious or his standard changed and he kind of picked sides and we’re just very fortunate.

Kimberly Faith: Like some of the great gods

John Mclarty: in world. Yeah, right. So, the Bible says, The Lord is righteous in all his ways, gracious in all his works. It’s one of his fundamental characteristics. Talked to those that have been following these podcasts, God is righteous, he’s also just, and he’s also loving.

So righteousness is just being right, being morally correct. And he defines that. But it stands up to human reasoning. Honesty, telling the truth is right, being morally good. But it’s kind of defined back to not our interpretations, not what you call situational ethics, but going back to God’s standards.

Kimberly Faith: It’s not a sliding scale or some slippery slope based on human opinion, culture, morality. We’re talking about again, we always try to give these podcasts are from God’s word, not my opinion, not your opinion, not culture’s opinion. And we talk about that in our first concept about the poles of influence or, you know, what where do get your truth from? Keep in mind that that everybody has their opinion about what’s right and wrong. But what we’re talking about is what does God say?

And so, going back to the biblical definition, you read that the Lord is righteous in all his ways. Righteousness is a definition defined by God’s nature, who he is. He is the standard. He is the definition and the measure of righteousness. It’s so interesting.

Psalms 8nine 14 says, Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne, but then mercy and truth go before your face. Almost everywhere God’s righteousness is presented, it’s presented in conjunction with his love and his mercy. And also the Bible says, and this is very important, it’s very clear that humanity is not righteous. The Bible says in Romans three ten, there is none righteous, no, not one. And Isaiah this is Old Testament and New Testament.

We are like unclean thing. We are all our unrighteous all our righteousness, excuse me, is like filthy rags. In other words, our best acts of righteousness, what we think is right and good, is as filthy rags.

John Mclarty: And that’s when we compare it to his righteousness.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John Mclarty: Which is a pure and unwavering righteousness.

Kimberly Faith: So that kind of brings us to this idea that true righteousness, therefore, has to come from God in order to meet the measure of what true righteousness

John Mclarty: the definition of it. He’s the epitome, you might say.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And so, beautifully, in two Corinthians five twenty one, the bible says, he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God. So here we are, the bad news, we’re all sinners, we’re not righteous. The good news, God is righteous. How do we reconcile them?

Jesus is the answer. And so, that kind of leads us to this first idea about true righteousness. There’s two types of true righteousness. One is positional righteousness, and the second is practiced righteousness. So we’re gonna talk about positional righteousness first.

And when we say positional righteousness, that’s based on this scripture that we just read out of two Corinthians.

John Mclarty: Yeah. And I just want to reiterate that because it’s so important to understand the importance of that. So, for he made him who knew no sin, so that was Jesus, to be sin for us, so that was the price of the sin paid on the cross, but then that we might become the righteousness of God. But that important word, in him. So a Christian, we have not developed our own righteousness through self discipline and morally transforming ourselves and just by our own will and deciding what’s good, it’s this act of God upon salvation that we become the righteousness of God in him.

And since he’s the only one that’s righteous, the only righteousness that he can approve of is his own righteousness. So he had to make us become righteous so we could become acceptable and live with him for eternity.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And so when we receive the gift of salvation by grace through faith, right, and that faith and that desire to repent both come from God, the Bible says in Philippians three:eight, you know, Paul’s writing, he says, I indeed I also count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness, which is from God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering, being conformed to his death, if by any means I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Paul is describing this righteousness that he has attained through Christ Jesus.

John Mclarty: Yeah, that’s almost just an elaboration on that phrase, we might become the righteousness of God in him. But then Paul kind of does a little deeper dive in that. We become that through faith in Christ. That’s how we attain God’s righteousness. And like you said, it’s kind of a positional thing.

It’s how God now views us.

Kimberly Faith: Right, right. And he emphasizes appreciate you pointing that out because he does emphasize that before we can ever walk in outward righteousness, God must clothe our soul and spirit inwardly in his righteousness. And when we are born again, we are justified in the sight of God the Father. In other words, it’s a legal declaration, our eternity is secure.

John Mclarty: And we discussed that in a previous podcast. This is one of the reasons we have eternal security.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John Mclarty: Because it’s not our righteousness. It’s not our reformation and following a new set of rules.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly.

