The Reading Plan is designed to guide you through daily scriptures and reflections, helping you deepen your understanding and strengthen your faith. Simply follow the daily readings provided, meditate on the scripture, and reflect on how it applies to your life. You can revisit previous days or jump ahead to future readings at your own pace. Stay consistent, and watch your spiritual growth unfold as you engage with the Word daily.
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- The Gift of Righteousness
5Day Reading Plan
The Gift of Righteousness
- Grace
Creflo Dollar
In God’s eyes, our righteousness is not because we do right, but because of our belief in Jesus; we must not let the devil’s lies shake us from this. Jesus was the perfect and acceptable sacrifice for our sins; believing this makes us right in God’s sight, regardless of our behavior.
How to Use the Reading Plan:
About the Author:
Creflo Dollar serves as the Senior Pastor of World Changers Church International in College Park, Georgia. He has authored transformative books like Radical Life of Grace and Why I Hate Religion. His award-winning television broadcast, Changing Your World, reaches nearly 1 billion homes globally.
Day 1Maintaining Our Righteous Stance
Christians are under severe attack from the enemy. In this spiritual battle we’re fighting, our minds are the battlefield and the arena of faith. The devil relies heavily on suggestion to contradict what God has said to us; therefore, those who don’t know God are open to deception. This makes developing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ critical to our success.
Jesus and the Father are one and the same; therefore, knowing Christ is knowing God Himself. In a world full of sin-conscious people who are strangers to Him, believers stand out as different. When others are struggling, the people who know their God will be strong and do exploits. The joy of the Lord is our strength; this kind of strength helps us maintain our righteous stance when the devil tells us otherwise
Believers have already been made righteous. This is a gift that wasn’t received by following a long list of rules, but by faith. Jesus, who is one hundred percent righteous, became sin so that we could be the righteousness of God in Him; believing this makes us right in God’s sight, regardless of our behavior.
Our good works can never make us righteous; this was demonstrated in the relationship between God and Abraham. If Abraham’s good deeds had made him acceptable to God, he would’ve had something to boast about. Despite his bad behavior, however, Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.
We find our true identity in Jesus Christ, the righteous; as He is, so are we in this world. In Him, our righteousness doesn’t come from ourselves, but through the faith of Christ. Refusing to budge from this ultimate truth when the enemy whispers his lies keeps us strong.
Scriptures:
John 10:30
Daniel 11:32
Nehemiah 8:10
2 Corinthians 5:21
Romans 4:2, 3, NLT
1 John 2:1
1 John 4:17
Philippians 3:9
To get a full understanding of God’s righteousness, check out Life Saver Sermon Notes: The Righteousness Edition or the Understanding the Foundation of Righteousness 2-message series.
Day 2We’re Righteous Because God Says So
Most people define their righteousness by standards such as how many good deeds they’ve done, their good intentions, or what others say about them. However, these standards are unpredictable and can swing wildly back and forth, leaving them with no good measurement of their stance before God. The answer to this dilemma lies in knowing what God says about our righteousness. Having faith that He saw us as righteous the moment we got born again helps us avoid the trap of relying on others’ opinions.
Believing that our right-standing before God is by faith and not by our works takes a great deal of pressure off us to perform perfectly. Even when we fall short, God’s grace is still there for us. If our righteousness depended on self-effort, then grace wouldn’t be what it really is—free and undeserved. The law was all about endless works, but if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.
Jesus lives in every believer. He is our righteousness, which means that we’re made the righteousness of God in Him. Even when we slip up, God’s favor is still available; we don’t have to slink away in guilt and shame. We can instead come boldly to the throne of grace and receive mercy to help in time of need.
One of the biggest barriers to receiving our righteousness as a gift is thinking that we have to earn it. We don’t; every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights. Knowing that we’ve been justified by faith gives us peace with God through Jesus Christ. Our right-standing with Him is based on Jesus, not on us; this should give us confidence.
Scriptures:
Romans 11:6, NLT
Galatians 2:21, NLT
Hebrews 4:16
2 Corinthians 5:21
James 1:17
Romans 5:1
To get a full understanding of God’s righteousness, check out Life Saver Sermon Notes: The Righteousness Edition or the Understanding the Foundation of Righteousness 2-message series.
Day 3From Sinfulness to Righteousness
Accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior has multiple benefits on several different levels. We receive a new nature and become as perfect and flawless as Jesus; then when God looks at us, He no longer sees us, but Christ in us. We mustn’t make the mistake of thinking that we lose our righteousness because of a sinful act. Changing the way we think about our permanent stance in Christ helps us avoid this pitfall.
