The Fruit of Righteousness

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned … Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. … Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans 5:12, 18, 20-21

Do you think you deserve hell? 

God is timeless, so the sin we committed five years ago indicts us as much as a sin we may have committed five minutes ago. As we mature in our faith and become holy as I am holy (Lev. 11:44-45, Matthew 5:48, 1 Peter 1:16), we no longer sin as we once did (Colossians 3:5-10). However our lack of sin now does not earn us the right to be let off of the punishment of our past sins. Only God's grace gives us freedom from sin—no matter how distant the sin was from our present course and position. We must remember to be humble and always remain thankful for the gift of salvation that we did not nor ever could earn. If we think we do not deserve God’s judgement, we have cheapened God’s grace. If we think God’s sacrifice wasn’t greater than man’s sin, we have cheapened God’s grace.

In the fall, man was condemned by eating a death fruit off of a live tree. On the cross, Jesus redeemed man by becoming a living fruit on a death tree.

All actions have fruit. The fruit of sin is death, but the fruit of righteousness is greater than the antidote for the sin fruit. The fruit of righteousness not only restores us from the death we earned from our sin, it grants us new life so we become righteous as He is righteous (2 Corinthians 5:21). And this new life that we have been given takes root in our lives as we begin to bear more of the righteous fruit. As we continue to produce more life-giving fruit, we can easily forget the first fruit and seed that was given to us back when we had no fruit. 

You lose nothing by giving away what’s not yours.

Giving away the fruit of righteousness so that others can have some fruit does not take anything away from the righteousness we have in our life. The fruit of righteousness that became a tree of righteousness in us was given to us through one Man’s righteous act. We have the privilege of producing more fruit that we can give to others, but we have to remember that the fruit does not belong to us. Giving away the fruit of righteousness does not produce more trees like us, it produces more fruit that is like Christ (1 Corinthians 1:10-17). By giving away Christ’s fruit of righteousness, we give more glory to Christ while losing nothing ourselves because the fruit was not ours to begin with. Let’s not think that we deserve the fruit of righteousness because of anything we have done; rather, let’s recognize that the fruit of righteousness that we freely give to others was first freely given to us.