John Mclarty: It’s God has made us righteous, his righteousness. That’s right. And there’s no boasting

Kimberly Faith: in that. That’s exactly what the Bible says.

John Mclarty: We just said, Lord, help me. I’m a sinner.

Kimberly Faith: Ephesians two:nine, If salvation is not of works, lest anyone should boast. Exactly. And so this positional righteousness is clearly a gift from God, which of harkening back to our series on the attitudes of Christ, the first one is blessed are the poor in spirit, right? No, Blessed are the yeah, the poor in spirit. And poor in spirit means, I got nothing to give you, God.

John Mclarty: I

Kimberly Faith: need you for everything, including especially salvation. And so when we understand that positional righteousness is the first part of obtaining true righteousness. We have nothing to do with it other than accepting the gift.

John Mclarty: Foundational. And we have it the minute we’re the second, the microsecond, as Brother Brian would say. We’re born again.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. And so, again, going back to this comparison with self righteousness, so that eliminates self righteousness right there.

John Mclarty: No busting.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Positional righteousness eliminates self righteousness. But it also is the foundation for practical righteousness, practiced righteousness, which is it should flow out of our new spiritual identity of Christ’s righteousness.

John Mclarty: It’s something we can, I say, build upon? It’s almost like let loose, let free. It’s almost like not suppress.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly.

John Mclarty: So our soul is not righteous, but our body’s unrighteous. So that’s that practiced righteousness.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Because we’re not working for acceptance, which is a works based salvation theory. Right? We’re working from acceptance. We have this righteous we’re in Christ who is righteous, And we’re working based on our position, not based on trying to attain a position.

And that positional righteousness sets us free from the sin of self It’s really, It’s almost like we’ve been divorced from this obligation because we already belong.

John Mclarty: Sets us free from the condemnation and gives us something within us. Yes. And says, Let this mind be in you which is in Christ Jesus, but that’s in us. So it’s almost like, let that out. Don’t suppress it.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. Like you said earlier, this sets a foundation for us to be able to practice righteousness. And some people call this the process of sanctification, understanding that sanctification isn’t sanctifying our soul and spirit. That’s already been done.

John Mclarty: It’s been done.

Kimberly Faith: Sanctification is the outward righteousness that is worked through the inward.

John Mclarty: Yeah, it’s like Christian growth to become more fruitful. Yes. And not just have it’s let our light shine and not put under a bushel.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Let’s read a couple verses about this practice righteousness that just to kind of hammer this point home. You wanna read one John three:seven?

John Mclarty: Sure. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous just as he is righteous.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. You know, there’s a lot of people who when we did the series on eternal security and and why you can’t lose your salvation, there’s lot of people who say, well, if that’s true, then why can’t I just go out and do whatever I want? Right? If if I can’t lose my salvation, why you know, that just means I can go out and start sinning again, it’s no big deal. But but the that ignores this principle that you just read.

John Mclarty: Mhmm.

Kimberly Faith: That if Christ who is righteous lives in us, well, he’s not going to want to engage him in us is not going to want to engage in the sin that crucified him.

John Mclarty: Right. It’s been said our want tos change That’s when we’re right. And again, we still have the body of flesh, but there’s something now in us because of him, because of his grace and through faith. But there’s that born again nature, which now has, it’s like this compass of God’s righteousness. And it’s now within us.

Know It’s a north. It’s a true north. It’s pointing toward the

Kimberly Faith: truth. That’s right. And it’s interesting, Ephesians

John Mclarty: And that’s why we have this sense, just to elaborate on that, like, Oh, here’s this practice that I used to be totally okay with. And I’m feeling like it’s, Wow, this doesn’t feel right

Kimberly Faith: anymore. Just

John Mclarty: name whatever, know, whether it’s partying or Or even

Kimberly Faith: just the things that we knew that we should do that we didn’t do.

John Mclarty: Just selfishness. The Bible

Kimberly Faith: in Ephesians four says, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, that you put off concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to deceitful lust and renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness.

John Mclarty: That is so perfect. And I just wanna emphasize this verse. I used this in a study a week ago, and this idea of putting off the old man, so the old man is hit with this body of sin, we’ve been saved, and then putting on the new, that’s a decision. And it involves renewing the spirit of our mind. And it’s this battle.

Just think about this. Before we were saved, we didn’t have the option to live according to the righteousness of God. Now we do, but it’s kind of this free will. We can put on the old man.

