Have you ever given somebody a gift (or tried to) and they didn’t receive it (or had great difficulty receiving it)?

I have. Recently, I attempted to purchase a massage for an individual. They would not receive because they thought it was too much. They had trouble thinking they were worth it. I did not argue with them about it, or try to make them take it, but it made me think about how often I have had this attitude in my relationship with the Lord.

 

Throughout the New Testament, we are told about our worth in Christ. It is not of ourselves. It is a gift given to us when we make Jesus the Lord of our lives. In receiving salvation, we have to ask if we believe we obtain everything that comes along with it. The biggest thing to me is who God made us to be in Christ.

To the Father we are priceless, but most of us have a hard time comprehending it and acting upon.

 

2 Corinthians 5:21 makes it very clear – “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”. Jesus became sin, so we would be made righteous. To become something means to turn into, change into, be transformed into, be appointed, be assigned as. According to this, we turn into, change into, are transformed into, we are appointed to be, assigned to be the righteousness of God when we receive Jesus as the Lord of our life. That is powerful! Now, we have to believe it and act upon it.

 

Righteous means – good, virtuous, upright, upstanding, decent, ethical, principled, moral, honest, law-abiding, noble, pure, justified, freedom from guilt or blame. When we do things that are contrary to God’s Word, we struggle with believing that this is the truth, but it is. God made us this way in Christ.

The more we choose to accept the fact that we are righteous, the more we will act like we are. It is a matter of receiving, believing and acting.

Sometimes we get gifts that we do not understand how to use and they sit unused. When we spend time attempting to learn how to operate it, we begin to grasp how to work the gift……then it becomes beneficial to us.

 

Learning how to work God’s gift of salvation works the same way. The more time we spend reading the manual and acting on what it says, the more  proficient we get at being righteous. People see it when we give ourselves to using it. Hebrews 5:12-14 tells us that milk is for babies. It is for those who are unskilled in the word of righteousness. In other words, they do not use their righteousness. As we grow in using the righteousness that God gave us, our senses get exercised and are able to discern between good and evil.

 

It is all about using the gift in the right way, because sometimes we get a gift and do not use it correctly.

When that happens we do not get the full benefit of the gift, sometimes we get frustrated with it and stop using it and oftentimes, it breaks. With salvation the same type of thing can occur. We do not experience the full blessing. We get frustrated because we do not spend the time that is necessary to learn how to use the gift of righteousness that God has bestowed on us in Christ. It takes meditation and action, but as we put time and effort into it we walk in the benefits of our salvation.

 

My admonition this month is to take time to learn how to use the gift of righteousness we have in Christ Jesus our Lord.