THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE

THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE

                  THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE

²² That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;

²³ And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

²⁴ And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. {Ephesians 4:22-24}

We must bury the old self and put on the new Spiritual life. True holiness and righteousness comes with this new life. It is the very nature of God the Father. We are truly God’s children if we allow the Spirit lead us. The Spirit joins Himself with our spirit and declares that we are God’s children. The Spirit doesn’t make us fear in bondage as the old Law of Moses did to us. Instead the Spirit has adopted us into God’s family and now we can call God “Daddy! Papa!” with every boldness we have. This means that we are Heirs of God and we have an unbelievable inheritance. Everything God gives as treasure to Jesus Christ belongs to us also.

 All of these is possible thanks to the new law of freedom. This new law is not written in tablets of stones neither is it written in letters but it is written in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. It is the law of the Spirit of life. It gives life unlike the law of sin and death which gives death.

⁴ And we have such trust through Christ toward God. ⁵ Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, ⁶ who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit;^[a] for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.{ 2Corinthians 3:4-6}

This new law came with the new covenant and it has nothing to do with our self-abilities. It is simply based on God’s sufficiency in us. The Spirit of God in us gives us life because He enables us to obey this new law of freedom. The laws are now written in our hearts no longer on tablets of stones.

¹⁵ And the Holy Spirit also gives us his witness. First he says,

¹⁶ “This is the covenant that I will make with them
    in the days to come, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts    and write them on their minds.”

¹⁷ And then he says, “I will not remember their sins and evil deeds any longer.”¹⁸ So when these have been forgiven, an offering to take away sins is no longer needed.{Hebrews 10:15-17 GNT}

In this new law of freedom that came with the new covenant, sins are no longer remembered because they are forgiven. Christ was the offering needed to take away sins. No other sacrifice is required than to accept Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sins. This new law of the new covenant far exceeds the law of sin and death of the old covenant in glory. You can read more about the new covenant in my book titled “NOT GUILTY”

⁷ But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, ⁸ how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? ⁹ For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. ¹⁰ For even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect, because of the glory that excels. ¹¹ For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious. {2Corinthians 3:7-11}

The old law of sin and death engraved in stones was called the ministry of death. It’s a pity that most minsters today are still ministering death to their congregation by emphasizing so much on the laws of Moses. I call such ministers “Ministers of death”. The real ministers of God are those who feed their members with the ministry of the Spirit and emphasize the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

The ministry of the old Law of Moses is the ministry of condemnation but the new law of freedom is the ministry of righteousness. The old covenant has passed away with its rituals and death sentences. Do not stay in a place where all you hear your pastor preach every day is condemnation. You may as well be trying to revive that which Christ already did away with. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to them that believe. Stay under the ministry of righteousness and you will have life.

There is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus.² For the law of the Spirit, which brings us life in union with Christ Jesus, has set me^[a] free from the law of sin and death.{Romans 8:1-2 GNT}

 There is therefore now no condemnation for you because you have been set free from the law of sin and death by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the law of freedom, the law of righteousness. It is written in your heart. Listen to the Holy Spirit who resides on your inside and He will help you fulfil God’s will.  

Jesus has given us a new commandment before He left and that law is based on love. The laws of Moses are all fulfilled in that law. Herein is that law:

³⁴ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

³⁵ By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.{John 13:34-35}

¹⁴ For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”{Galatians 5:14 ESV}

²¹ And so, my dear friends, if our conscience does not condemn us, we have courage in God's presence. ²² We receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. ²³ What he commands is that we believe in his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as Christ commanded us. ²⁴ Those who obey God's commands live in union with God and God lives in union with them. And because of the Spirit that God has given us we know that God lives in union with us. {1John 3:21-24 GNT}

The only thing that is required of us now is to have faith in Christ, love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. We can’t say we love God if we don’t love our neighbours. We must come into a true love relationship with God. A real bride and groom kind of relationship. We must love God with the whole of our hearts minds and souls. This love relationship with Christ will then reflect in how we love our neighbours. You can read more on how to enjoy this love relationship with Christ in my book “THE BRIDE OF CHRIST”.

Truly the greatest commandment is to love God and love man. Once this is achieved, every other commandment is automatically fulfilled

One of them, a lawyer, spoke up: ³⁶ “Sir, which is the most important command in the laws of Moses?”