Kimberly Faith: We truly have a free will.

John Mclarty: Yeah, or we can put on the new man. Right. And the new man is that born again, that righteousness of God that were made in him, in

Kimberly Faith: Christ. Yeah. And that’s the struggle that Paul talks about in Romans chapter seven. Exactly. You know, how because we do have the flesh.

We have the flesh, the devil, the world culture that’s after us.

John Mclarty: Mhmm.

Kimberly Faith: And this is the decision we make every day. Do I put on the mind of Christ or do I put on the mind of the flesh? And because the the Bible says that the flesh is at enmity with God, the carnal mind is at enmity with God, the enemy of God. And we get to choose who wins.

John Mclarty: And that’s really perfect because it’s Christian growth, it’s discipleship, it’s discipline, it’s creating new habits, just deciding to spend time in the word, spend time in prayer, the fellowship of believers And being important to

Kimberly Faith: I think where Christians, truly born again believers, this is my own testimony, where I work my way into self righteousness is where I forget who I am positionally with Christ. In other words, when I start believing that I have to earn again God’s favor and prove myself through my good works that I my identity shifts where I am becoming more about Kim Right. Than about Christ. That’s where self righteousness raises itself, you know, into the Christian walk is that it becomes evident. Like, because we are doing things not because we love God, but we because we have this sense of fear or obligation or we have to earn it, or if we don’t do this, God’s gonna knock us over the head, we fall out of love with God.

I think one John us, one John four nineteen says, We love him because he first loved us.

John Mclarty: That’s a key motivation.

Kimberly Faith: It’s gotta be our response. Our obedience has to be in response to God’s love, not out of fear or obligation. We don’t need to live as if we’re trying to earn a place in God’s household. We need to learn to live as children who already have.

John Mclarty: And that’s interesting because going back to our podcast on eternal security based on not our works, but resting in him and knowing we’re eternally secure. So we’re now living not to be saved, but because we are saved, we have this new life. And I’m just thinking, if someone is to say they’re truly saved, but they’ve come under the thought that they’re having to work to keep their salvation, and they’ll say they’re doing a good job of it, that could lead to self righteousness. But if you know you have eternal security, I’m just saying that’s more prone. We can still be self righteous and know we’re eternally secure, but it leaves less room for self righteousness.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John Mclarty: Because we know, I’m a sinner, saved by grace through faith. I have nothing to boast about.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Well, I think about Romans eight fifteen says, We do not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you receive the spirit of adoption. And fear produces pressure and anxiety. Adoption, when we understand we belong, produces peace, confidence, gratitude, and our actions are based out of those motivations instead of fear. I just think it’s so important that the key I found in my life from going from being this plastic Christian who was doing things out of fear, anxiety, trying to prove myself, whatever the motivation to fall asleep.

John Mclarty: And not prove yourself to God, to other people around you that you’re wanting to impress.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. All of that was because of my wrong view of God. All comes back to kind of like we talked about in the podcast about how God uses our pain and suffering. He works a purpose in it. It all goes back to who he is.

He reminded Job, you know, I I’m not gonna rehash all the the problems you’re going through, all the trouble. I’m gonna remind you who I am. Well, when we are constantly immersing ourselves in the word and working on our relationship with God, then we grow in experience with him. We grow in experience with his love, his mercy, his wisdom, all the things, the benefits of the relationship. And of course, we’re going to obey out of love.

John Mclarty: And Kim, I’m thinking about the experience you’ve shared in your life, that you had an experience where God just showed you despite yourself that he just loved you. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s what he shows all of us. But you were just in this place in life where God just needed showed you, Kim, wherever you’re at right now, I want to bless you.

Yeah. And that changed your life.

Kimberly Faith: It did. Totally

John Mclarty: It It wasn’t like, God, I’m gonna strike you down. Right. It’s like, Kim, I love you. Yeah. Just where you are.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. It’s the goodness of God that leads us to repentance. And when he when we get to the end of ourself, then we can we can start living in practical righteousness. We have to get to the end of ourself. And that kind of you know, practice righteousness, practical righteousness is not raw behavior modification.

Transformation from the inside out. Love.

