Self-righteousness is your own righteousness. It’s your own proclamation of righteousness. Your own established way.
When you get around a self-righteous person, you are around a person that has their own ideas of right and wrong, their own ways of good, and their own views on evil. Self-righteous people are full of pride because they trust in their own knowledge that they have created.
Self creations lead to self-exaltation. When we do something from our own strength, we can boast, but when it’s done by God, we have no place to boast because we know we didn’t do it on our own. Then come humbleness and humility naturally.
When God moves, humility is at the door. Yet in order to allow God in to move, I have to move myself out the way. I have to humble myself under the mighty hand of God. Humble people look like this. “God, I can’t do it, how do I do it?” “God, I don’t know, teach me.” We have no need that any man should teach us.
The worse man that teaches us is the self-proclaimed man that establishes in ourselves. Many self-taught are the worse people. Those who are taught wrong by other men are taught by people that have taught themselves. You’re either taught by yourself, by someone else, or God.
God moves men to teach, but it’s under the influence of the Holy Spirit. That’s what I want to hear out of men is the influence of God. The inspirational word from above. Inspiration from above is how we get delivered from a self-righteous spirit. When we stop teaching ourselves, we are beginning to be delivered from self-righteousness.
Self-righteousness is the end of all righteousness. Self-righteousness is what made the Pharisees blind. The fruit of pride that birthed from self-righteousness kept them blind. Jesus said because you say you can see, you will stay blind.
Many will stay blind because of pride, but the only way to break your pride is to break your self-righteousness. Is to stop teaching yourself. That you would come to Jesus and say, “Lord, I am blind like blind Bartimaeus.” And see a miracle before your eyes, and the miracle is when you start to see God.
Is when you start to see the Kingdom, is when the mud of revelation is rubbed on your eyes. The physically blind being healed is a miracle, but a greater miracle is a Pharisee being healed of blindness.
Your physical eyes will perish but your blind spiritual eyes will torment you forever. It’s a miracle when a prideful man becomes humble. It’s a miracle when a self-righteous man becomes humble. It’s a miracle when you can see. If you still have self-righteousness in you, it means you are still high on yourself. The Bible says do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to. If you are just a little self-righteous, that means there’s a little part that's high on you or that is doing things without God, seeing without God, working without God. Self works are a breeding ground for self-righteousness.
That’s why the Bible says not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit. When it’s by might and power, I will boast; when it’s by His Spirit, I will boast in Him. The key to loose self-righteousness is to get out of your might and power, your strength, and get in His spirit. You’re humble one day and prideful another? Well, maybe one day you’re in the Spirit and another you in your flesh, in your strength.
If l lift 300 pounds on the bench press, I will be proud of myself. Yet if I lift it with the help of a bodybuilder doing all the work then I will give the credit to the bodybuilder. If we let God do things in our life, we will give glory to Him, and every time I’m giving glory to Him, I’m not giving glory to myself. In the meantime, self-righteousness is dying because self-exaltation is dying. Even Paul needed a thorn in his flesh to keep Him from pride. Even when God moves through us, we need to look at what He is doing, not at what He did through us to glorify us. We need to keep our eyes off ourselves and focus on the light that our whole body would be full of light. The righteous are as bold as a lion. Self-righteousness is pretty bold because of itself. Yet the righteous are bold because of The Lion.
A self-righteous man is like a person that stinks and everyone can smell it but himself. Everyone around you knows your problems except you. Self-righteousness exposes where your righteousness is from. You are either in another man’s righteousness, Jesus’, or in your own. Our righteousness is filthy rags. Anytime we muster up our own righteousness, we are going back to the filthy rags. We need to stop worshipping our own ability to know something, and we need to start knowing Him. Bodily exercise profits little, but the Spirit that liberally gives us self-control profits all in all. There is no exercise in receiving. Many are striving and exercising against sin instead of receiving deliverance from sin, and in the meantime, becoming self-righteous because they win battles on their own, in their own strength. At the end of the day, the devil will, but if we do it with God, we always win. It didn't say "mortify the deeds of the flesh by might." It said mortify the deeds of the flesh by THE SPIRIT. I am an overcomer because He is The Overcomer in me. I am righteous because He makes me righteous. By His blood in name and by His power in deed.
If we know everything else but Him, we know nothing. Knowledge puffs up but love edifies. God is love, and when I receive from God, love is flowing through me. The knowledge of God is love, the spirits of God are love. Revelation reveals love. Revelation gives me eyes of love and unveils love. Wisdom teaches me how to walk in love. Knowledge from God shows me what love is and what love is doing. Might helps me walk in it. The spirit of understanding helps me understand it and the spirit of counsel reconciles me to love, and the fear of the Lord keeps me fearing from separating from this great love. They are the seven spirits of love because these seven are the traits of the Spirit of God and God is love.
Because you say you can see, you are blind. Seeing on your own makes you blind. Seeing on your own makes you self-righteous. When I see by God, it is righteous and pure. We need to stop seeing through the glass darkly and let the Holy Spirit shine His light so that we can see. When I see without God, even if it’s truth, it will have an impure twist on it. Yet when God shows things to me and teaches me how to see, it’s imparted with love because everything God does is with love because He is love.
Love thinks about its neighbor; self-righteousness thinks about itself and the works it’s doing. When I walk in His righteousness, I walk in love. And if I walk in love, it won’t be self-righteous because love doesn’t think about self.
By. Joe Pinto
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