Creflo Dollar - Maintaining Your Righteous Stance - Part 3
If you have your Bibles, go with me once again to the book of Romans chapter 1, and verse 16. And so this morning, we began talking about maintaining your righteous stance, that we understand that there's gonna be a release of technology like we've never seen before. But Christian people, we're not afraid of technology. We're gonna use it to advance the gospel like never before. We also know that there's gonna be this weird dissension, separation, split, whatever you wanna call it within the church. There will be a compromising, if you will, church. And then there will be one who will understand what the gospel is all about.
And there'll be lots of offense, and lots of slanders, and leaders fighting one another. But the church will be all right after it's all over, which the church will still rise up out of that as well. There will be the coming together of governments from all over the world as the Antichrist spirit works diligently to achieve this one world government. At the same time, working diligently to annihilate the church. Everything is to prepare for the revealing of the Antichrist, to work diligently with technology so that the communication will go all around the world at one time. And yet I'm not afraid of none of that. The thing that concerns me the most is that when all of that is going on, what will be happening to you? For there will be an attack in your soul like you've never experienced.
Our identity is righteousness. And there are many who still struggle with believing that they've been made righteous and Satan will attack you in your soul, in your mind, and in your emotions with shame, and guilt, and condemnation. And the objective is to shame you out of your real identity, which is righteousness. The objective is to cause you to feel guilty about your past, and so you continue to have change connected to what God has already forgiven you of. The objective is to condemn you to the point where you think God doesn't even want to use you anymore. Get the message from this morning.
So what we're gonna deal with tonight is we're gonna talk about the effects of righteousness. What happens when you go ahead and receive it? What happens when you go ahead and believe it? What happens when you start walking in it? There are some, there are some effects that come with receiving your righteousness. Let's begin tonight. Romans chapter 1, and verse 16, he says, "For I am not ashamed". The Apostle Paul is speaking here, "For I am not ashamed of this Good News," the gospel about Christ. This Good News is good news about Christ. He says, I'm not ashamed of that. And yet there will be cold love that will go out throughout the church. People are going to come to a point where they just don't care anymore. Their love will wax cold.
And I'm wondering how many of you who are seated here today, will you even be interested in what Jesus has to say this time next year? An all out launch to just try to work on your soul so you can give up, cave in, and quit. But I prophesy over World Changers, not here, devil. "I'm not ashamed of the Good News about Christ. This Good News is the power of God at work in you". This good news about Christ is the power of God. What is that good news? The good news that Christ has forgiven you of your sins. The good news that in him, you've been made righteous without working to earn that righteousness. But you have been made right, because your righteousness is in him. "It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes: the Jew first and also the Gentile".
And in verse 17, he says this, "This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight". So he is specifically talking about the good news of how you've been made righteous in the sight of God. How you just believing that you've been made right because of Jesus. That is the good news the world can't understand. And even some of the church can't understand, how can you be made right without earning it through your goody-goody things? This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. He said, this is accomplished from start to finish by your faith. Something happens when you finally say, okay God, I believe I'm the righteousness of God, because you said so.
Abraham said, I believe and the Bible says in Genesis, immediately heaven said, you're righteous without him doing any goody-goody thing first. Heaven said you're righteous because you believe. He said, "This is accomplished from start to finish by faith". As the scripture says, "It is through faith that a righteous person has life". Now, let's look at the effects of righteousness. 1 John chapter 2, and verse 1. 1 John chapter 2, and verse 1. What happens when you finally just give up on sweating to try to get what has already been given to you? What happens when you begin to accept the fact that I am who he says that I am. That is my identity. I am the righteousness of God when I'm up, when I'm down, when I missed it, when I made it, I'm the righteousness of God. What happens when you do that?
Here's the first effect, "My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father, He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous". You know what he is saying here? That your failures don't alter Jesus's righteousness. Think about what I said. Your failures don't change Jesus's righteousness. As long as Jesus is righteous and you believe in him, you are righteous. But the church and religion teaches you that your failure changes Jesus's righteousness because you think you're no longer righteous. You're righteous because of him, not because of you. So your failure didn't change his righteousness. So if he's okay, you okay. You're no longer okay, if he's not okay. The only way you're not okay is if something happened with him not being okay. But ain't nothing gonna happen with his okayness. As long as he is okay, you okay. Everybody say I'm okay. Once you believe, your failures don't alter his righteousness.
Let's look at the next effect. Ephesians chapter 1. Let's look at this in the NLT. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 4, and then Colossians chapter 1 and 22. So I'm righteous because I believe in Jesus. And Jesus said, that he's made me right with him. And I say, I believe that Lord and it's hard to believe when you're not doing right. But you're doing right doesn't change your identity is righteous. And that's what Satan's after. I got to get you to believe that you are as you behave. Look what he says here in verse 4, "Even before he made the world, God," oh my goodness, "God loved us and chose us in Christ and in Christ, he chose us to be holy in Christ, and he chose us to be without fault in his eyes". You know how strong that is?
So he said before he made the world, before you were born, before you even formed into a fetus. He loved you and he chose you in Christ. He already decided he's not gonna see you in yourself. He gonna see you in Christ. And in Christ, and what does it mean to be in Christ? If you're born again, you're in Christ. In Christ, you are holy right now. But you don't believe that and Satan's gonna work on that. Don't believe that ain't no way you holy in Christ. Look at you, look at what you did last year. Look at what you just did five minutes ago. How you gonna say you holy? The same way, Paul, a murderer and a persecutor of the church and one who stood by and allowed Steven to be stoned to death. And this Paul said I have wronged no man. I have corrupted no man. I have defrauded no man.