John Mclarty: Rather than external reformation.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John Mclarty: Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. Transformation is from the inside out. It’s like letting Christ out, letting him

Kimberly Faith: shine. Right. It’s it’s this new life that we have in Christ isn’t powered by our effort. It’s because of God’s work in us. And like Philippians says, it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure, Philippians two thirteen.

Mhmm. More we as positional believers, we have received the righteousness of Christ, the more we deep go into deep dive in our relationship with Christ, the more we develop the mind of Christ, the attitudes of Christ, then the less we wanna live in the sin that crucified him.

John Mclarty: Mhmm.

Kimberly Faith: You know? So and that kind of brings us to this thing of self righteousness. If we’re living both in positional righteousness, which we can’t lose, and we’re developing or practicing the lifestyle of righteousness motivated out of love, that frees us from self righteousness because we know it’s not us. We know that the practiced righteousness is coming from the positional righteousness, which is all from God and his righteousness. Where’s the self in that?

John Mclarty: There’s no self in that, and it brings about kind of we continue to serve God because it’s such a blessing.

Kimberly Faith: It’s a joy.

John Mclarty: It’s a joy.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. It’s peace.

John Mclarty: I think of a verse, our pastor, brother Brian, is using this. I don’t even know the verse. I should know the verse. He’s preached so much on it. But it’s about a group of Christians that have become addicted to the ministry.

Interesting. So, we can be addicted to, say, drugs or something, and it’s because that’s giving us pleasure, so we’re addicted to it. Well, this group of Christians, they were addicted to the ministry. They enjoyed it. They weren’t doing it out of bitterness and, Oh, I hate this, but I’m doing it anyway.

That kind of can bring self righteousness.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John Mclarty: But I’m doing it anyway. I’m going to church. I’m doing things I should do. But they were addicted to the ministry. That means that they were getting pleasure from it.

Kimberly Faith: And that comes from a deeper addiction to God.

John Mclarty: Exactly. Mean, Exactly.

Kimberly Faith: When you know that I always get this quote not quite right, but C. S. Lewis was the one who said, you know, when you have learned to, enjoy the goodness of God like through he used the, example of a ray of sunshine. When you’re soaking up that ray of sunshine, it makes you look up the ray to the source. Right?

And and and all these things that we get to enjoy understand those are all benefits of the goodness of God. Mhmm. We wanna get closer to the source. We wanna get closer to the well. We wanna dig up that mother load of gold in our backyard and get as much of it as we can because we’re addicted.

We’re addicted. We know the source of goodness is God. Therefore, we wanna get as close to him as we can. And when we start to stray from him and we feel the anxiety coming back, we we feel the emptiness coming back

John Mclarty: Mhmm.

Kimberly Faith: It’s scary. It’s a scary experience. It’s a it’s like I remember I was oh, I was this was just a couple weeks ago. I got into think some wrong thinking, and it was kinda leaving me the wrong talking. Mhmm.

And I was thinking about doing some wrong things. And I was laying there in bed, and I had this cold fear just creep over me. It was just it was like, woah. What is going on? And then I realized, I know why this is going on because I have my stinking thinking has led to some thinking stinking talking, which was getting ready to get into some stinking actions.

And God doesn’t Jesus doesn’t go around the stinky stuff. You know? He’ll pick you out of the stinky stuff, but he doesn’t get there rolling it with you. You know?

John Mclarty: So you were losing that the peace of God.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John Mclarty: The sense of his presence.

Kimberly Faith: The sense of his presence, which is love, right? And so, as I was studying this, I asked the Lord, I was like, show me where self righteousness manifests itself in me. You know? And and so he gave me some really I mean, they were pretty convicting examples. One was like, oh, you know, this quiet feeling of, I am more faithful than that person, or I’m way more serious about God than that person.

You know, maybe justifying gossip or even just a lack of love towards people in my own life. And that’s self righteousness,

John Mclarty: you know?

Kimberly Faith: I don’t know. Do you have any thoughts? Well, I’m

John Mclarty: just thinking of Romans the flesh is so deceitful. Yes. When Paul talked about Romans chapter seven, even when we do God, which is do good, which is just letting God have his way, then evil is present with us. And that can just be our flesh going just like you just said, look at me.

Kimberly Faith: Look at me.

