The Righteous: Who…What…Why?

The Righteous: Who…What…Why?

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Dr. Renton Rathbun

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 8/10/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Monday edition of Stand in the Gap Today. And it’s also our monthly focus on apologetics, biblical worldview and education with recurring guest, Dr. Renton Rathbun. Renton’s a regular speaker for Biblical Worldview Instruction with BJU Press, a longtime partner here at Stand in the Gap today and the American Pastor’s Network. And he’s also a college professor, been that for over 20 years, pastor of a church in upstate South Carolina as well. And he also hosts a podcast called the Renton Rathbun Show program that’s geared to helping Christian parents guide their children, I would say, through the maze of a hostile culture. Now, today as we normally do on this program focus, we’re tackling a foundational issue that not only directly impacts the health and the freedom and the moral stability of our nation and any nation, frankly, but one also that determines the very personal eternal future of every person alive now, but ever born.

The title I’ve chosen to frame this conversation is this, the righteous. Who, what, why? Now in a culture drowning in moral confusion as ours is and compromise all around us where truth has fallen in the streets and corruption is clearly rising, integrity, honor and selfless living, vanishing, yet scripture makes a very, very bold claim. Righteousness and the righteous still exist. They actually exist. The righteous and righteousness are not mythical ideals, nor are they defined by the, I want to say the ever shifting opinions of modern society. God has always maintained an identifiable remnant, men and women, whose lives reflect his truth in times of deep cultural decay. And these are the righteous as identified in such places like Psalm 34:15, which says this, “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are open unto their cry.” Now, it brings us to our first core question and we’re going to be dealing with four core questions, one in each of the segments.

But this first one is this. Who are the righteous? Who are the righteous? And would God declare you to be one? I put myself and not declare me to be one, but I’m going to put it out for all of you listening. Who are the righteous and would God declare you to be one? And with that, welcome, Renton. Thanks for being back with me today.

Renton Rathbun:

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Sam Rohrer:

Renton, when God evaluates righteousness, which he clearly does all through scripture, by his very nature, he has established by his nature an unchanging, absolute and objective standard. Since because of God’s holiness, which we’ve talked about on this program before, the holiness of God and his justice, God never grades on a curve, nor is he impressed by human performance. That’s not the way he grades. So with these thoughts in mind, who are the righteous? And I’m going to ask this question along with it. By what criteria does God recognize a person as being righteous?

Renton Rathbun:

Well, one way to help us understand what we’re talking about is to remember that righteousness, that term actually comes from the Old Testament. It originates there referring to the exactness of weights and measurements. So in other words, in the marketplace, it was vital that the measurements be used to discover what exact weight of an item to be sold in its exact weight so that there’s fairness. But what they were trying to do is using these physical weights had to be matched to the standard, to the exact standard of weight so that you’re not cheating with the physical weights. Well, in the same way, righteousness involves this exact measuring up to God’s law. And we say God’s law, we’re really talking about God’s law is an expression of his, as you had mentioned, his very being, his character. So to be righteous is to be named among those who stand fully and exactly in the right alignment to God’s law or his character.

Now, Ephesians 4:11 through 13 tells us that he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. And this is the goal, to a mature man. Now listen to how this is described, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. And so the whole goal, especially in the book of Ephesians, is that the Father wants a body for the son and that body will, if I can put it this way, measure up, measure up to the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. Now you think, well, that’s impossible. And it is. We find that the only way that this is possible is found in the next chapter, Ephesians two.

We can measure up because, or in the chapter backwards to chapter two, we find that we can measure. The problem with measuring up is that we’re dead in our sin and therefore we must be given faith by the power of the spirit because this is a gift. And that faith makes us alive together with Christ that we might be righteous and stand before the Father as righteous. And this is what measures how we measure up to the standard. We measure up to the standard because we have been given the righteousness of someone else by faith. Now this is important to understand. Those that are righteous are standing before the Father as righteous from someone else’s righteousness. And of course in Ephesians two, it tells us that someone else’s righteousness is Christ. We are made alive together with Christ. By grace, we have been saved. This grace is that Christ’s righteousness, his good works, his obedience, all that he did is placed on our account.

