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The Daily Word of Righteousness
But What If We—Don't?
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9-11—NIV)
Our traditional evangelical thinking is that the New Testament teaches a state of grace, that we stand in grace, that we are saved by the merits of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we had better do some hard thinking, find out what the goal of salvation actually is, and then look again at our traditions.
"May be pure and blameless." "Filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ." The fruit of righteousness.
When reading through Philippians last night, during my nightly devotions, I came across the above passage.
Everyone who is acquainted with my teaching knows my belief that current evangelical teaching and preaching is not emphasizing nearly enough the role of righteous behavior in the Christian salvation, how absolutely critical it is that we are transformed morally.
The passage from Philippians reveals clearly, it seems to me, that Paul is not speaking here of being filled with the fruits of imputed righteousness but the fruit of actual righteous behavior.
Would you agree with this? I think most Christians would.
I think nearly every Christian pastor and teacher would agree we ought to be growing in righteousness each day, although some are emphasizing "grace" to the point that any effort we make to keep Christ's commandments appears to be an affront to God's willingness to save us independently of our behavior. (We enclose grace in quotation marks because the New Testament in most instances does not define "grace" solely as forgiveness, as we do today, which is a problem in itself.)
Even such extremists of the "grace" preaching probably would not deny that Philippians 1:9-11 is implying there is at least some Divine interest in how Christians behave: "Filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God." Such passages are numerous in the New Testament.
I can't imagine anyone insisting we are saved by our beliefs about Christ apart from a daily interaction with the living Savior who continually is leading us in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. However, those who keep pressing "salvation is by faith alone" might be tempted to take such a position.
We will assume, then, that nearly every Christian, leader or follower, agrees that Christians ought to live an upright life, and righteous behavior is somehow connected to Christianity.
The problem arises concerning what will happen to us IF WE DO NOT LIVE A RIGHTEOUS LIFE.
What if we don't live the Christian life? Or is there even such a thing as a Christian life as characterized by godly behavior?
The majority opinion, I believe, is that even if we do not live a righteous life we are saved anyway because we "stand in grace." A "state of grace" exists, it is maintained, that protects us in case we do not obey the commandments of Christ and His Apostles with any suitable degree of fervency.
To be continued.