First of all, we are called in righteousness . God will not work apart from righteousness. We receive imputed (ascribed) righteousness when we first accept Christ. Righteousness is assigned to us on the basis of the shed blood of the cross of Calvary. Then, as the Holy Spirit leads us in the conquest of our fleshly nature and self-will, righteousness is wrought in us—an actual, observable righteousness of deed, word, motive, and imagination.

In the ultimate sense, all righteousness is imputed. God reserves the authority to determine who is righteous and who is not righteous. As we obey God, walking by faith in Him, He imputes righteousness to us. In the beginning our behavior is not according to God's standards. Yet, God imputes righteousness to us because we have obeyed Him by turning away from the Law of Moses and placing our trust in Christ. Divine righteousness was obtained for us through the fact that the Lord Jesus died on the cross in our place.

As we move ahead in our discipleship our behavior begins to approach God's standard. God still imputes righteousness to us because we are obeying Him, because we are living by faith in Him, because we are receiving the salvation He has provided through the death of His Son. But now it is an actual righteousness, as measured by both the Divine and the human standard, that has been produced in our personality by the grace of God working in us.

The mammoth error of much Christian thinking is the concept that our salvation in Christ includes only forgiveness and a righteousness imputed to us independently of and without reference to our personality and behavior. This error has destroyed the Christian churches. It is a modern expression of the ancient heresy termed antinomianism .

The truth is, Jesus did not come primarily to forgive us and to give us righteousness apart from what we are and what we do but rather to conform us to His image in personality and behavior. God's Glory is not so much in forgiving the sinner as it is in making the sinner a son.

The Servant of the Lord always is called "in righteousness." The warfare between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of the devil is not waged in terms of power. God possesses all power and never relinquishes His almighty power. God never gives His glory to another. No creature, angelic or human, has any power whatever except that which has been assigned to him and is supervised directly by God Himself.

Rather, the battles of the Lord are fought according to righteousness, holiness, and obedience to God. Michael and his angels can cast Satan and his angels out of Heaven only as the saints overcome the accuser. The saints do not overcome the accuser by fighting in their own strength but by faith in the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their Spirit-created testimony, and by loving not their own life to the death.

To be continued.