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God's Righteousness and Man's Righteousness

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The potter puts great effort into making celadon, but if the desired result is not achieved, he mercilessly breaks the pottery. All vessels may look good in our eyes, but the potter does not like them in the eyes of the potter. The authority to break the pottery rests only with the potter's hand. No one can restrict his powers. Even if the celadon baked at a temperature of over 1300 degrees begs him not to break it, his life is only in the hands of the potter.

Likewise, human life is like a lump of clay in the hands of God. However, human beings do not know this and feel proud to know that they are a great being. This is especially evident among people who believe in God. The reason is the superiority that he believes in Jesus and has been saved. However, the Bible records that unless you believe in the Son sent by God, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

God tells Jeremiah to go down to the potter's house and take a closer look at what the potter is doing. When Jeremiah went to the potter's house and looked closely at what he was doing, God said to Jeremiah, "You must know that as a clay is in the potter's hand, so your Israel is in my hands (Jeremiah 18:6). ” he says.

Jeremiah finally understands God's will and explains God's will to the Israelites through the parable of the potter. But Israel, who is stiff-necked and hard-hearted, refuses to turn from sin until the end, telling Jeremiah to stop talking nonsense. As a result, God's wrath reached its peak, and as a result, Israel was taken captive to Babylon and had to live in tears and sighs for 70 years. stupid human words.

It should be known that we humans today are just a lump of clay in God's hand. They say that everyone is not as good as dust and not as dust as they say, but when God's word is given to you, you turn it over like the palm of your hand. This is pride that arises because humans live completely unaware of their existence.

The Apostle Paul also claimed to be righteous before meeting Jesus. However, after he met Jesus, he changed 180 degrees and expressed himself as 'the chief among sinners'. This shows that he came to realize his existence only after receiving the true light. No man can realize his existence without being born again into Christ. Moreover, as people living under the law (sin), they cannot even know their existence. So when we live as a people, we cannot help but become proud because we do not know our own existence.

The Apostle Paul saw the folly of man, and said, “Does the potter not have the authority to make out of a loaf of clay, one vessel for noble use and the other vessel for humble use?” (Romans 9:21) and our human relationships. In other words, it means that human beings are nothing in the sight of God. The reason is that all human beings are sinners born of Adam's descendants.

God gives His people a law and tells them to live uprightly and according to the law. “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16) The people of God who have received the law do their best to live according to the law. However, it is impossible for human beings in the flesh to live according to the laws God has given them. Because the law is good ten times, and if you do it wrong once, you break all the laws.

“Whoever keeps the whole law, but stumbles in just one, is a transgressor of all.”  (James 2:10)

The purpose of God giving His people the law was not to make the righteous, but sinners (Romans 3:20). However, the people who have received the law do not know this fact and do their best to keep the law. It is at this point that human pride begins to sprout and goes astray. Compared to the Gentiles, the pride of Israel was that they were born of the blood of Abraham, the father of faith, and that they were the only ones in the world who received the law from God. I couldn't believe it, so I went to destruction.

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Human righteousness is to say that we are superior to others. By applying all the ordinances contained in the law, it is to make man righteous. For example, a person who keeps the Sabbath day by applying the Sabbath rules is a righteous person, and a person who does not keep the Sabbath day becomes a sinner. When it comes to tithing, some give tithes of their income, while others pay tithes after taking everything off. Here, too, the righteous and sinners are divided. He also builds up his own righteousness by fasting.

In the law given by God, there are countless rules that humans must follow. By applying the ordinances of the many laws, humans are made righteous or sinners are made. Who would want to be a sinner living as the same people of God? At that time, the people of Israel also believed that the righteous would go to heaven, and that sinners would go to hell. Therefore, of course, all the Israelites wanted to be righteous.

Those who were born through the righteousness of the law were the Pharisees, the scribes, and the lawyers. They were the religious leaders of the time. As always, the reason that leaders are more righteous than ordinary members of the church is that they are close to the Bible and teach the people, so they are also diligent in living a godly life. However, as ordinary people run and run for a living, they have no choice but to disobey the law and become sinners.

However, no matter how zealous the religious leaders at the time were, and fasting and abstinence, they could never become righteous with such zeal and effort. The righteous must have no sin. However, all human beings are sinners born of Adam's descendants. They believed that slaughtering cattle and sheep and offering sacrifices to God would blot out their sins, but the Bible records that animal blood cannot take away human sins. To become righteous, they had to believe in the Son God had sent and receive the forgiveness of sins. However, those who believed themselves to be righteous at that time did not believe in the Son and all went to destruction.

The same is true of Christians today who live under the law of the Holy Spirit. When Christians lived as unbelievers before believing in Jesus, they did not receive the Holy Spirit, so the law of the Holy Spirit did not apply. However, after believing in Jesus and receiving the Holy Spirit, Christians do their best to live according to the spiritual law God has given (law given in their hearts). However, Christians with a corrupt heart cannot fully obey the law of the Holy Spirit.