And in that placement of our account, we stand before the Father with the son’s righteousness on our account. And that’s through faith given to us by the spirit. And so none of this, we can look back and say, well, I was smart enough to figure out how to save myself. And so I believed I was smart enough and wise enough to believe and therefore I earned this faith. But rather the faith is given to us by grace. The same grace that took the son’s obedience and placed it on our account and the son took our disobedience on the cross. And that exchange is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about that righteousness.

Sam Rohrer:

All right, Dr. Renton Rathbun, excellent. Ladies and gentlemen, so you may have heard this term positional in Christ, in Christ, in Christ alone. By his righteousness, if we trusted in him, we are declared justified righteous. So we are righteous by positioning, but you know what? Those around us can view us. And much of the Old Testament talks about people who lived righteously. We’ll get more into that now in the next segment. Stay with us for this important program. Well, if you’re just joining us today, thanks for being on board. Our theme today, my special guest is Dr. Renton Rathbun, generally joins me once a month. Generally on the second Monday, we try to go of that kind of a pattern. But our theme today is a practical one. It’s one you probably. Well, who knows if you’ve ever heard it actually worked out or not.

It’s the first time I’ve dealt with this and Renton and I have dealt with it together on this program. But here’s the theme, the righteous. Who, what, and why? And we’re dealing with several key questions. Like in the last segment, for instance, Renton helped us to lay the bedrock definition of who the righteous are from God’s perspective, his vertical perspective based on his objective standard positional relationship and righteousness that comes not through anything that we can do, but through faith and because of what Jesus Christ has done for us so that when God looks at us, he looks at the perfectness of Jesus Christ. Now that’s how God, it starts there. But true biblical righteousness doesn’t reside alone, put it that way, or hidden in some abstract theology where you can describe it, but it doesn’t come in a practical way into those around us.

But righteousness has both a vertical and a horizontal outworking. Let’s put it that way. And the world around watches, do they not? And that brings us to our second core question today. Would others describe you and me, but I’m putting this way to all you listeners right now. Would others describe you as a righteous person? And what is their criteria? Now, simple observation and fulfillment of scripture, I think teaches that it is clear that it is entirely possible to maintain, I’m going to say a practiced, religious, outward appearance while remaining completely destitute of true character, the true measurement as Dr. Rathbun laid out in the first segment, that concept of measurement against a standard. In Matthew 5:20, for example, Jesus issued a sharp warning that unless our righteousness, that was on a sermon on the mount to his disciples, that unless our righteousness surpassed that of the Pharisees, we will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now he recognized that the Pharisees in fact had a religious discipline and actually complimented them on certain aspects of it, particularly their zeal. But they claimed only the outside of the cup. Well, they neglected the weightier matters of the law, which Jesus talked about, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. So true righteousness produces visible fruit in everyday life, such as fair dealing, moral courage, selfless living, keeping your word even when it hurts, protecting the vulnerable and more. Now, those closest to you, your family, your neighbors, your employees, your employer, your community, those closest, they all are able to observe your private actions to some degree. And then that matches against your public profession. That’s what Jesus was telling his disciples. Now, Renton, while God looks at a person’s heart and establishes the vertical determination of being righteous through faith in Jesus Christ, God looks that first, but as you made it clear in segment one, but there’s also a horizontal witness before men.

That’s where I’d like to go now. How does Jesus expose the difference between, I’m going to say, performative, self-righteous legalism, like of the Pharisees and true biblical character? In other words, what is true righteousness on the horizontal? And compare and contrast that. What it is, what it’s not.

Renton Rathbun:

Many times people believe that righteousness is doing good works that we ourselves deem as good. However, we find in Isaiah 64: six, our good works that we’ve deemed as good and our attempt to measure up to God are referred to as filthy rags, disgusting, smelly rags. Even though it seems on the outside that these works are good and they’re benefiting people and things like that. But here’s the thing, we do not get to decide what the standard is because we are created. I think the best way to help everyone understand this is that we live in a reality in which there is a creator that created and we are that which is created. And the creator demands through his own character for us to imitate him, to be like him. That is the essence of all reality. The essence of all reality is that we as the created are to imitate the creator.

And this is demanded in Ephesians five: one.

