A Quote by Tony Evans
Righteousness has to do with the vertical standard that God gives us to please Him. Justice has to do with the horizontal expression of that righteous standard in the lives of others.
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Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God's sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others' lives until they are totally yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit. As workers for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God's testimony to us as His workers. God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others.
Passive righteousness tells us that God does not need our good works. Active righteousness tells us that our neighbor does. The aim and direction of good works are horizontal, not vertical.
He that doth righteousness; that is, righteousness which the gospel calleth so, is righteous; that is, precedent to, or before he doth that righteousness. For he doth not say, he shall make his person righteous by acts of righteousness that he shall do; for then an evil tree may bear good fruit, yea, and make itself good by doing so; but he saith, He that doth righteousness is righteous; as he saith, He that doth righteousness is born of him.
A character standard is far more important than even a gold standard. The success of all economic systems is still dependent upon both righteous leaders and righteous people. In the last analysis, our national future depends upon our national character that is, whether it is spiritually or materially minded.
The civil magistrate cannot function without some ethical guidance, without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not to be the revealed law of God (which, we must note, was addressed specifically to perennial problems in political morality), then what will it be? In some form or expression it will have to be the law of man (or men) — the standard of self-law or autonomy.
In the case of man, righteousness is adjustment to God, and an articulation with man based upon that adjustment. Are you a righteous man? Am I a righteous man? Are you righteous? Then, if so, wherein does your righteousness consist? That your whole life is adjusted to God, and is moulded by that adjustment. This is righteousness.
The whole meaning of morality is a rule that we ought to obey whether we like it or not. If so, then the idea of creating a morality we like better is incoherent. Moreover, it would seem that until we had created our new morality, we would have no standard by which to criticize God. Since we have not yet created one, the standard by which we judge Him must be the very standard that He gave us. If it is good enough to judge Him by, then why do we need a new one?
When the Holy Spirit comes to live within you, He will come with the ability to produce righteousness. Righteousness is the nature of God, which when imparted to the human spirit, produces the rightness of God in the human spirit. It gives man right standing with God; it gives him the ability to stand in the presence of God without a sense of guilt, inferiority or condemnation. It means rightness in God. The righteousness of God is wrought in you.
When God's righteousness is mentioned in the gospel, it is God's action of declaring righteous the unrighteous sinner who has faith in Jesus Christ. The righteousness by which a person is justified (declared righteous) is not his own but that of another, Christ.
A low standard of prayer means a low standard of character and a low standard of service. Those alone labor effectively among men who impetuously fling themselves upward towards God.
At the end of the day, you can't impeach somebody over obstruction of justice where you use the wrong legal standard, a legal standard that doesn't exist.
Just as the normative standard for the good and for the true is God, so the ultimate standard of beauty is God.
We can often do more by doing less. God is not particularly interested in quantity production. That is an American standard, not a Bible standard.
We hold that no person or set of persons can properly establish a standard of expression for others.
Only few know what righteousness is. It is righteous to suffer for your own foolishness. When you sin, it is righteous to bear the consequences of your sin without complaining. Saying what you mean and what is on your heart when you deal with other people, that is righteous. One who hungers and thirsts for righteousness will be filled-and being filled with righteousness is something very great.
Biblical righteousness is more than a private and personal affair; it includes social righteousness as well....Thus Christians are committed to hunger for righteousness in the whole human community as something pleasing to a righteous God.