This is where the problems of Christians begin to go wrong. The purpose of God's giving of the Holy Spirit to Christians is not to make the righteous, but to make sinners. However, all Christians who received the Holy Spirit did not know this and thought that they would be saved if they only received the Holy Spirit. From this point on, the Christian view of salvation is also wrong and flows in a completely wrong direction.

Also, Christians think that they are superior to others. By applying all the ordinances contained in the law of the Holy Spirit, we make ourselves righteous. For example, even if we look at only one holy water on Sunday, we can classify those who have been saved and those who have not been saved by “whether or not they kept the Sunday well”. Tithing Also, while some give tithes of their income, some pay tithes after paying all living expenses. Here, too, there is a distinction between the saved and the unsaved. You build up your own righteousness by fasting and praying a lot.

All that Christians do faithfully and serve in the name of Jesus is actually what they do to build their own righteousness. Christians visiting nursing homes and orphanages to look after the poor, or to provide food for the homeless, are actually all things they do for self-righteousness. “Because I have done such a good deed, God will recognize my hard work and give me a lot of reward when I get to heaven.” It doesn't seem like it, but in the heart, everyone wants this. However, God is repeating that God does not lead humans to salvation just because he has done many such things, but that salvation comes only when he believes in the Son whom God has sent.

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Even among Christians today, there are many like Pharisees. In particular, those who belong to an orthodox denomination or come from families that have produced pastors or elders from generation to generation are unable to abandon their stereotypes. Those who have maternal faith also play a part in this. Those who justify themselves always tend to look down on people who are inferior to them and look down on them. And if they judge that only the tradition they have kept is absolutely right, and if their doctrine and ideas do not match, they will unconditionally dismiss it as a heresy.

However, what we can learn from the lives of the Pharisees is that those who followed the traditions of their ancestors and were zealous for their faith actually rejected Jesus. However, those who said that they were dirty sinners at the time and no one paid attention to them actually came to believe in Jesus more quickly. Why did this absurd situation happen? This is because humans believe themselves to be righteous. When we believe in ourselves as righteous, from that moment on, human pride rises to the sky. This is because, despite the law given to them to realize their sins, they were all made righteous by the sacrifice they made to God according to the law. As the Apostle Paul said, “If the law is used legally, it is beneficial to oneself, but if the law is applied incorrectly, it will only harm oneself” (1 Timothy 1:8; Acts 18:13).

In the law of the Holy Spirit given by God, there are many things that humans must keep in their hearts. However, the religious leaders set these laws as human standards, and some people say they were saved because of what they did, and others brand them as unsaved because they didn't do anything. Living as the same people of God, everyone wants to go to heaven, but who wants to go to hell?

The most unhappy thing to be born as a human is not to be unhappy because you do not have money, not to be unhappy because you cannot use a high level of courage in the world, not to be unhappy because you do not live well in a good house, but to die without knowing who you really are. If the apostle Paul had died without meeting Jesus, he would have been the most unfortunate human being. But after he met Jesus, he came to know of his existence. He confesses that “to know Jesus is the noblest knowledge in the world” (Philippians 3:8).

Some people say that when we die, Jesus forgives all of our sins. But this statement is a blatant lie. After our body disappears, since there is no place to impute our sins, our sins remain as they are, and when we are resurrected, we are resurrected as a body of sin. If our sins are forgiven after we die, no one will go to hell. These words were invented by the devil to reassure humans. Christians should never be deceived by these words. Whether it is our original sin or our own sins, we can enter into full salvation only when all of us are forgiven while we are alive.

In the end, we can see that the righteousness that man has built up by himself is the result of his own efforts, so he not only becomes an enemy before God, but also falls into pride and is used by the devil because of the righteousness he has built up, and then leads to destruction. And the righteousness of God is to first give the law to humans, imprison them under sin, and then send His Son so that those who come out of Him who believe in Him become children of God, and then live by His grace. If so, please confirm yourself to see who I am living by right now!

Those who have been regenerated into the real Christ embrace all people with the love of Christ, without raising their own righteousness and without discrimination based on religion or race. So, if anyone in this world takes up their sins and runs to Christ, the Lord forgives them of all their sins and leads them all into eternal life.

How much less, the Syrobonic woman and the centurion, who were Gentiles at the time, also ran before Jesus to solve the problem (Matthew 15:21-28, Mark 8:24-30, Matthew 8:5-13). Likewise, today's unbelievers or those who are engaged in Buddhism or Islam will solve all their problems as long as they take up their problems and run to the Son of God. And even those who have been deceived by false spirits so far and are involved in heresy, even those who suffer from the sin of eating and drinking in their hearts every day, realize that the doctrine of the church they believe in cannot solve the problem of sin in their hearts. As soon as you run to the Lord immediately, He will forgive you of all your sins and bring you to eternal life.

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