Creflo Dollar - Maintaining Your Righteous Stance - Part 4
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 that"?
I ain't worrying about that, I'm more concerned about you believing who Jesus says you are. And if you'll 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'll 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? "Oh, 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, I screamed to the top of my voice this morning, because what bothers me is this is so simple that your intelligentsia is gonna let it pass by your mind while 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 the righteousness of God while you're 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.
So far, all I've done tonight is read Scripture and tell you what it said, because we are now figuring out that people are interested in living according to the Bible, they're interested in living according to religion. "I don't want to hear what the Bible got to say, all I know is my Bible tells me," and you don't even know how to read the Bible. That's just like you going around talking about, "The Lord spoke to me last night," and you just got baptized, still dripping water all over the floor, ain't heard from God, but now, all of a sudden, he been speaking to you about a lot of stuff, don't know the difference between his presence and the air condition turned down low. But those are the kind of people that can gain influence on social media and you will follow them until you come to realize, "That's not even in the Bible".
So people are interested in living according to the Word, because as soon as you show the Word, they say, "Well, I'm interested in hearing what I've heard before". And most people come to church to hear, they don't come to church to hear no revelation, they come to church to hear what they already know, and I'm not trying to continue to preach what you already know. I'm trying to challenge you, I'm trying to make you mad, I'm not trying to make you, "Let me see where he got it from". I'm trying to, that's why I'm reading. I'm reading right now, I'm just reading, I've been reading all day, because my opinion about life doesn't matter, now we're where the rubber meets the road. Have you received your identity? "I am the righteousness of God, in him I am righteous, in him I am holy, in him I am pure".
My stance in him is righteous, holy and pure, my state is not there yet, I'm on my way, but if I receive my stance, righteous, holy and pure, then that's gonna translate and begin to impact my state, and I'll begin to transform into what I believe about Jesus and what he has done for me. Now, watch this, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17, in the NLT, 2 Corinthians chapter 5:17, in the NLT. You know, I could get up and say a lot of inspirational phrases, but sometimes those phrases aren't even biblical. They sound good, they're motivational, but they may not be biblical. Verse 17 says, "This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person".
How many of you belong to Christ? Okay, so you're not the same. "The old life is gone; a new life has begun"! Say this out loud, "Out with the old, in with the new, out with the old identity, in with the new identity". Your old identification was sinner, your new identification is righteous. The New Testament no longer refers to a believer as a sinner. So when somebody says, "We just sinners saved by grace," speak for yourself. I used to be a sinner, but now that I am saved, I am, according to Scriptures 67 times in the New Testament, a saint, a saint. By what Jesus has done in this new agreement, I am away from the old, I accept the new, I am the righteousness of God right now. I am not a sinner saved by grace, I am someone that used to be a sinner, I have been saved by the grace of God and now I no longer identify with any parts of that old identity.
These are decisions you have to make, I've made a decision I'm gonna preach this gospel, and if there are three people left, I'm gonna preach it to them, I'd rather please God than men. And that's what happens when you become the righteousness of God, you're willing to let it all go so that you might please one person, and really, that's the only one that's gonna matter at the end of the day. And you still trying to impress people by buying stuff you can't afford, trying to impress somebody that doesn't care, that's that approval addiction, and you got it and you won't admit that you have it, and you're comparing yourself amongst yourself.
Taffi asked me to share from a man's perspective the attitude of biblical equality, and she asked the right person. Because I didn't know about that when Taffi went to South Africa, called me, talking about, "I got some". I'm like, "Don't be bringing none in here now, you know? If you don't start nothing, it ain't gonna be nothing". And she came with this biblical equality stuff, I'm like, "What in the world"? And I said, "Wait a minute, this is just grace," God had already prepared me with his grace. And I was amazed at the number of people in this world that don't understand that some of the things we're doing today is a result of a curse, like male domination.
When God said that the man shall have dominion over you, it was after they sinned in the garden, and then he started dishing out the curses and one of the curses was male domination. But we took male domination and said, "This is what you're supposed to do". And it's like, dude, we do the same thing with living for 70, 70 was a downgrade, it was a part of the curse. It ain't the blessing to live for 70 years, you're supposed to be living way past 70 years, that's a downgrade. And it's amazing to me how we take pieces of the curse and try to turn it into a blessing. "Man supposed to dominate his wife". God knew better than that, because if you take an inferior man and try to tell him he has dominion over his woman, he is going to feel so inferior that he's got to get involved into some false superiority to kind of deal with his inferiority, and then start doing stupid stuff.