Starting in Ephesians four, you are brought very quickly to the depths of the work you are to do in your righteousness from day to day. And Ephesians five says, the goal of all this is for you to imitate God himself as children. So in a moral sense, this is how we live or die. We live or die by how we respond to this debt we are in. And the debt is a debt that we have created in our sin that the creator had to send his son to die for. And in response to that, in response to how we are to act, I’ll tell you, we begin already in a position, like you said before, ready to imitate God’s character. You see, that part has to begin with our gratitude for our position. So there is a direct correspondence. If we’re going to act in a horizontal way to our brothers and sisters, our neighbor, our enemies, and we’re supposed to love them and act a certain way toward them as God does, then we are to be grateful for our position.

And that gratefulness is all part of how we present ourselves no longer as Gentiles as Ephesians four says, but rather to act as people that understood and know who Christ is. So it’s not just good works that we deem as good. There are good works that have been. And if you look at Ephesians chapter two, it tells us that the whole purpose of our salvation, the whole purpose of how we were brought to life through Christ, all of that were for good works that were prepared beforehand. And so it’s not just good works in general. God prepared good works for us to do because of the position we are in as sons and daughters of God. And that difference is everything.

Sam Rohrer:

All right. And that’s what the Pharisees lacked because they rejected the Son of God, though they thought their deeds were good. Jesus said, “You’re a worker of iniquity.” But as a true believer in Jesus Christ, where he recognized as righteous through the righteous of Jesus Christ, our life must reflect itself in those outward things you’re talking about. Let me just go here in a practical sense because since the word of God renting all the way through, so many verses has the righteous and then the wicked. The righteous and then the wicked or the evil. And there are certain things that happen to both. So they’re always there all the time. Now here’s my question for you. We don’t often think in terms of measuring ourselves or measuring others in terms of now that’s a righteous person. Now that’s an evil person, but yet scripture does.

So I’m going to put it this way. So using biblical terminology, because I think that’s where we can’t go wrong by doing that. When using biblical terminology, can and should true believers measure people in office, people in the pulpit, people in the media, people in business, and ourselves as being righteous or being wicked? Is that a right approach to be followed?

Renton Rathbun:

In short, yes, absolutely. And let me explain. Our entire existence is measured. It’s measured in terms of righteousness, which means in the end, we all will be left as either covenant keepers or covenant breakers. In other words, are we in Christ as Ephesians talks about? Are we in Adam as Romans five talks about? Those are the only two groups of people that scripture really categorizes. People that are in Christ or in Adam. There’s nothing in between. In fact, Ephesians 4:17 through 20 says this. So this I say to affirm together with the Lord that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walked in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them because of the hardness of their heart. And they having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

Verse 20, “But you did not learn Christ that way.” I want you to notice here, there’s only two kinds of people, those that are living wickedly and those that are living in Christ. And those in Christ are commanded. Don’t live like the wicked. These are the only two kinds of people. And so every judgment comes down to how we are living or not living to the standard of Christ.

Sam Rohrer:

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I hope that this is though provoking and perhaps answering some questions. No doubts raising some. Hopefully we’ll conclude and address those before we get to the end of the program. So stay with us today as our theme is this, the righteous. Who, what, and why? We started with this. Would Jesus, would God declare you as righteous? What would our neighbors say? Would they say you’re righteous? Well, today as we continue our conversation, Dr. Renton Rathbun and myself, Dr. Rathbun has a website, which I’ll give you right now, rentonrathbun.com. And you’ll find there his podcast that he does geared to parents, Christian parents primarily who are concerned about the influences of our culture and how it’s impacting their children and how they can counteract those kind of things. You can find it at that site plus other things, I am sure.

But he’s with me today and we’ve selected this theme, the righteous, who, what, and why. Now, so far we’ve examined God’s, I’m going to say his vertical standard of faith that establishes the matter of being righteous, which we’ve identified that is through faith in Jesus Christ alone so that when God, the Father, looks at us, he doesn’t see us, which is only the exact opposite, but he sees the righteousness of Christ. So we are in Christ if we truly known him. That is that aspect of righteous. But then we just talked about the horizontal witness because there is a daily conduct requirement for those who are righteous right before God through Jesus Christ. And that is how they live. Because if we do not live righteously, then how can we be righteous? Makes sense. And scripture talks about that. And so that’s what we’re trying to walk down through.

