If you are a Christian, I am sure you’ve heard someone say, “All our righteousness is as filthy rags.”
Did you know that is a misquote?
It’s “all our righteousnesses [note: plural] are as filthy rags.” Meaning, all our self-righteous good deeds that are not in obedience to God are “as filthy rags.”
Do you fully understand the “filthy rags” part? It just doesn’t mean “dirty clothes,” though that is how it has been translated in some versions. It actually means a “soiled menstrual clothe.”
Why is that significant?
Well, consider these verses below –
1st Peter 1:22 – Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart fervently: 23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed [i.e., semen], but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever.
See, God’s word is, as it were, the holy semen of truth, which when acknowledged and accepted by faith quickens us, or makes us alive, enabling the divine nature of Christ to be fully formed in us.
James 1:18 – Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures.
1st John 3:9 – Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for His seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
The reason Isaiah told the people that “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” was because the people, like a menstruating woman, had reject the seed [word] of God and it did not bring forth His life in them.
Therefore Isaiah continued with saying, “…and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. 7 And there is none that calls upon Your name, that stirs up himself to take hold of You: for You have hid your face from us, and have consumed us, BECAUSE of our iniquities.”
Jesus told us, “That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Because they were hypocrites. Faith, saving faith, comes by hearing of God’s word, brings repentance, gratitude, and love; because true faith works by love… which is simply known as FAITH-fulness, or to be full of faith.
The just shall live by faith… that too is an Old Testament verse and reality….
Revelation 3:4 – You have a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white: FOR THEY ARE WORTHY.
Are you going to be found worthy?
2nd Peter 2:2 – Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,
3 According as His divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue.
4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
5 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
6 And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
7 And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
8 For IF these things be in you, and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 BUT… he that lacks these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and has forgotten why he was purged from his old sins.
2nd Corinthians 6:1 – We then, as workers together with Him, beseech you also that you RECEIVE NOT THE GRACE OF GOD IN VAIN.
It is time to awake unto righteousness and put on Christ Jesus.
Be holy.
Live for the King!
Gates of the City 