Creflo Dollar - The Magnificent Gift of Righteousness - Part 2
The devil has got this thing all wrapped up in church and you can’t hardly, you can’t get free because you won’t accept your identity. And the day you accept your identity, the behavior will follow suit. But you’re still working, sweating, trying to be right. Some people said, «Let me go, let me go to Christmas service this morning. Maybe God will do a little something special for me this week.» He’s already done something special. He gave us Jesus and he gave us this magnificent gift called righteousness. My God, I feel like running right now, my goodness. I remember the Baptist Church, «Won’t he do it?»
Let me show you the scripture right quick. Hebrews chapter 9:28 in the NLT. Hebrew 9:28 in the NLT. These scriptures are all in the New Testament. So if you’re gonna hang on to the thing we’ve gotten traditionally, then what are you gonna do with these scriptures? Especially this one. So also Christ was offered. How many times was he offered? Once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people. See, we have the idea that God is forgiving us progressively. You have the idea when you wake up this morning, if I see the day that, «Oh God forgive me.» And then he’ll forgive you as you sin. That just wouldn’t be wise, because that means Jesus have to just stay on the cross, right there.
We can go to Israel, he’s still on the cross. He don’t even have a second he can come down because it’s sin going on every second. So what he did was he says, «I’m gonna give you a one time sacrifice that’s gonna cover you from the time you get born again until the time I see you.» It was like an insurance policy that’s been paid up. «I got you. And while you’re on the journey, I’m gonna change you with my goodness. I’m gonna be so good to you. It’s gonna turn you away from what you thought you used to like.» «So also Christ was offered once for all times as a sacrifice to», to what? Take away the sins of many people. He will come again. How many of you believe Jesus is coming again? «He will come again not to deal with our sins.»
Stop, stop all my life. They told me Jesus is gonna come. He can, the Santa Claus. You know the the Santa Claus Jesus. You better watch out. You better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why. Jesus, he coming to town. «He sees you when you sleepy. He knows when you awake.» Here comes the fear. «He knows when you’ve been bad or good. So be good for goodness' sake. Oh, you better watch out.» You better watch out. That’s why most folks scared to die. They’re scared to cross over. That should be a glorious time. Every time I look at certain scriptures, I’m amazed at how much I don’t know. You move out this body and you don’t even know you died until you know you died.
You just, you move over, you move out of the physical realm, you into the parent of the physical realm. You’re in a spiritual realm and everything in that realm seems just as real as everything in this realm except you can comprehend it and see it and hear it. «I’m not coming again to deal with sin, but to bring salvation to all» who are eagerly waiting for him. The final salvation, which is the putting on of your glorified body. You finally get your clothes back, Adam and Eve lost your clothes in the garden of Eden. Then that day you finally gonna get your clothes back, hallelujah. The magnificent gift of righteousness.
Wow, Jesus never sinned and yet why impute sin on a man who doesn’t sin? We have a forever gift of nonimputation of faults or sin. It is a gift of no charging or crediting to your account sin. You got saved and some angel turned the sin meter off. Hard to believe because you’re sitting there and I’m saying it’s time for it to stop being hard to believe. It is time for you to believe what he said. So most people say, «Well, that’s giving you license to sin.» They gonna go crazy if you tell people that. Pass it off, you tell people that they’re gonna go crazy. They’re just gonna start doing everything. No, they don’t know truth; that’s why they go crazy.
Believe the right things, then you can live the right way. If you believe the right things, you can live the right way. The reason why God won’t impute your sins to you is because he’s already imputed your sins on Jesus Christ. So that’s number one. If he said that «I have already charged Jesus and I have taken your sins and placed them on the body of Jesus,» he will be allowed to turn around and charge you after he said that «I have placed all of your sins on the body of Jesus.» So he’s not gonna impute sin to you, but he had to charge sin to somebody. Somebody’s got to pay for this sin. And so he said, «I’m gonna put it on Jesus and he will become the payment or the ransom from all of your sins. So the only way I don’t impute sin to you, I got to find somebody who gonna pay the bill.»
So, you see, if he turns around and imputes the sin on you, then Jesus wasn’t enough to pay the bill. But since Jesus is enough to pay the bill, honey, every time the devil comes to try to condemn you, you need to send him to Jesus. Go talk to Jesus, go talk to Jesus. I’m not gonna be walking around condemned. Go talk to him. All of my sins have been placed on the body of Jesus Christ. So God will never ever, never will he ever never impute sin to my account to turn the sin meter off, because it’s been paid for. Jesus has taken all of my sin. David in this passage in the book of Romans, he envied us because his sins were imputed to him. Every last one of his sins was, David, he was punished. His sons rebelled against him. They died. The kingdom was split. That ain’t us. We’re in Christ.
Now why, why, why talk about this on Christmas man? You were supposed to be talking about, you were supposed to be talking about Mary and Jesus and Joseph, and I know Joseph was tripping out when Mary came talking about she was pregnant. He said, «Well, how you get pregnant? I know I ain’t did nothing.» And then Mary said, «It was the Spirit.» Now, that wouldn’t have worked this day and time. Mary would have been weeping. Now, you know that song, «Oh Mary, don’t you weep.» No, we gotta talk about how to live. We gotta make this stuff practical. It’s gotta be for everyday life. We got time to be talking about no favors. Not to say that that was the favor of the true story I have. But we need to talk about, you know, what you doing this Christmas? When are you gonna believe?