John Mclarty: I’m not like this phony Christian over here. Right. And we’ve actually become that person.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Well or even if you know? Another example God is

John Mclarty: revealing

Kimberly Faith: to me was just getting defensive. Somebody comes in and and maybe points out, hey, maybe you should just think about how this is I I remember my daughter, Grace, was pointing out to me I was gonna I wrote I’d written this devotional about some way that god had blessed me. And and I I honestly, in my heart was, share this so people can desire god. Mhmm. And and she said, well, mom, I you know, I she was kinda correcting me, and mom, I don’t know that this is gonna be as effective as you think it is, and here’s why.

And my first reaction was a little bit defensive because I knew I knew what my motivation was. But the Lord just convicted me. You’ve got to you’ve got to listen to what she’s saying, and she is also listening to me, and iron sharpens iron. And that initial defensive reaction was self righteousness.

John Mclarty: Which comes from pride.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John Mclarty: The pride of

Kimberly Faith: life. That’s right. And so, thankfully, the Lord was able to convict me. And, you know, so I’m just saying self righteousness, we all battle it. It’s it’s

John Mclarty: a Absolutely.

Kimberly Faith: Definitely a battlefield in our life. And, I’ll tell you the way I I see it manifest itself the most in my life is this performance based spirituality where, like you said early, when ministry becomes a measure of our worth instead of our righteousness that’s found in Christ.

John Mclarty: And

Kimberly Faith: that’s hard sometimes to self detect. But again, I look at that part Yeah. Of the

John Mclarty: Our own heart is so deceptive, our own mind, the mind of the flesh. Again, we have to distinguish our born again souls have the mind of Christ, which we can take no credit for. But the mind of the flesh is very deceitful.

Kimberly Faith: It is deceitful. And, you know, it’s in in Christian culture, it’s so easily mean, think about Galatians. The Judaizers that Paul was trying I mean, Peter was was struggling with this

John Mclarty: up in it. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: And and you think of Peter, Jesus had given him the keys of the kingdom. Mhmm. And here he is struggling with this works based infiltration into the into the gospel, really, of you have to be circumcised.

John Mclarty: Right, the Judaizers.

Kimberly Faith: Right, the Judaizers.

John Mclarty: You still need to keep the law

Kimberly Faith: Right. And we’re and no keep those different. We water down the gospel with our own pride in our own works. And and when we do that, we have we we just have to correct we have to be corrected, you know, and and I’m I’m talking to myself, you know, because it’s so easy for us to, in the Christian culture, to say, Well, that person’s ministry is so great. Look what they’re doing.

And then we start comparing ourselves against each other instead of resting in the righteousness and the identity we have in Christ.

John Mclarty: That’s true. Very good.

Kimberly Faith: So I don’t know. I just this was so important to me, this podcast or this subject was so important to me because I want my life to represent Jesus. I And think that I’m easily deceived into using my good works as as becoming even unintentionally self righteous and giving that you know? And I don’t wanna do that. I thought, well, thank you, Lord, for correcting for opening my eyes on the subject because it’s true.

I mean, we we can have true righteousness both positionally and in practice, and that will eliminate the self righteousness. It will.

John Mclarty: If anybody could have correctly been self righteous, you’d think it was Jesus, right? Because he was righteous. Right. He gave us the perfect example of a servant and humility. And he scolded the Pharisees and the scribes and Sadducees for self righteousness because they were keeping the law for the side of men.

So Jesus, again, that’s our example. Yeah. Yeah. It’s the way he lived, the way he presented himself. As a servant.

Kimberly Faith: I’m not trying to make anybody just beat up on themselves, but the fact is that we all have I use this example of adoption because I do a lot of adoptions in a law practice. I was adopted by you. And you know, you think about a child who’s grown up and and for maybe half their, you know, their childhood, maybe till age 10. And let’s say they were in a home where the father beat them, mistreated them, made them feel worthless, which is what the world’s culture does to us. Mhmm.

It gives us this sense that we are without value, we have to prove ourselves. Right? And and then the child was adopted into a loving home. They’ve got all that baggage of all those years to undo. And the fact is, you know, the last podcast, we talked about distraction, and we talked about the difference between our brain and our mind.

Mhmm. And the fact is we have all these grooves cut in our brain of old behaviors, old ways of thinking. And so in order to move our obedience from being fear driven to being love driven, we have to experience the father. Have to experience And

John Mclarty: that goes back to that foundation of positional righteousness being in him.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Because you think about the adoption example.