³⁷ Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.’^38-39 This is the first and greatest commandment. The second most important is similar: ‘Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets stem from these two laws and are fulfilled if you obey them. Keep only these and you will find that you are obeying all the others.”{Matthew 22:35-40 TLB}

 The irony of it is that most churches are trying to obey all the other commandments and religious rituals but fail to obey the most important law of love and faith. Jesus said “keep only these and you will find that you have kept all others”. Isn't it simple enough? The broad way involving so many rules and rituals have been made narrow into just one law of faith and love yet many still prefer the broad way. Jesus said only a few find the narrow way that leads to life. Christ is the only way. Faith in him and love for him and others is the way that leads to life. Chasing after many rules and religious rituals is the way of destruction, the way of sin and death. Only by faith shall the righteous ones live.

 

To be able to love the lord your God and your neighbours, you need the Holy Ghost to help you.

He is the one who helps us come into a true love relationship with God and man. He teaches us how to relate with people from a pure heart of love. He distributes God’s love in our hearts.

⁵ This hope does not disappoint us, for God has poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God's gift to us.{Romans 5:5 GNT}

The Holy Spirit also produces fruit in us which helps us relate with our neighbours and live a pure and holy love lives. The first on the list is love and the others follow but you will notice that when the Holy Spirit produces His fruit in us, there is no longer conflict with the laws of Moses.

²² But the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ humility, and self-control. There is no law against such things as these.{Galatians 5:22-23 GNT}

To round off this article I would like to reiterate that we now live by a new law of freedom. We have no business with the law of sin and death anymore. Keeping a list of rules no longer makes any meaning before God. What matters now is something far more than that, something more glorious and it is called the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus and it is written in our hearts. To be able to walk by this new law, we must have faith in Jesus Christ and allow the Holy Ghost implant His love in our hearts. We must not seek the laws of Moses. God is not as interested in our rule keeping as much as He is interested in our love relationship with Him. If we love Him enough, we would find ourselves naturally obeying His commandment to love our neighbours and whatever His Spirit tells us to do we would do easily. We must therefore seek for a satisfying relationship with God through the Spirit.

Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love. {Galatians 5:5-6 MSG}

⁵ But we by the help of the Holy Spirit are counting on Christ’s death to clear away our sins and make us right with God. ⁶ And we to whom Christ has given eternal life don’t need to worry about whether we have been circumcised or not, or whether we are obeying the Jewish ceremonies or not; for all we need is faith working through love. {Galatians 5:5-6 TLB}

¹⁸ When you are guided by the Holy Spirit, you need no longer force yourself to obey Jewish laws.{Galatians 5:18 TLB}

Spirit controlled men through faith and love please God. Carnal men try to please God by keeping religious laws and rituals. However, without faith it is impossible to please God.

 I repeat, Chasing after many rules and religious rituals is the way of destruction. The way of sin and death. Only by faith shall the righteous ones live. Through faith in Christ Jesus and Love for God we fulfil the law of the spirit of life.

He is love, He is life and he is the author and the finisher of our faith. Chase God, Chase faith, chase love. When all is said and done only three things will count: FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE.

¹³ There are three things that remain—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love {1Corinthians 13:13 TLB}

 ⁸ But let us who live in the light keep sober, protected by the armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the happy hope of salvation.

⁹ For God has not chosen to pour out his anger upon us but to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ; {1Thessalonians 5:8-9 TLB}

Once you obey this new law of faith and love, you have hope of salvation. You expect the rapture with joy knowing that your salvation is secured in Christ. For Christ in you is the hope of glory. His return is at hand and when he comes will he find faith on earth?

KEEP THE FAITH! KEEP THE HOPE! KEEP THE LOVE!

GOD BLESS YOU.

THE NEW LAW OF FREEDOM

THE NEW LAW OF FREEDOM

There is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus.² For the law of the Spirit, which brings us life in union with Christ Jesus, has set me^[a] free from the law of sin and death.{Romans 8:1-2 GNT}

We all know the obvious fact that the Law of Moses condemned all men and made the whole world guilty of sin. The wages of that sin is death. Therefore the Law of Moses is also called the law of sin and death. It was a law that held us hostage in bondage to sin and killed us spiritually when we faulted it. The children of Israel were enslaved all their lives to this law of sin and death. They served under the prison of sin because of their flesh, their human nature. This is how Apostle Paul explained the plight with our human nature because of the law of sin and death:

¹⁴ We know that the Law is spiritual; but I am a mortal, sold as a slave to sin.¹⁵ I do not understand what I do; for I don't do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate. ¹⁶ Since what I do is what I don't want to do, this shows that I agree that the Law is right. ¹⁷ So I am not really the one who does this thing; rather it is the sin that lives in me. ¹⁸ I know that good does not live in me—that is, in my human nature. For even though the desire to do good is in me, I am not able to do it. 

