Romans 4:16
Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.

God has set things in order so that the promises are available to everybody, no one is excluded because of something done in their past, or yesterday for that matter. Anyone who has the faith to take God at His word and persevere will receive the promises! But, there is something we have to understand about receiving the promises of God, the righteous are the ones who receive. There is no contradiction in what I am saying but a misunderstanding of righteousness that has permeated Christian thought for centuries.

Matthew 5:20
For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

As a quick side note, please keep in mind that the “kingdom of heaven” is NOT the sweet by and by, Jesus taught and told his disciples to preach “the kingdom of God is at hand”, meaning that it was here. Jesus said “The kingdom of God is within you.” Many other verses attest to the truth that the kingdom of God or heaven came with the revelation of Jesus as the Son of God. The promises are our inheritance from our Father God and they come through his kingdom. This is a whole other subject but it is important to the discussion. Ok, next verse.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

As you can see, those who choose their own way over righteousness are disqualified to share in the kingdom of God. It makes no difference what our opinion is concerning the list of behaviors that Paul lays out in 1 Cor. 6, only what God has to say about it matters and he says that those things will keep you from the promises of God. I can believe with all my heart that in the end these will make it into the kingdom of God because he is a loving and merciful God but that won’t change his mind. He is not talking about saved people who backslide or fail in an area, although those things can greatly hinder his purposes, he’s meaning those who make it a lifestyle. In Romans 1 & 2 Paul refers to those who practice such things, in other words a deliberate choice to ignore what God says and live according to our own morality, these will be prevented from receiving the kingdom.

Then you have the Pharisees from Matt. 5 whom Jesus himself said could not receive the promise of the kingdom either. These were ultra-religious Jews who carried out the law of Moses to the extreme. They even made up extra rules to make themselves more righteous in appearance. Paul the apostle was a Pharisee in his life before conversion and he said that according to the law he was blameless but he considered all of the that a pile of crap compared to the righteousness of God that he received by faith.(my paraphrase of a portion of Philippians 3). Everything they did was for outward appearances, they really weren’t concerned about God, they wanted to be held in high esteem by those around them and to be judgmental and condescending to those they deemed below them.

These are two ends of the morality spectrum and neither of them will be qualified to inherit the promises of God. You can’t be unrighteous(sinner) and you can’t be self-righteous(Pharisee), there is only one type of righteousness that counts with God.

You see, there are two kinds of righteousness. There is the righteousness of obedience and the righteousness of faith. One comes from the law and one comes from God, one is lacking and one is complete. The righteousness of obedience is lacking because we will never be 100% at keeping the law and because the motivation of the heart is not considered but the righteousness of faith is complete because it comes from God himself and is not determined by our ability to follow the rules!

Here’s a little story about the righteousness of faith!

Abraham had been given the promise from God at 75 years old that he would become a great nation and through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. (Please keep in mind that these guys lived well into their hundreds at this time) Then, at 85, God promised him again that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. There was only one problem, he had no children! It had been ten years since the first promise and at 85 it seemed even more unlikely. Abraham let his own reasoning and his wife talk him into producing a son through his wife’s maidservant, Hagar but God spoke again and told him it would be a son from his wife Sarah that would be his heir. He would have to wait another 14 years, when he was 100 years old and Sarah was 90, before the promise was fulfilled. By that time it was no longer just improbable but impossible for them to have children, that’s when faith had to move past human understanding and lay hold of the promise.

Abraham had the righteousness of faith. We know this because Romans 4:22 and several other places tell us that Abraham’s faith was accounted to him as righteousness, therefore faith=righteousness as far as God is concerned. He even deposits righteousness into our account. That’s what it means when it says that righteousness was imputed or accounted to Abraham. It is an accounting term that means to consider, count or number something as it actually is so if God says faith and righteousness are the same thing then they are the same. And Romans 4:24 says that it will be imputed to us also, if we believe! Now, if we have had righteousness deposited in our account then we are qualified to receive from God and it is grace that has made sure we qualify because it didn’t come through our works.

Faith operates best when the improbable becomes the impossible, when all our resources and understanding have been exhausted and when we have been forced to either believe God or give up. Some will just abandon the promise because of a lack of perseverance but some will hold on until they receive. Although, once we have experienced the faithfulness of God, it becomes easier to disregard our own understanding and man’s ability and move directly to faith in order to acquire from God the things we see in His word, the promises of the kingdom.

It is the righteousness of faith that comes because of God’s grace that qualify us to inherit the things of the kingdom. Grace truly guarantees that possibility for everyone to be qualified to receive the promises, it’s up to us to believe!

Blessings,
Jeff