How can he say that when you can turn to the next page and see him wronging people, defrauding people, and corrupting people? How could he say that? He made his mind up. Since I don't know what to do with my wicked self, I'm gonna go ahead and receive Jesus, and believe him, and realize that my righteousness is always gonna be stronger than my sin. And if I believe that I'm righteous, I'm telling you, that's gonna take care of your sinning. You gotta get your identity fixed before you see your behavior fixed. And religion is teaching you to deal with your behavior first and ignore your identity.
But Jesus is saying, I need you to believe your identity in Jesus Christ. And in Christ Jesus, I need you to believe you're holy. And in Christ Jesus, as you believe that you are holy, I see you as holy. But I also see you without fault. Oh thinking about this knowing you got plenty of fault. But you sit there and say, Jesus sees me with no fault. Who does that? It's not hard to love him. He loved me before I was ever born, died for me. Went to the hell I should have went to. And then he says, I see you with no fault. That's beyond my thinking. I don't, I can't figure that out. How can you see me without fault? He said, cause I'm not looking at you outside of Christ. When I look at you, I'm only looking at you in Christ, and I see you holy and I see you righteous and I see you without fault.
And Satan wants to contradict that just like he did with Adam and Eve in the garden. He wants to come to you and say lie, lie, lie, look at yourself. Remember what you did? You ain't no good. Because if he can destroy and attack your identity, you will buy the chaos that is to come in this world. There's gonna be chaos, and there's gonna be foolishness like you've never seen before. But just because there's gonna be chaos doesn't mean you have to dwell in the chaos. You can dwell in the peace that comes with believing Christ, and operating in his grace. And the church said, amen.
Now let's look at this scripture in Colossians chapter 1, 22, in the NLT. This literally broke me down when I was reading yesterday because I'm like, I believe it, but you're so awesome. He said, "Yet now he has reconciled you to himself". He did it, "through the depth of Christ in his physical body". Now, as a result of Jesus dying in his physical body, "he has brought you into his own presence". I now have access to the presence of God, not because I earned it, not because I deserved it, but I believed in Jesus and him making me right, and now I have access to his presence. And he says, "and you are holy, and you are blameless as you stand before him without a single fault".
Now, that may not mean a lot to a lot of you, but somebody who's been walking around, beating themselves up and allowing the devil to beat you up, and telling you day in and night that you ain't no good, that you deserve hell. That all what you did will never be forgiven or you should be ashamed of yourself. It may not mean much to you, but to that guy, it means a whole lot because it says I got an opportunity to walk away from all of the crazy I used to be, and stand in his presence without one single fault. My goodness. That's the effect of it. If this thing takes place, if Satan doesn't stop this thing, you're gonna walk around knowing that you're more powerful than he is. He's got to get you to accept that you are every bit of your bad behavior.
And the bad behavior won't change because you won't yield to believing Jesus as the one who's made you righteous. Your righteousness is greater than your sin, and your righteousness will eventually, your identity will eventually, your identity as the righteousness of God will overcome the sinning. You keep worrying about the sinning. It's almost like you think you can be righteous by doing, doing, doing, and you think you can be free from sin by doing, doing, doing. And you don't get what this is all about. You need Jesus Christ. You are a human being stained with the sin of Adam. And the only way out is Jesus.
You fall short of the glory of God. You have inferiority because of what happened in the Garden of Eden. You feel like you don't measure up, you feel like you're not cared about. You are inferior. And the only way to defeat that inferiority is through Jesus Christ and the devil knows it. He knows if I can keep you in inferiority, if I can keep you thinking that way, you won't change how you live, you won't change what you do. But the day you receive that I am the righteousness of God. Then all of a sudden you ain't gonna wanna do what you used to do, because you're not who you used to be. Because in him, he has changed your identity.
I'm more concerned about the character of saved folks more than I am, when the devil gonna show up, and when the Antichrist coming, and oh, what about 666? And yet I ain't worrying about that. I'm more concerned about you believing who Jesus says you are. And if you believe who Jesus says you are, if you should bump into the Antichrist, you can recall Luke chapter 10:19. "Behold, I give you power over all the power of the enemy. And you'll tread on serpents, and you'll tread on scorpions. And nothing will, by any means hurt you". I am the righteousness of God, devil. Take that stuff somewhere else because in Jesus you can't touch this. Are y'all see what I'm saying?
It's not just you knowing what I am saying, it's you receiving until you place ownership of this righteousness, and start walking around owning it. All you're doing is flapping your jaws. But if you move past flapping your jaws, to I'm righteous.
Now, the enemy has got a problem. Somebody said, well, I don't need to know none of this. Well, "they that live godly shall suffer persecution". You ready for yours? But pastor it's gonna be hard. That's what life is. You're going down the path, you are on a journey. And I'm screaming to the top of my voice tonight because what bothers me is this is so simple that your intelligentsia is gonna let it pass by your mind. Why you allow the world to move you into concentrating on something that's not as important as your identity. I wanna remind you the first attack Satan released on Adam was his identity. The first attack that he released on Jesus in the wilderness was his identity.
The attack that he's about to release on all of us is our identity in Jesus Christ, not what your last name is right now. But do you know who you are in Christ Jesus? And if you fail to answer that, you become open prey for the devil to reap havoc in every area of your life. Your relationships, your marriages, oh yeah. You got to know you're the righteous righteousness of God. Why are you married? Because if not, you'll start conducting yourself like worldly relationships, and you won't see that through this righteousness, you conduct yourself as someone who is holy, and righteous, and without fault. But if you won't do that, you won't have patience with Jethro and them, and you'll just say, look, you know, I ain't in him no more. I love him, but I'm not in love with him. You know that excuse that we use.