Creflo Dollar - Defining Self-Righteousness
If you have your Bibles, go with me to the Book of Galatians chapter 5 and verse 4 and Galatians chapter 2. Last week we talked about defining self-righteousness. We're really talking about the righteousness of God. But if you can understand self-righteousness, then I think it'll add a lot more accuracy to your understanding of what it means to receive the righteousness which comes by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's important to understand that you are righteous because of what Jesus has done and not because of what you do. It is not you trying to strive to achieve righteousness, but it is you who will release your faith in what Jesus has already done and you believe what Jesus has done and you're righteous.
And that's important because Satan wants to attack your righteousness, which is now your identity. He wants to attack your identity and he wants to condemn you and get you to, you know, striving to try to achieve something that Jesus has already achieved. And then we're going to talk about some things, I think, that'd be a blessing to you. So let's just pick up with this, defining self-righteousness. Galatians chapter 5:4 says, "Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; you are fallen from grace".
Now look at this in the New Living Translation because he tells us what it means to fall from grace. To fall from grace means to fall back into the performance of the law. Look at this in the NLT. He says, "For if you are trying to make yourself right with God by keeping the law", that's what we were raised with. We were trying to make ourselves right with God by keeping the law. He says, "So if you're trying to make yourself right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ". See, your performance and your self-effort to try to be made right by God by you keeping the law, the Mosaic Law, he says you're cut off from Christ. You have fallen away from God's grace.
Well, let's once again define what self-righteousness is. Self-righteousness, the simplest way I could define it would be people who are striving to get right with God. People who strive and work and sweat to do what they think they need to do to get right with God, that's self-righteousness. You're trying to become righteous through your own performance. Notice in Galatians chapter 2:16, let's read that in the NLT. Galatians 2:16. So self-righteousness is a person who was working hard and striving to get right with God, and that's what happened to a lot of us when we first got born again and we joined religious churches. We were working hard to be right with God. "What do I have to do to be right with God? How do I need to speak to be right with God"? Everything was about striving to be right with God.
Galatians 2:16 in the NLT says, "Yet we know that a person is made right with God," how? "by faith in Jesus Christ". He says you're made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. Wow. "And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law". He makes it so, I mean, it's just right there in front of your face. He's saying you are self-righteous when you take upon yourself the responsibility of trying to achieve your righteousness instead of trying to receive righteousness that Jesus has given you. You're righteous because of Jesus. You're not righteous because of what you do, you're righteous because of Jesus. And when you have faith in Jesus, then you are the righteousness of God.
Now, last week I said that, we gave a definition for religion 'cause I wanted you to see, you know, what do I mean when you hear me say that's religious or talk about religion or write a book that says why I hate religion. Well, religion is the same thing as self-righteousness. It's the same thing as self-righteousness. It's working hard. It's man's pursuit to make himself right before God. That's what religion is. Religion is a person's pursuit to try to make himself right with God. Self-righteousness is a person's pursuit or striving to try to make himself right with God. Religion and self-righteousness are exactly the same, and most of us came out of religious institutions, religious churches. And just think back what it was like. It was you striving to make yourself right with God. You had to do bam, bam, bam, bam. You had to do doon, doon, doon, doon.
If you didn't do that, then you get condemned. When I say, you know, thank God we're not in religion anymore, thank God we're not in self-righteousness anymore. I use those terms interchangeably. Religion and self-righteousness are exactly the same. It is man's pursuit, his striving to try to do something that will make him right with God rather than receiving what Jesus has already done. If you understand that, say "amen". And so I think I closed with this. Religion operates through guilt and fear. Religion operates, or self-righteousness, if you want to examine whether or not you're in self-righteousness and/or religion, then there will always be the presence of guilt and fear.
Think about when you were in religious churches. Think about it. When you were in religious churches you were full of fear and you were full of guilt, and a lot of that guilt and fear was coming from the pulpit. "You know, if you don't do this, then God don't like ugly. And the reason why that didn't happen for you is because you didn't tithe, or the reason why that didn't happen for you is 'cause you got a divorce, or the reason that didn't happen..." And just constant guilt and fear, and I compared this last week. This dependency on guilt is what keeps religion alive and well just like a drug dealer will give an addict a small dose of drugs to keep him coming back for more, and that's what happens, that's what keeps religion and self-righteousness alive: guilt and fear.
