What is the Hope of Righteousness, and How do I receive it?

(Galatians 5:5-6)

How do you receive the hope of righteousness? Isn’t righteousness all about doing good, so can you receive the hope of righteousness just by being and doing good?

The answer to this is both yes and no. We do need to do and be good, but it is not because of the hope of righteousness but rather it is about how we walk and live our lives as Christians. You cannot “be good” and receive the hope or the gift of righteousness.

The hope of righteousness and the free gift of righteousness are two different things, but they are both received via the same path. And this scripture tells us clearly what that path is.

The Free Gift of Righteousness

First, let us look at the free gift of righteousness that we receive from God.

We receive righteousness as a free gift when we believe in what God has done through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ died as the perfect sacrifice for our sins so that we could have our sins both forgiven and forgotten.

Jesus came to “…take away the sin of the world,” as we are told in John 1:29, and when He does that for us, we receive the free gift of righteousness. It is given to us by the grace of God and we receive it through faith.

We believe, and then we receive.

Once we come to Christ and are baptised in accordance with the scriptures, we believe that we have died and been resurrected with Christ. This is the symbolism of our baptism into the death of Jesus Christ. We are buried with Christ as we enter the waters of baptism, then we are resurrected with Christ as we are lifted out of the waters.

When we believe these things, God declares us to be righteous in His eyes because we have faith in the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. This is the righteousness given by faith through grace and it covers our sins both past, present and future because our past sins are forgiven and forgotten, and future sins are removed when we are set free from the law. If you are not under the law, then you cannot break the law and therefore sin no longer has any power over those who believe.

In very simple terms this is how the free gift of righteousness occurs and works. It is given immediately when we believe these things and are baptised in the name of Jesus Christ. We are perfected by faith because our sins have been taken away, and if we have no sin, then we are perfect in the sight of God.

But that doesn’t mean every thing we do is perfect…not by a long shot. To be perfect in all our ways is still a goal and a process yet to be achieved.

This is where the hope of righteousness comes into play.

The Hope of Righteousness

These scriptures speak about the “hope” of righteousness, as we see.

5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love. (Galatians 5:5-6)

Now if we had already received righteousness, surely there would no longer be the need to hope for righteousness. As we are clearly told in the following verse, who hopes for what they can see?

24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:24-25)

We were saved in hope, and one of the hopes that we are saved in is the hope of righteousness.

But aren’t we already righteous by faith, as I pointed out in the earlier part of this post? Don’t we just have to have faith and be declared righteous?

Yes we do…BUT that is not the end of the story.

We are declared righteous by faith for the purpose of being prepared to be assisted and aided by God to enable us to be brought into the true righteousness, which is by being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.

We come to Jesus and then we must walk with Him. This walk is a journey that leads us to God, and to be in His presence we must be righteous and perfect as He is perfect. He gives us the free gift of righteousness by faith to enable the journey, so that we can come to the place of perfection in the image of Christ.

I make the distinction between these two places of righteousness in this way. First we are righteous by faith, and then we walk with Christ to become righteous by fact.

While we are learning and growing in Christ as we walk with Him, we will make many mistakes. We will fall and fail and mess up as we walk and learn to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad and sin from righteousness. The walk takes time…lots of time to come into perfection.

This is the hope of righteousness, the hope that we will become righteous as He is righteous.

How do these two righteousnesses differ?

The first righteousness is the one we receive as a free gift from God. It is received by grace through faith, as discussed above.

We receive the free gift of righteousness when we believe and enter into the grace of God through our baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is all that is required to receive the free gift of righteousness: believe and be baptised.

The second righteousness, and the hope of righteousness, is brought about by the working of the Holy Spirit in us.

This is how and why it works.

We receive the first free gift of righteousness to prepare us and bring us to the standard where God will help us find the fullness of the promises of the gospel. God gave up on man because man sinned and so if He were to then turn around and help man back to His standard of perfection, sin had to be dealt with. So God sent Jesus to die for our sins and to provide the path by which we could become perfect once again, as He created man in the first place before the fall of Adam and Eve.

The promise of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the promise of freedom and perfection. It is the promise of reconciliation with God and the hope of eternal life through being perfected in Jesus Christ. And a big part of that promise was prophesied by the prophet Joel, as quoted by Peter in his oration at Pentecost.

17 ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; 18 yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. (Acts 2:17-18)

The fullness of the promise of the gospel of Jesus Christ included and was completed by the receiving of the Holy Spirit with the attending signs of speaking in tongues and prophecy.

And this receiving of the Holy Spirit is necessary in relation to the hope of righteousness. As we see in the scripture in Galatians 5:5 quoted above, we see that we await the hope of righteousness, “…through the Spirit, by faith.” The reason we are awaiting this hope of righteousness is because the journey to perfection, which is the fullness of the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ, is a long journey.

The work of the Holy Spirit is to bring us into perfection and to transform us into the image of Jesus Christ, as we are told in this scripture.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

It is the Holy Spirit dwelling within us who does this work of transformation, and as this verse tells us, it occurs very slowly over time, “from one degree of glory to another.”

This is the hope of righteousness in Jesus Christ. First, that we would be righteous as a free gift from God through faith and by His grace, and second, that we would be made righteous in all we think, say and do by the working of the Holy Spirit in us and on us. And the reward of the hope of righteousness is eternal life with Christ Jesus and God the Father in the new heavens and earth that are yet to come after His return.

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