Ultimate Security: Finding a Refuge in Difficult Times (9 page)

If you are feeling troubled or guilty, grasp the truth that, through faith in Jesus, you have been made the righteousness of God.

A Robe of Righteousness

In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah gave us a beautiful picture of salvation plus justification. Let me emphasize again that you must not stop at receiving salvation. You must go on to receive justification. Here is a prophetic picture of what salvation will do for God’s people:

I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness. (Isaiah 61:10 nasb)

In this verse, we find Isaiah expressing real excitement. I question whether a person who never gets excited about salvation has much in the way of salvation. I find that the people in the Bible who knew what salvation was got really excited about it. Isaiah said, “
I will rejoice greatly in the
Lord
, my soul will exult in my God.”

When God has given you the garments of salvation, please do not refuse the robe of righteousness. Salvation is the first stage; righteousness is the second stage. Why shouldn’t you have it? It is God’s righteousness. You cannot earn it; it is a gift.

Again, Isaiah used a most beautiful picture when he said,
“
[God]
has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness.”
Like Isaiah, we can say, “God has covered me all over. There is nothing exposed of my old, carnal, sinful nature. There is nothing of my past left for the devil to fasten onto. God has covered me all the way around, from head to foot, with a robe of His righteousness.”

Work It Out

We receive righteousness as a gift, but we cannot leave it that way. Again, it requires a response from us—we must work out what God has worked in. Paul stated this truth very clearly in Philippians:
“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure”
(Philippians 2:12–13 nasb). As I said above, we must work out what God has worked in. If we will not work out our righteousness, God cannot work more in. The measure of what God can work into us is the measure of what we work out.

There is a wonderful picture of the result of “outworked” righteousness in the bride of Christ as she is revealed in Revelation 19:

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to [God], for the marriage of the Lamb [Jesus] has come and His bride [the church] has made herself ready.” It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. (Revelation 19:7–8 nasb)

In this picture, the bride has moved beyond imputed righteousness to outworked righteousness—
“the righteous acts of the saints.”
This passage is a good reminder to us of the process: We do not start with righteous acts; we start with a righteousness that is imputed to us by God. After that, however, we work out what God has worked in, and that is expressed in our righteous acts.
Those righteous acts will be our clothing throughout all eternity.

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SEVENTH STAGE: GLORIFIED

In God’s plan for us, He did not stop at saving us, nor did He stop at justifying us. Rather, He went on
to
glorify us
. It is very important to see that
all
these stages are in the past tense. If you can believe, on the basis of Scripture, that God saved you, then you can also believe, on the basis of the Word of God, that God justified you. Accordingly, on the basis of Scripture, you can believe that God glorified you.

Glorification Is for Now

You cannot put off glorification to the future as something wonderful to look forward to. Being glorified is for us now—here, in time, during this life. Salvation leads to justification, and justification leads to glorification.

To be glorified, or to enter glorification, means to share Christ’s glory with Him. Before Jesus went to the cross, when He was praying prophetically to the Father, He said of His disciples,
“The glory which You have given Me
I have given to them
”
(John 17:22 nasb). Notice that it was not
going to
happen; it
had
happened. The glory that the Father had given Jesus was made available to His disciples—and to us—through His sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection.

Let me repeat: If you enter into the fullness of God’s plan, you can make these three declarations: “God saved me,” “God justified me,” and “God glorified me.” You can use the same tense for all aspects—not the future tense but the past tense. These blessings have already happened. They are yours now.

In Romans 4, Paul explained that we are justified through the resurrection of Jesus. Paul spoke about the patriarch Abraham’s faith in God and referred to the Old Testament Scripture that says,
“Abram
[Abraham]
believed the L
ord
, and he credited
[
“reckoned”
nasb]
it to
him as righteousness”
(Genesis 15:6; see also Romans 4:20–22). Then, Paul went on to say:

Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to [Abraham], but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised [resurrected] because of our justification. (Romans 4:23–25 nasb)

Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins. But when He rose again from the dead, it was to bring us justification. When God resurrected Jesus, He reversed the verdicts of two human courts—a secular Roman court and a religious Jewish court. Both courts had declared Jesus worthy of death and had seen that He was executed. But on the third day, when the stone was rolled away—when God brought Jesus back from the dead—God overturned those two human verdicts. He declared, in effect, “This is indeed My Son. This is indeed the promised Messiah. There is no sin in Him. He is totally righteous. He cannot be held by the chains of death.”

The resurrection vindicated the righteousness of Jesus. But His resurrection vindicates our righteousness, also. Our guilt was imputed to Jesus, and He died because of our guilt. When we believe in Him and His resurrection, His righteousness is then imputed to us in return. Because He was vindicated by resurrection, we are likewise vindicated, justified, and acquitted by His resurrection.

Glorified Through the Ascension of Jesus

We need to take another step, however, because God does not stop at resurrection in regard to our salvation. He takes us beyond resurrection and justification to ascension; and, through ascension, we are glorified. We are justified through the resurrection of Jesus, and we are glorified through the ascension of Jesus.

