A lot of people see Christianity
in just simply being forgiven. And that's amazing, isn't it?
That all the things in my past, and all the things I'm gonna
do, I can look back to and I can say, you know what? It was horrible
that I did it, but I'm forgiven. But it's more of a negative view. It's looking at that God did
something for me to forgive the bad things that I've done in
my life. And it's looking at the gospel
in a sense that it's sort of like a warrior coming back from
war, sort of going, all right, well, I survived. I made it. And just sort of from that point
forward, just living as a survivor. And there's too many people in
here. You're living right now like you're a survivor. The scripture
says that in the gospel, we are imputed with Christ's righteousness,
accredited. It's like a bank term, right?
Accredited. an account at the bank. So looking
at just that, I am forgiven of my sin, right? That sort of leaves me in a place
of like, all right, well, tomorrow I got to struggle at it again.
It'd be sort of like, and I'm grateful, but here we go again.
You know, I can really tell you're grateful. And so it'd be like, you've got
$100,000 in debt. But you go to the bank, and the
bank goes, man, your account's at zero. You're wiped out. You
no longer owe a dime, right? You'd be like, man, that's awesome
that I don't owe all that, but now I got to get to work. You
know, now I got to start earning away, you know? And that's how
too many Christians live. Like, man, that was great. He
forgave me. But now you're just struggling along. When to understand
that I'm approved, that I'm righteous with God, it's like going to
the bank and owing a million dollars in debt and going there,
not just being wiped to zero, but realizing my account is at
50 million dollars. And I don't leave there and go,
glad it was paid. Of course it doesn't. Right? I would begin, you and I all,
right, would begin to live rich. We'd begin to live like kings.
Because our whole status has changed. I'm not just forgiven,
I've been given a ton of wealth. A ton of wealth. Now think about
that. What would it be like for somebody,
for you and I, to live with an incredible amount of spiritual
and emotional wealth? Oh, man. You know what? Somebody critiques you, you don't
got to get all defensive and tell them. Right? Because you have the spiritual
and emotional equity to take some criticism. I mean, because
isn't that what we do? I mean, somebody says, hey, you
know, you might want to, you know, that boss comes in and
says, you know, there's one thing. What? You know, immediately defensive. What are you doing? You're defending
your identity and your righteousness. You know, when you become, when
you're filled with spiritual and emotional righteousness and
wealth, you're able to be like, you know, I'm going to take a
look at that. I know that I've failed miserably,
and I thank you for pouring into that in my life and pointing
it out to me so that I can maybe do something differently, right?
If you have spiritual and emotional wealth knowing that I'm acceptably
for God, I don't have to earn it from Him, and I don't need
to earn it from everybody else. So I don't have to get super
caught up all the time in trying to control and manipulate what
people think about me, and stories about this and that, and what
somebody might be saying, and trying to get validation from
people all the time, and super insecure about what they might
think, and approval seeking. Man, you know what? All of that
is a problem of righteousness. of not understanding that Jesus
paid it all and that I'm accepted, that I'm not just forgiven, I
have a new status, right? I don't have to live defensively.
We can come to a place and we have that spiritual and emotional
wealth. We're able to admit when we're
wrong and confess and be like, yeah, you know what? I messed
up. You know what? Would you forgive me? Because I don't have
to try to manipulate what they think about me. Because what's
most important is not what you think about me, it's what God
thinks about me.