Guilt and fear, it keeps religion and self, I mean, listen. When I was in religious churches, I just felt guilty all the time. I felt so guilty and so fearful I just one time thought, "Well, I probably ain't even going to go to heaven so I don't even know why I'm still coming to church". I mean, 'cause they'd add something to the list all the time. Guilt and fear is what keeps religion alive and well. Guilt and fear is what keeps self-righteousness alive and well. Now, I could go down the road and probably help you recall a lot of the guilt and a lot of the fear that you had. But you were not only in religion, you were in self-righteousness.
Now, before I go on, why do we need to get rid of the guilt? Well, if we don't get rid of the guilt and the fear, but mostly the guilt, then self-righteousness stays alive. If you don't get rid of the guilt and the fear, religion stays alive. So let me give you five results of guilt and maybe this will motivate you to get out of it. Five results of guilt.
Number one, if you maintain that guilt, number one, self-condemnation will show up. So you're not only going to be in self-righteousness, self-righteousness will move to self-condemnation. You will start condemning yourself and you will never be enough and it'll never be enough. Self-righteousness will move to self-condemnation. Guilt is present. The result of guilt being present is self-condemnation. And see, when a person condemns himself because of guilty feelings, he's also opening the door for a host of other emotional problems. When those guilty feelings, you just maintain those guilty feelings all the time, loneliness eventually will show up, inferiority complex will show up, anxiety will show up. Emotional problems show up when self-condemnation comes as a result of you not dealing with the guilt, as a result of you not dealing with the fear.
Number two, number two, a guilty person usually feels that he is merely getting what he deserves for being so bad. He feels like, "I'm only getting what I deserve for feeling for being so bad". That's just totally opposite to what Jesus through the grace of God wants to get you to thinking. But if you maintain that guilt, then every time you look around you start feeling, "Well, you know, this happened. I deserved it". And there's no resistance because you're walking around thinking you deserve it. You won't stand up and fight against it because that guilt maintains that self-righteousness.
Number three, now this is pretty big, when you maintain guilt in your life and you don't get rid of it, then you place blame on others for your problems and for your wrong. You play the blame game. You place blame on others for your problems and for your wrongs. And when you place blame on others and play the blame game blaming others for all of the issues you have in your life, it just only demonstrates that you have failed to accept responsibility for your own actions and that's, again, you're in self-righteousness again. You have yet to accept responsibilities. If you find that you're always just blaming somebody for where you are, how you feel, what you're going through, you're in self-righteousness, man. You're in self-righteousness, and that guilt is what's keeping that self-righteousness alive.
Number four, pessimism is a result of maintaining and not getting rid of the guilt out of your life. Pessimism, that negative outlook on life. You got a negative outlook on everything. You remember, I forgot what cartoon this was, but I think it might have been Charlie Brown. I don't know. You remember the dude that says, "Oh no, we'll never make it"? Nobody remembers that but me? Okay, was it the dog? The dog? Yeah. "We'll never make it". Was it Snoopy? No, it wasn't Snoopy. I don't think it was Snoopy. But anyway, that pessimism comes because the guilt is still there because you're still in self-righteousness. It's hard to have a positive attitude with a heavy load of guilt. Difficult to have a great attitude when you're loaded down with guilt.
And then the last result of guilt is going to be physical illness. You carry around guilt and you stay in self-righteousness and you stay in religion, you get sick. Physically it begins to affect your physical body. And so I am saying that we cannot be in guilt because dependency on guilt and fear, it keeps you in self-righteousness and that is not the will of God for your life. His will is for you to receive the righteousness which comes from him. In fact, I ask myself a question. Do I humble myself by what I do, or do I humble myself by who I am in Christ Jesus? And I found out that I really humble myself by who I am in Christ Jesus. I am the righteousness of God. I humble myself because I'm submitting myself to who God says that I am. I am righteous. All right? When you start believing you're righteous, you'll start doing what's right.
But if you keep struggling with who you are in Christ, if you keep struggling with "I am the righteousness of God," then, you know, you're going to always struggle with your behavior. But the day you settle that you're the righteousness of God, the behavior begins to line up with your identity. But a lot of people are, you know, the other way around. You're working so hard, striving so hard to behave right so that that can define who you are. That's completely backwards. That's self-righteousness. Okay? Let's look at these Scriptures real quick. I think they'll really bring this stuff home.