So the world around us, those around us, they can tell if we are Christ like righteous, the standard, perfect standard, or we’re not. Now, but it goes actually beyond that. You may not have though about this, but this third segment’s going to deal with this rather searching question. And here’s that question. Would Satan describe you as a righteous person? And what is his criteria? You might say, well, who cares? Well, he cares. I’ll go here. In Job chapter one, as an example, Satan challenged God by asserting that Job’s righteousness was merely transactional. He in effect claimed that Job served God, acted righteously only because God gave him good things. Blessed him with wealth and protection and all of that kind of thing. And the devil we know is an adversary. He walks around seeking whom he may devour. And I’m going to contest and put out there, he doesn’t care if you’re already in his camp.

Who’s he looking to devour? The righteous. Now, the adversary, the devil, his scrutiny tests whether our conviction holds when the blessings are stripped away, when pressure mounts and when standing for truth brings severe personal cost. Genuine righteousness is an active threat to darkness. It cannot be bought or bribed or intimidated into silence. Righteousness is never just a personal credential to hold. I’m going to submit it to stewardship to execute, carrying the heavy duty to defend that which is of Christ. Justice, protecting, vulnerable, exercising moral authority, not compromising on matters of truth and living faithfully wherever God places us. Now, those are some thoughts. Frantin, when we look at the account of Job and Satan’s accusation as the adversary, he puts a specific test out there and saying, “Well, a person’s righteousness and under fire.” And he says, “When I test him, oh, he’ll deny you.” So here, why does genuine uncompromised biblical character pose such a direct threat, I’m going to say, to the kingdom of darkness?

Renton Rathbun:

Well, what’s interesting about what happened with Job was that Satan here was using his craftiness. That craftiness is part of how he always kind of deals with people. He leaves just enough truth in it for it to sound legitimate, but the accusation becomes a different idea. So what you noticed was the accusation was false. However, there was truth in what he was saying. The truth is this, he was illustrating this principle. The principle is this. For you to be righteous, you can’t be righteous unless you are first have some kind of good motivation. Now, in a general sense, what we’re talking about is first, righteousness is not righteousness until it is first positional and then active. In other words, am I just making up good works? Am I doing something that’s just transactional? God’s been good, giving me stuff, so I’m going to be faithful to him until that.

Of course, those motivations are wrong. So Satan is saying, yes, he’s doing the right works, but is he doing it for the wrong reasons? This is even discussed in James chapter four verse three when it tells us that when we ask of something, even if we’re asking of good things, but we’re asking with selfish motives, the wrong motives ruin the righteousness of the act. And so Satan fears, Satan’s greatest fear is not merely just our good deeds. It’s good deeds that come from a person who loves the Lord. And in their motivation, they are motivated by gratitude to how they were brought to life. And in that gratitude, they move forward with works that are prepared for beforehand. Because those works are works that are in gratitude to the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit due to the love of the Father. And all of that comes down to these works prepared beforehand for the furthering of the kingdom of God and the tearing down of the gates of hell.

And so when someone is positionally righteous and then actively doing righteous works, that is a huge threat to the gates of hell and especially to Satan who does not want to see the kingdom of God increase.

Sam Rohrer:

And that’s interesting because in that contest with Job, I’m just going to throw this out here too. In that contest with Job, a lot of people think that Satan went and he came into the presence of God, which is displayed there. He has access to the throne room. The Satan is there accusing the brother and us today even. But he went in there, but he didn’t start out by accusing Job. God himself actually said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job?” And then that’s when the Satan came back and said, “Oh yeah, I’ve looked at him. I see him, but he’s not genuine.” And then that’s when God said, “Okay.” Now, is there a lesson that we can learn from that? And part of it, when I look at that, I say, “Well, you know what? Until God gave permission, Satan couldn’t do anything to buffet the righteous Job.” Apply some of that because if the devil just goes after everybody who’s righteous, it’s kind of like, wow, do I want to be righteous?

Well, of course I do, but answer that question because I’ve heard some people raise that.

Renton Rathbun:

Well, what’s interesting, we were talking about James, the book of James. If you look at how the whole book of James even begins, it begins with telling the brethren to count it all joy when you have diverse temptations and difficulties and trials. All of that, you are to count it joy. And the reason is, is because it builds up your faith. Your faith actually increases during those trials. In the fallen world we live in, our faith doesn’t seem to increase during peace time when everything’s at rest, but our faith does increase oftentimes when we are in trials. And it says that that’s what will happen. The trial will bring forth an increase of faith. And that increase of faith will give you establishment. It will give you stability. You will be stable. You won’t be tossed back and forth by every window of doctor and every other thing.