¹⁹ I don't do the good I want to do; instead, I do the evil that I do not want to do. ²⁰ If I do what I don't want to do, this means that I am no longer the one who does it; instead, it is the sin that lives in me.

²¹ So I find that this law is at work: when I want to do what is good, what is evil is the only choice I have. ²² My inner being delights in the law of God. ²³ But I see a different law at work in my body—a law that fights against the law which my mind approves of. It makes me a prisoner to the law of sin which is at work in my body. ²⁴ What an unhappy man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is taking me to death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God, who does this through our Lord Jesus Christ!

This, then, is my condition: on my own I can serve God's law only with my mind, while my human nature serves the law of sin. {Romans 7:14-25 GNT}

 I know some of you can relate to this fight between the spirit and the body. You have done things you knew were wrong to do. You even cried when you sinned and swore never to repeat the same again only to find out that you even did worse the next time you were tempted. I have been there before and I know you have also. I even said to God once “If I do this again, just kill me. I would rather die than to keep disobeying you” My dear friends, I said that because I trusted in myself and believed so much in my ability not to sin again. 

What do you think happened after then? It is not what you think. The next time I stood before my temptation, I was as weak as a man whose hands and legs were chained. My spirit was quoting some scriptures which were countered immediately by my flesh. I struggled between my will and His will. I did worse than I ever did before. 

What I didn’t know was that I needed help, I needed grace to come rescue me from myself. My body was about to destroy me. If you are going through the same struggle that Brother Paul and I went through, I’ve got good news for you. Christ is available to rescue you from yourself so that you will no longer serve the law of sin and death.

Christ came to rescue us from that slavery to the law of sin and death by destroying sin in the flesh and to set us free from the fear of death.

¹⁴ Since the children, as he calls them, are people of flesh and blood, Jesus himself became like them and shared their human nature. He did this so that through his death he might destroy the Devil, who has the power over death, ¹⁵ and in this way set free those who were slaves all their lives because of their fear of death. 

¹⁶ For it is clear that it is not the angels that he helps. Instead, he helps the descendants of Abraham. ¹⁷ This means that he had to become like his people in every way, in order to be their faithful and merciful High Priest in his service to God, so that the people's sins would be forgiven. ¹⁸ And now he can help those who are tempted, because he himself was tempted and suffered. {Hebrews 2:14-18 GNT}

Now he that has the power over death has been destroyed. The devil has been destroyed and we have been set free from the slavery of the fear of death. Christ took our nature so that He can become our faithful High Priest and so our sins are forgiven. Whenever we are tempted, He helps us out. He is the High Priest who is touched by the feelings of our infirmity and makes intercession for us.

What the Law of Moses could not do, God had to send Jesus to do for us by giving us a new law. This law is called the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. It is this new law of freedom that has set us free from the law of sin and death.

There is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus.² For the law of the Spirit, which brings us life in union with Christ Jesus, has set me^[a] free from the law of sin and death. 

³ What the Law could not do, because human nature was weak, God did. He condemned sin in human nature by sending his own Son, who came with a nature like our sinful nature, to do away with sin. ⁴ God did this so that the righteous demands of the Law might be fully satisfied in us who live according to the Spirit, and not according to human nature. ⁵ Those who live as their human nature tells them to, have their minds controlled by what human nature wants. Those who live as the Spirit tells them to, have their minds controlled by what the Spirit wants.

 ⁶ To be controlled by human nature results in death; to be controlled by the Spirit results in life and peace. ⁷ And so people become enemies of God when they are controlled by their human nature; for they do not obey God's law, and in fact they cannot obey it. ⁸ Those who obey their human nature cannot please God.