And then, before you know it, he putting his hands on his woman and beating his woman because he got a problem with his own inferiority. Male domination is a part of the curse, it is not God's plan, it is not God's idea, it is not God wanting that to happen. He said, "Y'all messed up in the garden, and as a result of it, men are going to dominate". And then he said something interesting, "Actually, women want to be in charge, but the man gonna dominate the woman". And Jesus said, "But give me some time, I'm gonna fix it". He go, "We gonna bruise his head, but he will hit your heel". He said, "I'm gonna fix it".
And I'm just amazed at the number of leaders that can't read. We have a new identity, we are not sinners with new clothes on, we are new from within and we have become partakers of the divine nature of Christ. We're no longer called sinners, but saints, no longer do we put our trust in our self-effort, but we put our trust in Jesus Christ. Look at Romans, in Romans chapter 5:17, in the NLT. Romans 5:17, he says, "For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many". So, because of what Adam did, everybody after Adam came to the earth spiritually dead. "But even greater," even greater than what Adam did, "Is God's wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness".
Isn't that interesting? Could have mentioned any other gift, but he says that this gift of righteousness came by grace, not by effort, not by your works, it came by his unmerited favor. He favored you and gave you undeserved privilege to receive this gift of righteousness, and we still struggle to receive. Somehow we still let behavior convince us that we're not who he said we are, because we work so hard to be a lawman, Galatians chapter 2:16 in The Message, instead of a God man. There's so much we can say about this. "For all who receive it," now here it is, "Will live in victory over sin and death".
Look at your victory over sin and death. Receiving the gift of righteousness, that's where your victory is gonna come from. Receiving your identity as the righteousness of God, you overcome, "Sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ". The issue I'm trying to point out, tonight, is have you or will you receive this gift of righteousness? "I have been made," not become, you didn't become it, to become it means you did something to deserve it, "I have been made righteous by what Jesus has done, and I believe Jesus," and that, "I have been made righteous".
Now I will see victory over the behavior and the sin that you have tried for years and years to overcome through your own self-effort and it seemed like it got worse and worse, because you went back to believing that you were a sinner and refused to accept that you have been made righteous. Wow. Say out loud, "I am the righteousness of God, I believe I've been made right". Now, I want to end with where we started this morning, Romans 3:20-31. The Bible says, "We reign in life," Romans 5:17, that's another effect of it. When we understand that we are the righteousness of God, According to James 5:16, our prayers avail much. Another effect is that we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ Jesus. Healing comes when you understand you're the righteousness of God.
Romans chapter 3, in the NLT, starting at verse 20, he says, "For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are". Yeah, the law in the Old Testament shows you how sinful you are, why is that? The law is perfect, nothing wrong with the law. The law is perfect, the problem is, we are not, we are fallen men. And when you take fallen men, something that's imperfect, and try to match it with something that's perfect, the only thing that's gonna happen is you're gonna see your imperfections in the face of perfection like you've never seen it before. Jesus said, "I gotta come up with something else, this is not working".
Because the law in and of itself will cause condemnation and shame and guilt, which what it was designed to do. The Bible says, "The law simply shows us how sinful we are". Verse 21, "But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who you are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's glorious standard". That just simply means, as a result of sin, everyone has to deal with inferiority. Inferiority is that feeling of falling short, inferiority is that feeling of not feeling that you're noticed or that you're cared for. The only antidote and answer for inferiority is Jesus.
24, "Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Jesus Christ when he freed us from the penalty of our sin. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life". How many of you believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, how many of you believe in this shedding of his blood? When you believe what Jesus did for you, the reason why he's not going to charge sin to your account is because he decided to charge it to the account of Jesus.
Jesus has taken upon himself all of the sins of the world, both of those who are born again and who are not born again. He says, "I took the the sins of the sinner," so when he got ready to get born again, I was already his sacrifice as well. "People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. The sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus".