Righteousness

Matthew 5:20 (NKJV) 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.

Jesus is warning us that our righteousness must pass the level of hypocrisy; which the Pharisees represented. The Pharisees were religious but not relational. They understood the letter of the law but not the spirit of it. Jesus is teaching us that this type of religiosity is false righteousness. It speaks of righteousness instead of living it and that was exactly the problem with the Pharisees. They talked the talk but did not walk the walk. If you asked the majority of the unsaved what their primary problem with Christians is the answer would likely be, hypocrisy. It is not righteousness, it is self righteousness. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a parable of a Pharisee and a tax collector to show the difference between the way we should be and the trap we can fall into. This is how it is introduced in the Gospel:
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: - Luke 18: 9-14.And he spake this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Jesus tells the parable of how the Pharisee was so self-righteous that his very prayers unto God exalted himself and how the sinner showed true humility before God because he knew he had no righteousness. That is the frame of mind we need to be walking our salvation in. Humility which comes from the realization that we have no righteousness except for the blood of Jesus Christ, which covers our sins before Almighty God!

Have A Blessed Day