Look at Ephesians chapter 2 in the NLT. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9, and then Titus chapter 3 and verse 5 in the NLT. Look at this. He says, "God saved you by his grace," when, "when you believed. And you can't take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it". Salvation, I love this, it's not a reward for the good things we have done. So don't ever think that the gifts that you get from God is a reward for the good things you have done. Salvation is not a reward for the good things you've done. You see now clearly what religion does? Religion has you striving and working like somehow you're going to get the reward for the good things you have done. It's not a gift for the good things you have done. He says, "So none of us can boast about it".
If you ever find yourself boasting about the gifts that came from God, you're in self-righteousness. I guarantee you you're in self-righteousness because it is not about gifting you based on what you have done. Now look at this in Titus 3:5 in the NLT. This is good, too. Titus 3:5 in the NLT. Hallelujah. "He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done..." There it is again. He saved us not because of the righteous things we have done. I don't know if you remember, but the day when you got saved, but prior to that, you ain't did too many righteous things. You was already messy. "He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his," what? His mercy.
In fact, he said, "You deserved some bad, but I saved you". That's his mercy, you know. "He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and a new life through the Holy Spirit" as the administrator of our lives. That's powerful Scripture. Now, go to Philippians chapter 3, verses 4 through 6, in the NLT. Philippians 3:4 through 6. I just want you to see the number of times you see this in Scripture and how people who are still religious, still striving to be right with God and there are these Scriptures right in here that says not do that and I'm thinking, "Wow, where were they"? They were in the same place. I guess through fear and guilt we just weren't paying attention to that. We were just trying to be right with God without knowing that he'd already made us right with him. We had received it by faith.
Verse 4, I'm going to read verse 4 through probably 9. "Though I could have confidence in my own efforts if anyone could..." now, Paul said if there's anybody that could be confident in his self-righteousness, it would be him. He said, "Indeed, if others have reasons for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more". Now watch this. "I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am pure-blooded citizen of Israel. I'm a member of the tribe of Benjamin. I'm a real Hebrew if ever was one. I was a member of the Pharisees," so he was a Pharisee, "who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. I was a zealous that I had harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault. I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done".
Now, you get what he was saying? He thought that working to try to be right with God, he thought it was valuable until he saw what Christ was done. Go back to that Scripture, verse 7. Before he saw what Christ was done, he thought it was valuable. He says, "But now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done". So you've got to consider religion and self-righteousness worthless now that you understand what Christ has done. All right, look at the next verse. Verse 8, "Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith".
It's all over the New Testament. It's all over the New Testament. So what we got to do is we got to examine our lives and say, "Now, Lord, show me where in my life where I am still striving to try to be right with you rather than having faith in the righteousness that you have already made available to me". This is big, big stuff. It's probably, when you start sweating and striving the most to deserve something from God is when you've absolutely fallen from grace back into the performance of the law trying to get God to do something, and then at this time most people say, "Well, yeah. But what do you do? You got to do something".
See, now you're fighting against religion. You're just so used to doing that. And I don't know why because you think, "Well, you know, did something really big happen"? If anything happened as a result of that, it's called mercy. It's like God knew that one day you were going to get it straightened out and stuff like that, but that's not how you do it, ladies and gentlemen. "I have faith in Jesus Christ. I'm the righteousness of God. I have a right to healing. I got a right to deliverance. I got a right to prosperity. I got a right to a good life. I got a right to peace. Because Jesus is my righteousness, I have faith in him and now I take a rest". That's what this is all about. Amen?
Now, let's go to John. This is pretty cool. I'm going to look at three Scriptures that go with John. John 15, verses 4 through 5, in the NLT, and then I want to go to Isaiah chapter 10:15, and then Romans 6:13. There's a great message in these three Scriptures. John 15:4 through 5, he says, "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch..." Say out loud, "I am a branch". "For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine". Is that true? A branch cannot produce fruit if it's been cut off from the vine or severed from the vine. "And you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me". And he said he's the vine, right? Next verse. "Yes, I am the vine. You are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing".
So here's what he's trying to say. You're trying to be righteous apart from him. You're not going to produce it. You're trying to be redeemed apart from him. Not going to happen. You're trying to prosper apart from him. Not going to happen. He says, "You can't do anything being severed from me". And so the whole theme here is in the New Testament it is not you trying to achieve anything. Jesus has achieved everything for you. Your job is to stay attached to him so you can receive from him.