John Mclarty: Yeah. It’s like

Kimberly Faith: being born again. And you think about this child starts building this new relationship with a loving father, right? It doesn’t happen on day one. They get adopted, they’re excited in this new life, and they have a new bedroom and they have this new family and they get to go to a nice school or whatever. Right?

I’ve seen these adoption days. They’re wonderful celebrations just like your salvation. But there’s still all this baggage that you have to spend years undoing. And sometimes for adoptive families, it never happens. You know, they never the child just goes off the rails completely, and it’s it’s the saddest thing.

But, you know, when God adopts us, we get to experience the presence of his presence in our life. But we have to our job is to take that righteousness and apply it, the positional righteous, and apply it in everyday practice by letting what’s inside of us work and transform what’s outside and the old ways of thinking.

John Mclarty: Well, that’s in it really interesting because you think of a lot of people, you get saved and you already have all this baggage. And that’s the importance of discipleship and Christian growth. Because actually the tendency is to let that old baggage come back into your life just like a child that may, say, adopted at 10 or 12. And rather than just rest and enjoy this new family, they let this baggage creep back into their life and it can totally derail them. And that can happen to Christians.

That’s right. Without discipleship, actually, that’s almost the norm. Without growth.

Kimberly Faith: 100%.

John Mclarty: It’s more of the norm.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. And I mean, we all see it. And matter of fact, even with discipleship, we can rebel. So it’s this daily retraining of our desires in our mind.

John Mclarty: Transformed by the renewing of our mind.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. And we’ve talked about almost every podcast, we talk about practical steps, practical things that we can do. A matter of fact, in the last podcast about getting our focus.

John Mclarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: Right? Open the word. Identify the distractions. Open the word. Allow that truth to be the loudest voice in our head.

God’s truth needs to be louder than all the quote truth, the false truth, whatever you wanna call it, coming from all the other because that, his truth, is the only truth that’s gonna heal all these grooves in our brain that are wrong.

John Mclarty: Right. And consciously replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts, bring every thought captive to Christ. Yeah, the last podcast was a very practical example of how to allow God to make this from positional to practiced righteousness, which is just letting Jesus live through us, really.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. I mean, we talk about prayer and prayer can be more formal with a group of people, but it can also be, God, I got nothing right now. You need to give me the words, give me the strength. I mean, it’s that everyday walk, worship. I think worship and and thankfulness is is so critical in my life to reposition my heart before God because the more thankful we are and the more we are giving God credit for everything, which is kind of what worship is, the less the more we realize that it’s not about us and that God does everything, he is everything, he’s everything that we do, it’s because of him.

That worship and gratefulness, become think about the adopted child. That child, the more grateful that child becomes, the more the parents want to bless him. And I think with God, it’s even better than that. It’s more than we can even understand, ask, or imagine.

John Mclarty: And that thankfulness gives us an appreciation of just acknowledging where the grace came from, where the righteousness came from,

Kimberly Faith: not from us. The fellowship of believers, you’ve talked about this a lot, but the people who have you know, we’ve all we all have a common we have common journeys when it comes to we all have this you know, very similar struggles. And, you know, when we have I think we were talking about this. I don’t remember if we’re talking about this in one of the earlier podcasts or just one of our chats, but how we go to a ministry team in our church and we can ask those questions like, hey. I’ve got this situation.

How do I deal with it? And everybody gives their experience with God’s word and God’s presence, and it gives us what we need to sort through and say, oh, this is so helpful. You know, it’s like we just help each other.

John Mclarty: Yeah, I think it’s really important. I just think of the fellowship of believers and how we’re wanting this righteousness to become practiced righteousness, habits in our life. I give the example of we go to church or just a Bible study. Like you said, these discussions happen. But we might go There’s a person in our church, Rick Saldivar, has such a burden for souls.

And so when I go and hear him, that challenges me. It’s like iron sharpeneth iron. It’s like, Oh, boy, I need to be more like that. So I’m saying Jesus in him. I thought of this.

All these qualities. Another person has a ministry to kind of help people

Kimberly Faith: Maybe fix the widows.

John Mclarty: Yeah. Sink. But it’s not that person per se, it’s Jesus through him. So I’m thinking it’s all seeing Jesus in others helps us be encouraged and maybe exhorted to let Jesus live through us. Yes.

