The Power of Righteousness

The Old Testament emphasizes on the power of sin, whereas the New Testament stresses on the power of righteousness. Believers ought to differentiate between the two, else they will be confused while reading their Bible and not be able to reap the full benefit for their lives.

One powerful illustration to bring across the point is this: in the Old Testament, touching a leper makes one unclean; in the New Testament, touching a leper makes the leper clean. In fact Jesus authorized his disciples to cleanse the lepers (Matt 10:8).

Have you ever thought about this: in asking them to touch the leper Jesus is asking His disciples to break the Law! Why could his disciples now break the Law? Because it is no more about right and wrong, it is about Life. Law defines what is right and what is wrong, but it cannot give life.

Remember what happened in the Garden of Eden? Adam and Eve chose to know right and wrong instead of choosing Life. And so began mankind’s downward spiral until the Redeemer comes.

The Old Testament’s emphasis is the power of sin. Again and again it tells us that we are unable to overcome the power of sin (and it is sin that causes all human misery). All that passing laws against sin did was to produce more lawbreakers (Rom 5:20, MSG). That is exactly why we need a savior. After the Savior has done His job saving, sin has no more hold over us. We have been made righteous by His work and now have His Life living in us and out of us!

It is a beautiful thing that we can now expect the Life of God to flow out of us. When it does, it will overcome all forms of darkness surrounding us. Sin, sickness, oppression, fear, poverty and you name it; they have no fight with this Life. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly (John 10:10, NKJV).

So for believers the focus now is the power of righteousness, not the power of sin. Christians are New Testament believers!

If we fail to grasp this we will be looking for the power of sin even in the New Testament. If we insist on trying to be right on our own, it is like trying to be like Adam and Eve, doing it all over again. This is reading the Bible backwards.