⁹ But you do not live as your human nature tells you to; instead, you live as the Spirit tells you to—if, in fact, God's Spirit lives in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 

¹⁰ But if Christ lives in you, the Spirit is life for you^[b] because you have been put right with God, even though your bodies are going to die because of sin. ¹¹ If the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from death, lives in you, then he who raised Christ from death will also give life to your mortal bodies by the presence of his Spirit in you. ¹² So then, my friends, we have an obligation, but it is not to live as our human nature wants us to. ¹³ For if you live according to your human nature, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death your sinful actions, you will live. ¹⁴ Those who are led by God's Spirit are God's children. ¹⁵ For the Spirit that God has given you does not make you slaves and cause you to be afraid; instead, the Spirit makes you God's children, and by the Spirit's power we cry out to God, “Father! my Father!” 

¹⁶ God's Spirit joins himself to our spirits to declare that we are God's children. ¹⁷ Since we are his children, we will possess the blessings he keeps for his people, and we will also possess with Christ what God has kept for him; for if we share Christ's suffering, we will also share his glory.{Romans 8:2-17 GNT}

With this new law there is no condemnation for us. This righteous demands of the law is fulfilled in us by the Holy Spirit which dwells in us. We no longer live according to our human nature but according to the Spirit of God. The Spirit tells us what God wants us to do. We are now under the control of the Spirit and are no longer slaves to what our human nature wants. To be controlled by our human nature will make us enemies of God and that will result to death. To have life and peace, we must allow the Spirit control us. That is why you must be born again and be filled with the Spirit of God. 

Without the Spirit of Christ in you, you don’t belong to Him. The Spirit of God in us is Life for us because we have been made righteous even though our body dies because of sin. But glory to God who also gives life to our mortal bodies by His Spirit who lives in us.

We no longer owe the flesh any debt to obey its desires but we owe the spirit our lives to live by His lead and directions. We are no longer under the law of sin and death if we allow the Spirit lead us.

¹⁶ But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.¹⁷ For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. {Galatians 5:16-18 ESV}

²² That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;

²³ And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

²⁴ And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. {Ephesians 4:22-24}

How do I put on this new man who is righteous and holy like God? Watch out for the next article.

EXCEPT YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS EXCEEDS THE PHARISEES'

Except your righteousness exceeds

                      the Pharisees’

^“For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.{Matthew 5:20}”

 This is a statement made by Jesus which many pastors have misunderstood. I hereby want to explain the true meaning of this statement.

Now let’s look at that statement critically. You will find out that there are two kinds of righteousness mentioned there. The first one is the Pharisaic righteousness and the other one is the exceeding righteousness. I will start by explaining the pharisaic righteousness and I will start with questions.

(1)Are the Pharisees actually righteous?

(2) Were they not the same people Jesus convicted of sin when the woman caught in adultery was brought before Jesus?

(3)Were they not the people Jesus told would die in their sins if they didn’t believe in Him?

(4)Were they not the ones Jesus called hypocrites standing on street corners to pray?

(5)Is their righteousness (if any) based on the laws of Moses or on faith in Christ Jesus?

I wonder if these people are really righteous. Let’s see some scriptures about the Pharisees that could help you answer my questions

 “Make certain you do not perform your religious duties in public so that people will see what you do. If you do these things publicly, you will not have any reward from your Father in heaven.

² “So when you give something to a needy person, do not make a big show of it, as the hypocrites do in the houses of worship and on the streets. They do it so that people will praise them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full. ³ But when you help a needy person, do it in such a way that even your closest friend will not know about it. ⁴ Then it will be a private matter. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.

⁵ “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites! They love to stand up and pray in the houses of worship and on the street corners, so that everyone will see them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full. ⁶ But when you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you. {Matthew 6:1-6}

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

⁹ Jesus also told this parable to people who were sure of their own goodness and despised everybody else. ¹⁰ “Once there were two men who went up to the Temple to pray: one was a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood apart by himself and prayed,^[a] ‘I thank you, God, that I am not greedy, dishonest, or an adulterer, like everybody else. I thank you that I am not like that tax collector over there. ¹² I fast two days a week, and I give you one tenth of all my income.’ ¹³ But the tax collector stood at a distance and would not even raise his face to heaven, but beat on his breast and said, ‘God, have pity on me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you,” said Jesus, “the tax collector, and not the Pharisee, was in the right with God when he went home. For those who make themselves great will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be made great.”{Luke 18:914}

The above verses certainly have shown you some truths about the Pharisees but I have some more for you. If you didn’t read the verses above please endeavour to read the ones below. You will find out about the pharisaic kind of righteousness and decide for yourself if you want that kind of righteousness. This is what Jesus said about the Pharisees:

Religious Fashion Shows

23 ^1-3 Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.