We’re now to focus on our righteous standing in Jesus, not on our sinful standing in Adam. This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person; the old life is gone, and a new one has begun. Adam’s sin brought condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God. Isaiah prophesied this when he said not to remember the things of old.
Adam made us sinners; thankfully, Jesus makes us saints. We are not what we do; otherwise, we’d be sinners again with one slip up, and Jesus would have died in vain. Righteousness doesn’t come by self-effort, but by faith in Christ, who is the end of the law for all who believe. When we do miss the mark, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
Jesus paid with His life to replace the curse of sin with the gift of righteousness. We can’t take any of the blame for being born sinners or any of the credit for being made righteous; it wasn’t because of anything we did. All we can do is simply declare joyfully that this was the Lord’s doing, and it’s marvelous in our eyes. This level of gratitude changes our thinking and corrects our behavior.
Scriptures:
2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT
Romans 5:18, NLT
Isaiah 43:18
Psalm 30:4
Romans 1:7
1 Corinthians 1:2
Ephesians 1:1
Philippians 1:1
Philippians 4:21
Revelation 14:12
Galatians 2:21
Romans 10:4
1 John 2:1
Psalm 118:23
To get a full understanding of God’s righteousness, check out Life Saver Sermon Notes: The Righteousness Edition or the Understanding the Foundation of Righteousness 2-message series.
Day 4Declared Righteous by Faith
In an unbelieving world, born-again believers live in an interesting juxtaposition. We’re surrounded by people caught up in feelings of guilt and shame over sinful behavior that they just can’t control. This mindset is a curse that keeps them trapped in sin-consciousness, despite Jesus having taken care of sin on the cross. By contrast, we can focus on the gift of righteousness we’ve received from Christ.
When others live by their five senses, we live by faith. Our reliance on Christ justifies us in God’s eyes; this is one of the ways Christians have been set apart. What’s even better is that we don’t have to depend on our own imperfect faith; we’ve been given the perfect, fully-developed faith of the Son of God.
Our heavenly Father has given us some amazing gifts. God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him can have eternal life. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, believers received the gift of the Holy Spirit. God gives this gift to anyone who requests it.
No longer do we have to struggle to see results in life through our own efforts; Jesus did all the work necessary so that we can simply receive God’s best. Every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights. Our salvation—another gift from God—is also by faith.
God has united us with Christ Jesus, and we can’t take any of the credit for this. We’ve been freed from sin and made pure and holy. Looking inside ourselves, we see that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start and is created new; the old life is gone, and a new life emerges. This settles our identity in Jesus.
Scriptures:
Habakkuk 2:4
Galatians 2:16, 20
Philippians 3:9
John 3:16
Acts 2:38
Luke 11:13
James 1:17
Ephesians 2:8
1 Corinthians 1:30, NLT
2 Corinthians 5:17, MSG
To get a full understanding of God’s righteousness, check out Life Saver Sermon Notes: The Righteousness Edition or the Understanding the Foundation of Righteousness 2-message series.
Day 5Righteous in Christ
Believers are fighting spiritual warfare against the devil. One of his favorite battle strategies is attacking our identity. We’ve gone from sinners to saints by getting born again; however, if Satan can convince us that we’re not righteous, then he can take us out. Thankfully, we find the ammunition we need in God’s Word.
Our righteousness doesn’t depend on our behavior, despite what the enemy tells us. We’ve been justified by faith; this gives us peace with God through Jesus Christ. We’re no longer who we were before we got saved. Anyone who has been enfolded into Christ has become an entirely new person; all that was related to the old order has vanished, and everything is fresh and new.
The devil wants to confuse us about the truth of our salvation, which is permanent and irrevocable. Paul wrote to the Corinthians about this, cautioning them to think straight and warning them not to play fast and loose with resurrection facts. Our redemption was a gift from God, with no need to earn it; anyone who tells us differently is mistaken. We therefore mustn’t be carried about by various and strange doctrines.
Despite how many times we may fall on our spiritual walk, God will always see us as righteous because of our stance in Jesus. We maintain this stance by believing that Jesus, who is righteous, became sin for us so that unrighteous man could be righteous before the Father. John immediately realized this when he saw Jesus and declared Him to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
The fight takes place in our minds, but we’ve already won because we have the mind of Christ. We’ve been made righteous by faith. This kind of mindset keeps us in the winner’s circle.
Scriptures:
Romans 5:1
2 Corinthians 5:17, TPT
1 Corinthians 15:34, MSG
Hebrews 13:9
John 1:29
1 Corinthians 2:16
To get a full understanding of God’s righteousness, check out Life Saver Sermon Notes: The Righteousness Edition or the Understanding the Foundation of Righteousness 2-message series.
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