So that, yeah, that fellowship of believers is important.

Kimberly Faith: You can’t really underestimate when you see somebody who has the purity of heart, their motivation is just to be glorifying God and truly loving others the way Jesus loves us, that is easily distinguishable from self righteousness. Right. I mean, you know that person’s motivation is pure. You can tell. I mean, children children have a sense of that, you know, whether you’re genuine or not, an instinct.

And other Christians, we can see that, and it’s so inspiring. You know, the the stories that inspire us are the the ones where people are genuinely selfless. But the only way we can be genuinely selfless is if we’re living with Christ’s love

John Mclarty: Mhmm.

Kimberly Faith: And his righteousness. And I think that, I don’t know, I just I love this idea that that god is teaching me that to to shift my way of thinking about who he is and who I am, who my what my identity is in him, and I am free to serve others and to serve him out of the purest motivation and that is love.

John Mclarty: That’s really good. It’s all about knowing him, knowing him more. And we do that, just to summarize some of the points here, by opening his word, spending more time in prayer, worshiping, having that thankful heart, and then seeing Jesus, having the fellowship of believers, seeing Jesus played out in other people’s lives.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. And just to summarize, as our confidence in Christ deepens, our obedience becomes freer, truer, more joyful. We stop having this mentality, Lord, I obey you so you will love me. Instead, it’s, Lord, I love you. Therefore, I’m going to obey.

John Mclarty: Or I obey you so you won’t strike me down.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And because we understand we’re no longer servants trying to earn favor, we are children.

John Mclarty: Very good.

Kimberly Faith: We’re learning to live in the love that we already possess.

John Mclarty: And that’s why knowing our salvation is eternally secure is so important.

Kimberly Faith: So important.

John Mclarty: It frees us for that proper motivation. Yeah. That it’s all him, it’s not us, and that he loves us.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. And when we learn to live in this love that we already know that we possess, there’s no life like it. Gosh, I don’t know about you, dad, but I want more of that in my own life.

John Mclarty: More? Yeah, I think there’s a song. More about Jesus, I would know. Yes.

Kimberly Faith: More of his heavenly love to show. Is that right?

John Mclarty: Think that’s right. Close anyway. Well, sounds good, right? More and more about Jesus.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Well, this has been good, Dan. It’s

John Mclarty: about focusing on him. He started it, so we’re positionally in him. But then we practiced it really by his grace, by blessings and his repentance that we might be addicted to that peace What with

Kimberly Faith: a gift God’s righteousness is and what a continuing gift that actually enables us to give the kind of love he gives us.

John Mclarty: And just, you know, I’m just thinking, just to wrap up here, this self righteousness as a Christian, that’s just a sin.

Kimberly Faith: It is.

John Mclarty: And it’s really something. And we’re all guilty of it. Because like you say, we can do something that’s actually of God and led of God, and then our pride jumps in and says, look what I just did. Yeah. That’s yeah, Satan really does use that and unbelievers to see what they call hypocrisy in Christians.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. And it’s to me, it’s very disarming when somebody when somebody I had a guy tell me that he’d go, well, you know, you guys all just you think your way is the only way. It’s the right way and very self righteous and and, you know, judgmental. And I just looked at him. I said, you’re right.

I said, I said, you’re right.

John Mclarty: Very good.

Kimberly Faith: We’re very much, we’re very much a failure in our own strength, but I can tell you that God never fails. When I am trying to give him kingship in my life, when I’m doing that, that’s the only time I can really live in his righteousness. And rather than denying it, you just own it.

John Mclarty: Like we said before, if you tell that person, Why don’t you go read the Bible about the life of Jesus and then tell me some fault you found in him? Yes, I agree it’s in me. But find some in him, then come talk to me about it.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. But I’m just so grateful that God is so faithful to continue to push me and you and hopefully help what he’s giving us to give to others to be more like Jesus. That’s really It’s where the joy is

John Mclarty: all of him. That’s right. It’s a journey. Amen. And we all struggle, but he’s good.

Kimberly Faith: And the struggle is real, but God is more real. Is he realer? Amen.

John Mclarty: God is greater.

Jacob Paul: You’ve been listening to the truth and love podcast with your hosts, Kimberly Faith and John Mack. To discover more answers to the big questions in life, visit us at gofaithstrong.com.