Ruined Righteousness
I thank God that there is some really good teaching today on righteousness. Christians are being taught the valuable truth that righteousness is a gift that you receive when you receive Jesus, not something that you work for. They are correctly taught that they are justified, meaning just-as-if-I’d never sinned! They are correctly taught that they are just as righteous as Jesus and that their current righteousness is perfect with no need for improvement, now or ever. They are correctly taught that they are accepted in the Beloved and welcome in God’s presence. They are correctly taught that Jesus paid for them to be free from a nagging sense of guilt.
Then the teacher gets into a discussion of 1 John 1:9 and ruins the whole thing!
There are at least three icky variations at this point:
Righteousness Ruiner #1
According to this variation, when you confess a specific sin to God, you are cleansed from all unrighteousness. That is supposed to sound like good news. But that HAS to mean that BEFORE you confessed that sin to God, you were NOT cleansed from all unrighteousness! It would make no sense to be cleansed if you are already completely clean. So the inescapable conclusion is that when you sin, you lose your righteousness and have to get it back by confessing that sin. If you still had even one iota of unrighteousness, it would mean that sin makes you stop being the righteousness of God in Christ. If you need to be cleansed even in the slightest, you are NOT a righteous as Jesus. Your righteousness CAN improve, so it isn’t perfect after all. It is NOT just as if you’d never sinned. If you’d never sinned, you would not need to be cleansed from ANY unrighteousness!
This teaching ruins your righteousness. Now rather than being STRICTLY a gift from God, YOU have to do something to maintain and perfect it – stay out of sin and confess your sin if you DO sin.
It is very hard to understand in this scenario how you could BE the righteousness of God in Christ. Either you ARE the righteousness of God or you AREN’T. You can’t be stuck somewhere in the middle because you sinned. Righteousness is a binary proposition – you either have Jesus’ perfect righteousness or you don’t. To sum up Righteousness Ruiner #1, sin destroys your righteousness and you have to do something to get it back.
Righteousness Ruiner #2
Perhaps seeing the obvious problem with Righteousness Ruiner #1, a second variation says that you don’t lose your righteousness when you sin. Instead, it says that you keep your right standing but you temporarily lose your fellowship with God. Then confessing your sin gets you back into proper fellowship with God.
This is interesting (though not in a good way) for two reasons. First, the verse in question (1 John 1:9) doesn’t say a thing about fellowship! So it’s hard to see how you can get a doctrine about fellowship from a verse that never says anything about fellowship from any angle. You’d be adding to the verse, which has an adverse effect on your interpretation! Second, John just got through telling you that our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3), so it is really hard to understand how John could suddenly make a U-turn and say that sinning (which we ALL still do) takes away our fellowship. John never said anything in that chapter about our fellowship with the Father and with Jesus being subject to revocation. John wasn’t perfect when he wrote his letter, and HE still had fellowship with the Father and the Son anyway. So why shouldn’t you?
It makes you wonder – given that you are seated with Christ in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6) and that Christ sits at the right hand of God (Mark 16:19, Hebrews 10:12) how could God not hear you when you’re sitting right next to Him? Nothing in the New Testament teaches that you lose your heavenly seating when you sin, which we all do.
If your righteousness can’t keep you in fellowship with God, what good is it?
I address the horribleness of the idea that God gives you the silent treatment when you sin in the discussion What 1 John 1:9 Really Means. For the purpose of this discussion, I want to emphasize that if sin takes away your fellowship with God, things are NOT just as if you’d never sinned. If you’d never sinned, you would certainly not have lost the right to fellowship freely with God! God and Jesus are always on speaking terms, so if you have ANY impediment to your ability to talk with God, you are NOT just as righteous as Jesus and your righteousness has room to improve. You are not as welcome as before in God’s presence, certainly not as welcome as JESUS is, and YOU have to do something to fix the situation. Your righteousness has been ruined again according to this teaching. Now it depends on YOU, not just on Jesus’ finished work. Bummer.
Righteousness Ruiner #3
Seeing the obvious problems with these other positions, the teacher asserts that you have positional or legal forgiveness, but now you need “familial forgiveness.” This is a new kind of forgiveness invented by the teacher (or a preacher whose book the teacher read) that is never mentioned in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t mention any different kinds or levels of forgiveness. You’re either forgiven or you aren’t.
But your righteousness just got ransacked again. It is NOT just as if you’d never sinned. If you’d never sinned, you would not need familial forgiveness, whatever on earth that is. If you are in lack of familial forgiveness because you’ve sinned and haven’t confessed it yet, your standing with God has room for improvement, which means that you do NOT have perfect right standing with God at the moment. You no longer have JESUS’ right standing. It depends on YOUR efforts again, so it is no longer strictly a gift as God told you that it is in Romans 5:17. Rats! It was so much nicer when your righteousness was all based on grace without your efforts to maintain it!
The Common Issue
If sin can change your righteousness, righteousness is no longer a gift. According to all three of the Righteousness Ruiner teachings, your righteousness now depends on your works – how good you are at avoiding and confessing sin. In other words, your righteousness is now LAW-based, not GRACE-based. This negates the whole New Testament message of grace!
Someone might object, “If you sin, even you admit that God will correct you, so He would not be dealing with you “just as if you’d never sinned.” But correction and right standing are separate issues. You do NOT lose your right standing when you sin. If you did, your righteousness would be a matter of your works and not purely God’s grace. God in His love (not His anger) will correct you if you are missing the mark in any area. But you are still welcome in His presence – accepted in the Beloved because of Jesus’ shed blood – even if God is correcting you about something.
Others might object, “Jesus said that they are blessed who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Thus, we should hunger and thirst for it rather than claiming to have obtained it all.” But this is where we have to consider that this was a pre-resurrection statement. Those who hungered and thirsted for righteousness would find it in Christ after His resurrection, and they would be filled with that righteousness. References to righteousness in the Church Age refer to something that we have obtained as a gift, not something that we can get more of if we’re hungry and thirsty enough.
If some teachers would just get 1 John 1:9 right, they would have some awesome righteousness teaching instead of generally very good righteousness teaching.