^4-7 “Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’

^8-10 “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.

^11-12 “Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.

Frauds!

¹³ “I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won’t let anyone else in either.

¹⁵ “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.

^16-22 “You’re hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, ‘If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that’s nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that’s serious.’ What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: ‘If you shake hands on a promise, that’s nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that’s serious’? What ridiculous hair-splitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless.

^23-24 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God’s Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that’s wrong from start to finish, nit-picking over commas and semicolons?

^25-26 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.

^27-28 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.

^29-32 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You’re cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count.

^33-34 “Snakes! Reptilian sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It’s on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.

^35-36 “You can’t squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah’s son, whom you murdered at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I’m telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation.

^37-39 “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God’s news! How often I’ve ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn’t let me. And now you’re so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say? Only this: I’m out of here soon. The next time you see me you’ll say, ‘Oh, God has blessed him! He’s come, bringing God’s rule!’”{Matthew 23:1-39 MSG}

An entire chapter was dedicated to lambasting the Pharisees, yet Jesus said except your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven .It means that the pharisaic kind of righteousness which is based on the Law of Moses and which is always faulted can never take any man to heaven. Most preachers think that to exceed the pharisaic righteousness you will need to obey more laws than they did. No sir! That is a wrong teaching. I have stated before in this book that no man can keep all of God’s laws by himself.

To explain the second kind of righteousness, The Exceeding righteousness, let’s look at the verse of scripture below

 I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.{Philippians 3:9 MSG}

Now you must understand that the righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees, is the robust kind of righteousness and it has nothing to do with rule keeping. It is not connected to obeying more laws than the Pharisees did. It is simply a product of faith in Christ Jesus. It is the righteousness gift He gave us when He alone fulfilled the laws for us. It is God’s righteousness through faith in Christ Jesus. It exceeds that of the Pharisees. The laws of Moses and the prophets bore witness to this exceeding righteousness. They prophesied about it long ago. It is this exceeding righteousness that makes men perfect as their heavenly Father is. It is the saving righteousness that Jesus meant when He said “with God all things are possible” It is only possible through Him. 

. It is the righteousness that came with the kingdom of God. It proceeded out of heaven. It is not an earthly righteousness based on earthly rules. When Jesus announced the kingdom, the first thing on His mind was the exceeding righteousness. He said except you have this exceeding righteousness, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. 


A lot of people have the pharisaic kind of righteousness and the more laws they keep the more pharisaic righteousness they have but the truth is that no matter how much of that law -based righteousness you have, you still will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Only the exceeding righteousness by faith gives us access into the kingdom of heaven. Under this kingdom righteousness, we don’t judge each other because we all have the same value of righteousness by faith. We all know that without God’s help we are nothing and can never attain righteousness. But under the pharisaic righteousness, one person feels more righteous than the other because of how many laws he could obey. There is a judgemental spirit operational in the supposed righteous ones and a spirit of pretence in the seemingly unqualified ones because they want to appear outwardly righteous too.

The pharisaic righteousness based on the laws of Moses had been before Christ came but He said Repent for the kingdom of Heaven is here when He arrived our earthly realm. The first thing about God’s kingdom is Righteousness. If the righteousness by laws was sufficient there wouldn’t have been need for the arrival of the kingdom with a righteousness that is based on faith.

 ¹⁷ From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.{Matthew 4:17}

¹⁷ For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.{Romans 14:17}

This exceeding righteousness that came with the kingdom has peace and joy in the Holy Ghost with it. It is based on faith for being justified {declared righteous} by faith we have peace with God. The pharisaic righteousness is not based on faith and lacks peace and joy. It is based on the law and the law is not of faith. Remember, whatever is not of faith is sin. No wonder Jesus said REPENT for the kingdom of heaven {with a faith righteousness} is here.

¹¹ But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.

¹² And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.{Galatians 3:11-12}

²³ And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.{Romans 14:23}

I decide to enjoy this exceeding righteousness from Jesus. I reject the pharisaic righteousness with all its laws and religious rituals. Make your choice today. Jesus’ righteousness without the laws or the pharisaic righteousness with the laws? The choice is yours.