Sin has damaged the perfection of the human race. As generations pass, the moral fabric of society continues to deteriorate. Pick up the newspaper or a glance at the images of your news channel will leave a man emotionally downtrodden. How can we like Noah find grace in the eyes of the Lord? Are our wretched lives filled with hopelessness? Yet, within the pages of the Old Testament among the words of the weeping prophet, so called because of his continued expression of grief over the stubborn and unrepentant nature of His people, there are words of hope. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell safely; now this is His name by which He will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. (Jeremiah 23:6) Jehovah-Tsidkenu means the Lord our righteousness. Jehovah; I Am. Tsidkenu; Righteousness. Within the beauty of that name, there is found the gospel message and the hope of our salvation. To grasp the importance of righteousness, we must first develop a humble spirit much like that of Isaiah in Isaiah 6 and realize the insufficiency of our own righteousness. So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:5). If we can set aside our human pride and allow ourselves to be viewed not as the way we want to be viewed but viewed in the way God views us in His eyes as revealed in His word, only then can we see the insufficiency of our own righteousness. Works will not save us. We will not save us. To depend on anything of this world or of ourselves is to follow after vain hope. There is no need to stop on this sobering truth, for to do so we will be missing the joy. For you see, God implemented righteousness. When He gave the world His only son, He gave the world hope for righteousness. While we will suffer failure in relying on ourselves for righteousness and salvation, we can find hope in trusting in God’s only Son for righteousness. When the final words of Christ were spoken on Calvary those many centuries ago, He was laying the groundwork for righteousness for generations to come. “It is finished” was a final declaration that God’s plan of salvation and righteousness was in place. The penalty and the price of sin’s wages had been paid. To accept Christ is to allow God to impute His righteousness among us. And be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith (Philippians 3:9). The most elegant descriptive of the word impute is “to charge to one’s account”. When God sees us, He does not see our sins, for they have been blanketed by the righteousness found in the shed blood of Christ. To receive righteousness is to understand that it is freely given and requires a simple task on our part. That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9-10) In this world of hopelessness, there is still hope to be found. Though for many the future of this world looks dark and depressing, through Christ’s imputed righteousness on our lives, our future is glorious and bright. Don’t be held by sin’s dread sway, but thrust yourselves into the saving arms of Christ and receive a new outlook on life.
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