Paul made this truth clear in his letter to the Ephesians:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up [resurrected us] with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4–6 nasb)

God performed the following three actions on our behalf, all of which are stated in the past tense: He
“made us alive together with Christ,”
“raised us up
[resurrected us]
with
[Christ],
”
and
“seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
Jesus is sitting on the throne of God; and, if we are seated with Him, we are also sitting on the throne of God. The Weymouth
translation
actually renders Ephesians 2:6 as
“
[He]
enthroned us with Him….”

In the previous chapter, we looked at Job’s question
“How can a mortal be righteous before God?”
(Job 9:2). In the book of Job, there is also a beautiful prophetic Scripture that I am sure was not fully understood by Elihu, the man who uttered it:

[God] does not withdraw His eyes from the righteous; but with kings on the throne He has seated them forever, and they are exalted. (Job 36:7 nasb)

Salvation is not just resurrection—it is also exaltation, which is glorification and enthronement. And remember, this means you, too—because you have been made righteous by faith in Jesus.

Jesus is sitting on the throne of God. If we are seated with Him, we are also sitting on God’s throne.

“A Secret and Hidden Wisdom”

This amazing process of glorification that we have been examining is the secret, hidden wisdom of God that Paul spoke about in 1 Corinthians 2. He began by telling the Corinthians,

When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:1–2 rsv)

First of all, Paul laid aside all his natural, human, intellectual, academic knowledge. Then he spoke of another wisdom:

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification. (1 Corinthians 2:6–7 rsv)

Before time began, God had this wonderful plan that included seven phases—of which the final phase was glorification. The last stage comes through
“a secret and hidden wisdom of God.”
This revelation is not granted to the natural understanding; therefore, it cannot be learned from a book. Rather, the revelation of God’s complete plan comes through the cross—through knowing
“Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
The cross is the only doorway to this secret, hidden wisdom of God.

Identification Is the Key

The key to God’s plan for us is identification. Jesus identified Himself with us in our guilt, and He totally paid the penalty we deserved for it. In return, when we believe in Christ, we are identified with Him in His death, His burial, His resurrection, and His ascension. When we come to His ascension, that means we enter into glory with Him. The end result of the
“secret and hidden wisdom”
is our glorification—and it is applied to our lives here and now. What you believe determines your attitudes and your lifestyle. Therefore, when you understand that you are glorified with Jesus, you are going to live a different kind of life. As Paul wrote in Colossians,

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1–4)

What Paul referred to here, combined with the truths we have been exploring in the previous chapters, is the place of total security in God. In Christ, you died. When Jesus died on the cross, that ended the whole of the old sinful life. You are not only raised with Him, but you are enthroned with Him, as well.
“Your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

Can you think of a safer condition than to have a life that is hidden with Christ in God? What harm can come to you? What evil can reach you? What can Satan do against you? What limit can there be to your security when you realize that your life is hidden with Christ in God?

Simply grasp the amazing truth that
“Christ…is your life.”
Those four simple words can change the whole way you face life. This is the climax of God’s wonderful plan. Do not stop short of it, because it is indeed the place of total security.

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ETERNAL HOPE

Now that we have covered all seven stages of God’s plan for us, let’s turn to the impact upon our lives of the security God’s plan affords us. First of all, knowing God’s sovereign plan for us gives us an eternal hope.
Hope
is one of the most beautiful words in any language. Hope in the heart gives us patience and strength to endure hardship, calamity, and all the other pressures that come against us in life. Hope does not allow us to bypass difficulties, but it does give us the strength to go through them.

A Refuge and a Hope

Having hope is wonderful. In contrast, having an outlook of hopelessness saps initiative, strength, and the very will to live. To be without hope in this life is tragic, and to be without hope in death is the ultimate tragedy. However, that is not the fate of the soul who is committed to Jesus.

When calamity comes, the wicked are brought down, but even in death the righteous have a refuge. (Proverbs 14:32)

The King James Version translates the above verse in the following way:

The wicked is driven away in his wickedness: but the righteous hath hope in his death. (Proverbs 14:32 kjv)

A powerful truth comes from this combination of the
New International Version
, which says,
“Even in death the righteous have a refuge,”
and the King James Version, which reads,
“The righteous hath hope in his death.”
For the soul committed to the Lord, there is a refuge, and there is hope, even in the valley of the shadow of death.

We can contrast those beautiful words from Proverbs with what Paul wrote in Ephesians about those who do not have a relationship with Christ. He was writing to Gentile believers who had never known anything about the Lord until they heard the gospel. They had no background in the Scriptures and no past knowledge of the true God. This is what Paul said to them:

Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ [cut off from Him, not related to Him], excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:12)

These are some of the saddest, most terrible words in the Bible:
“without hope and without God in the world.”
The reason why these Ephesians had at one time been without hope is that they had been separated from Christ. The soul who is building only on the sands of time—who has never made a commitment to the eternal Rock, Jesus Christ—is without Christ, without hope, and without God.