Righteous or Self-Righteous?

How easy it is to be self-righteous if we take our eyes of the true example of Jesus.  Pointing fingers because people sin differently than we do, feeling so good about our selves because we are not as bad as someone else.  You see it every day! I see it every day.  Most of us have been guilty of it a time or too.  I'm a little leery of those that right here say 'oh, I never have', 'I'm not that man or woman' because I'm afraid they may be so caught up in their self-righteousness they have begun to believe their own lies.  Most of the time when we are feeling self-righteous, we use our tongue to show how 'righteous' we are.

I talked about the tongue and 'talking with our fingers' yesterday.  It goes hand in hand with this.  It is easy to 'look down on' someone that commits sins that we are SURE we will never commit.  It is easy to condemn those that commit sins that we have been forgiven up and left in the past.  We forget that to whom much is given, much is required.  We can become like the Publican that thanks God that he is not a sinner like the poor man beside him.

It's funny but most folks who do that, they aren't even aware they are doing it, they have done it for so long.  I've known people like that, they were so caught up in their own opinions they could not even consider that they might be wrong.  Heck, there have been days I was that person.  I'm not proud of it but I'm honest. 

But God doesn't want us to be self-righteous.  He tells us in Romans 'there is NONE righteous, no, not one'.  In Isaiah 64:6 we are told "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away."  We judge by our standards but none of our standards ever will meet God's standards.

I have no righteousness, except through the blood of Jesus.  You may think that by looking down at someone you are making your look better or more holy but in fact the opposite is true.  As my Daddy Bill used to say 'If you are throwing dirt at someone, you are the one losing ground.'  It's true, you may impress someone or you may gain something small but you lost a bit of yourself to do it.  It's not worth it. 

Jesus told us to LOVE one another.  We are to love others as we love ourselves.  You can't hang on to self-righteousness and love others.  They two will not mesh.  Today you face a choice, which of the two is more important to you.