Quest For Glory

Romans 10:2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
Romans 10:3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
Romans 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

This passage is loaded with doctrine that is very applicable to our times. All non believers and many professing Christians are almost totally ignorant of God's righteousness. People are running around seeking glory, establishing their own righteousness being totally ignorant of God's. Why is that?

This goes to the root of who we are as a depraved human race according to biblical teaching. The first man, Adam, was made in the image of God and crowned with His glory. He was also made in fellowship with God and therefore rightly related to Him. When Adam sinned sought his own self interests and stepped out of fellowship with God, God took His glory away. Since that time, we the human race been without the glory of God and have this deep desire for glory, and there is nothing wrong with that, except that we we seek it in the wrong place and for the wrong reason. IN OUR NATURAL STATE, OUR QUEST FOR GLORY IS DEEPLY SEEDED IN "SELF", and therein lies the root of all our problems.

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

The result is when we seeking our own glory, apart from God, whether it be in material wealth, sports, fancy cars, an important position in a company, or RELIGION, the itch never gets sufficiently scratched. There is no lasting satisfaction. The empty hole where the glory and fellowship with God should be, is still empty. Men seek religion as a way to fill that empty void, but it is only a continuation of the problem because it will still never satisfy for it still stems from purely selfish motives. It is still a vain attempt to attain glory and establish our own righteousness, that will forever be insufficient. We may join a "church", get baptized, volunteer at a soup kitchen, join a cause, witness, read our bibles, donate to charity etc, to try to fill that need for glory, but it is still just dead works and filth in God's eye. Without faith it is impossible to please God and it is through this channel of faith in His righteousness that all of our actions must emanate from.

So continuing on, the root of the problem is this, that we (the human race) are going about establishing our own righteousness without submitting ourselves to the righteousness of God. To clarify, IT IS NOT GOOD WORKS THAT GOD HATES, IT IS GOOD WORKS THAT IGNORE HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, THAT GOD HATES. When we do good works that come out of a heart without faith, whose only motivation is to fulfill selfish desires, it's those works that God calls filth. It is personal works of righteousness that manifest out of a sense of guilt, out of a sense of duty, where the motivation is as the relationship between a slave and his master, and based completely on legal motives and not love. A truly born again Christian is motivated by the love of Christ which is manifested in His righteousness (in the gospel), not in legal motives. Why? Because a Christian is not under the law (or covenant of works) but under grace. This verse perfectly illustrates it...

Romans 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

What that verse says is that when a person gets saved, there is no more need for that person to seek personal righteousness to get in right standing with God and inherit eternal life. When a person gets saved they have all the righteousness needed to get to heaven, which is Christ's. For the rest of that individual's life, all of the good works that he or she does, should come out of a thankful and loving heart because of what God has done for them (ie. God's righteousness). God's righteousness is now the motivation for everything in that believers life. Any act he does, springs forth from the faith he has in God's righteousness, which is what He did when He sent His Son Jesus to this earth and made Him to be sin for us and shed His blood on that tree. When a person gets born again, and finally sees the enormity of God's righteousness manifested in the Gospel, it absolutely melts his heart. Just the thought that God would justify ungodly heathen sinners, while they are still in their sins, is beyond human understanding. The tremendous gap between the ungodly life of the individual coupled with the hell they deserve, contrasted against God's awesome love that comes from His righteousness, motivates the new believer to act out of love and thanksgiving, finally glorifying God the rightful Owner of all glory. At the point where the sinner believes God and submits to His righteousness, that sinner is again crowned with the glory. That empty hole that the sinner used to fill with pleasure seeking, material wealth, religion etc. is now forever filled because of this. That continuous feeling that there is something missing, is gone. In its place is only joy, thanksgiving, and love because of finally submitting to the right righteousness and getting the glory back, both of which are God's.

So to get in right standing with God again (like Adam was before he sinned), we must be in God's kingdom, and to be in His kingdom we must be born again. How do we get born again? By rejecting any personal righteousness, or any offering out of our souls to God for the purpose of getting in right standing with Him, and simply turning to God and believing that Jesus got right with God for us. It is in trusting that His sinless life, His blood, His dying, His resurrection is enough to get us rightly related to God and into heaven.