Now, here’s the statement that got me going down this path. All the blessings of God will flow in your life when you have righteousness. God declared over Abraham, «You’re righteous,» and then the blessings of God just begin to flow in his life. And the thing about Israel, Israel had righteousness based on the blood of the bulls and the goats, but our righteousness is based on the eternal sacrifice of Jesus. Now, the question is, when are you going to start believing this? How many more times are you gonna go back and forward, believing that you are the righteousness of God? The day you believe you’re the righteousness of God, my warning to every person out there who does this: never send an evil spirit against a Christian who believes they’re the righteousness of God. You done messed yourself up because you cannot curse what God has already blessed. You don’t hear me.
God, God saw Israel as righteous in the sacrifice, but so did the enemy. God saw Israel righteous, the devil saw Israel righteous. The problem is Israel never saw themselves righteous. So they continued in sin. And if you don’t see yourself righteous, you gonna continue in sin. You’re gonna continue in sin because you won’t see yourself as righteous. You got too many voices going through your ear. You just can’t believe that, because somehow you want to position yourself as if you contributed to what Jesus has gifted you with. You’re still trying to pay for what is free. You’re still trying to do it. You’re still working hard to try to be righteous with God, but you’re righteous by birth, you’re righteous by birth when you got born again.
Righteous is a term which just simply means «okayness.» «I’m okay,» and we are 100% okay with God because of our new birth, not because of what we do. We’re 100% okay with God because of our new birth, not because of what we do. You keep trying to make what you do, the determining factor of who you are. As we get to this issue of righteousness settled in our minds, that’s what I’m trying to do, you gotta settle this in your mind. Once you get righteousness settled in your mind, you’ll stop chasing okayness. That’s what we do. We’re chasing okayness. What else do I need to do to be okay with God? Chasing okayness. Soon as you get that in your head, as soon as you get settled in your head that «I am okay with God because I’m righteous,» then you can rest.
This is what it means to hear the Spirit bear witness to our spirits that we are the sons and daughters of God. Bear witness to our righteous identity. He convicts us of our righteousness. So we are no longer hungry and thirsty for more. I am righteous. It’s enough. And on that righteousness, everything in my life starts transforming and lining itself up with who I now believe I am. Your conversation gonna change, your desire is gonna change. The stuff you thought you like, you gonna realize had a bad taste in it. You know, I used to love those donuts. Remember they had that sale, buy one get one dozen free? And I eat a dozen on the way home. Taffi said, «Where you been?» I said, «I just roll around.» She said, «You lying. You got sugar on your mustache.»
And then when I backed up off of it for some years, I think, «Ken, you was with me.» In New York we were shooting a New Year’s Special. Me and Ken and I went in now. We got a couple of dozen, didn’t we? Oh, it’s a good day. «The Lord is moving!» Man we started eating them doughnuts. I start tasting stuff I never tasted before. Like what happened? Got sick to my stomach. It was disgusting to me. I hadn’t gone back since that day. That’s what God is doing to you. Something that you used to do, that you thought was sweet, that you thought taste good, that you thought, «I was great.» «I dare you to step back in that right now.»
You gonna taste some something you didn’t notice before. All of a sudden you’re gonna be disgusted with it. All of a sudden, you ain’t gonna want to swallow no more. All of a sudden you don’t want to go to 12 doughnuts. You’re gonna stop there at five. Trust the Holy Ghost. He knows what he’s doing with you. You are not the first one that he has transformed. He is snatching the taste out of you. God knows how to change your taste. He knows how to snatch it out of your life. He knows how to snatch it out of your, and so instead of you waiting to see if he gonna snatch it out, you ought to start praising him because you know what’s getting ready to come. You ought to start praising him. Y’all, excuse me for hollering but I know him. I know I don’t know about him. I know him. Praise the Lord.
Honey, when you back up and you start having a flashback at what God has already done, you start looking at how you used to be and you look at how you are right now, you start looking at where you used to go and you don’t ever want to go back to that place no more. You start looking at how broke you used to be and now all of a sudden you’re able to pay all your bills. You start looking at how selfish you used to be and now you’re considering somebody besides yourself. I’m telling you he’s able! He convicts us of righteousness so we no longer hunger and thirst for more of whatever it is.
I am the righteousness of God. When I’m up, I’m the righteousness of God. When I’m down, I’m the righteousness of God. But I don’t know why I did that dumb thing. I’m in the righteousness of God. When the devil whispering in my ear, «Look at you, you ain’t changed no bit. Look at you», I’m still the righteousness of God. We see that we already have it all. What’s done is done. We are okay and we are okay forever and we don’t have to struggle for okayness. We’ve been made right with God, the magnificent gift of righteousness.
So then in the ages to come, if anybody would ever think in the future, «Can God do this?» He will point to you who have been changed by his grace. He said, «Look at them. These are the ones that I have called out of darkness into this marvelous light so they can show forth the praise to the Almighty God.» Christmas celebration ain’t nothing more than as in church and thanking and praising God that he gave us his Son, Jesus, who then presented us with this magnificent gift of righteousness. You get anything out of that this morning? It’s a magnificent gift of God.