“For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life is manifested, then you will be manifested with him in glory.” Col. 3:3-4
“For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life that He lives, he lives to God. Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Rom. 6:10-11
The truth that these verses reveal is so stunning that I find myself torn between “this is hard to believe,” and “this is astonishingly remarkable.” Meditate on those verses and let it sink in that we are being told that we have a place in Jesus’s relationship with his Father. His relationship before God is what you have been included into, and get to participate in. Can you imagine the affections the Father has for Jesus, and that Jesus has for the Father? I try to imagine the depth of joyful emotion and delight that is shared in the Fellowship of the Trinity, and my imagination can only go so far because I know that our God is the God who lives in the “exceedingly, abundantly, beyond anything I can ask or imagine” realm.
The word “righteousness,” could simply be translated “doing right.” As I say that, I don’t just mean doing right as opposed to doing bad, but I primarily mean doing right as opposed to doing wrong. If you’re trying to operate some machine and you do it the right way, it works; but if you do it the wrong way, it simply doesn’t work. The word righteousness is a positive word about doing things the right way so that life works, as opposed to doing things the wrong way which makes life not work. Living a life of righteousness before God is to live life the right way, and in discovering living life the right way, life works. I share, that is, have a place in the life that Jesus lives before God. That life is lived the right way and it results in the abundant life that Jesus promised us, as opposed to a life lived that brings nothing but ruin. Remember this verse from 2 Corinthians 5:21, “He (The Father) made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” A righteous life is not a life that we live for Jesus; instead, it is the life that Jesus lives, and we have a place in that life that he lives before the Father. It is the most awesome and joyful life, that is in its essence supernatural, and Heavenly atmospherically. These are some of the things that it means to have a place in Jesus’s relationship with and before the Father. We get to share in the immeasurably delightful affection, and joyful fellowship of the Trinity, and we get to share in the abundant supernatural righteous life of Jesus lived out before the Father, by the Holy Spirit. Oh my, how big this being in Christ thing is.