You will have steadfastness. And that is an imitating of the Father. Father is steadfast. We are to be steadfast. Therefore, when the Lord allows things to come upon us and gives permission that we might go through trials, this is actually making us more like the son. And when we’re more like the son, it’s an imitation of the father because that’s who the son is imitating. And so what we have here is this work that’s done in us to bring forth steadfastness even in trial.

Sam Rohrer:

And tie that into what Jesus told the disciples in sermon on the mom. We were already there once where he said later on through, he says, “If they persecute me, and he’s the perfect standard of righteousness, they’re going to persecute you. So don’t be surprised about it. It’s going to happen, but as you said, countered all joy.” Build that out just a little bit to give hope to the righteous who may be feeling the pressure like Job did.

Renton Rathbun:

In a fallen world, standing for righteousness sake, in other words, saying that the standard of the Lord is right, that’s what it means, is going to cost us. And that is something that I think the Lord permits because he wants us to see the cost and our cost is very small. Our cost is merely our life. And that’s the only thing they can take is our life, but they can’t take our soul. And so when Christ says, “If they hated me, they’re going to hate you.” This is a test for us. I mean, have we gone through the work of our Christianity and just reflected on the Lord’s giving us salvation? That’s enough for us. That is the message of many churches that are out there. Just reflect on how the Lord saved you and he was gracious to you and all these sort of things.

But what we need to do is act and act like the Lord and do the works. And that is going to cost us.

Sam Rohrer:

And ladies and gentlemen, I hope that you’re tracking all the way through here. The last segment, we’ll answer this question. Why does it matter? And why does it matter? Why does it matter that if we are righteous before Christ, why does it matter that we understand these things that we’re talking about today? We’ll conclude by wrapping up all of these points here in the next segment. Well, we’re going to end our final segment here now. So thanks for being with us today. Before we delve into this summation and wrap up of this emphasis today on righteousness and being righteous, I want to just remind all of you who are listening that again, if you’ve never visited our website, standonthegapradio.com, or you have not downloaded our app, Stand in the Gap, which is free, just get it on your phone, you can access all of the programs in archive form.

This one, the minute program, the weekend program, TV program, all of those you can find there. And when you access it, the program, this today program, you can also bring up the transcript. So you can actually read what we are saying. And many have found it very helpful to actually bring that up. And then you can listen to the program again. And if you want to print out, and then you can just almost make notes on that. And it’s very helpful as some have shared. So I just would encourage you to consider doing that. And then obviously easily share it with a friend. Now, so far throughout this hour, we’ve held up, I’m going to say three distinct mirrors to define biblical character, that matter of righteous being righteous. And when it’s done, it is righteousness. That’s the connection of it. One is God’s vertical standard of faith through Jesus Christ, that positional righteousness, which is where it starts.

You can’t work your way into it. It’s by faith. It starts there. Then there’s the horizontal observation, I’m going to say, of our fruit. We live out our Christ likeness if we are in Christ. Our righteousness, if we are righteous in Christ, it’ll be observable around us. And that’s where Jesus, when he talks to the disciples in the beatitudes, salt and light. That’s really what it means in simple terms, a way to look at it. Then there’s an aspect of the devil himself. He’s out, as we learn, as a roaring lion, walking about, seeking whom he may devour. Well, he doesn’t devour his own. He already owns them. They’re already devoured. But for the righteous, the son of God, mean thy children of God, different matter. All right. Now, Renton and I, I’m going to bring all three of these perspectives together here. And I want to ask you this question, ladies and gentlemen, this is what we’ll deal with next.

Are you a righteous person? And when you stand before him, I ask myself this regularly, so we’re all in together. When we, when you stand before the Lord, which we all will, will you hear the Lord Jesus say, well done, good and faithful servant? Now we know that’s not going to be said to the wicked. We know that’s not going to be said to the Pharisees. That’s going to be said to the true righteous. And this is the ultimate question I think of human existence. It transcends earthly politics, culture wars, personal achievements. Those things make no difference, really. Eternal life, true kingdom, fruitfulness. And the commendation of Christ are reserved for those whose righteousness is genuine, rooted in faith, and then proven by a life of faithful stewardship. In Matthew chapter 25, the master commends the faithful servant, not for mere talk or passive belief, but for taking what was entrusted to him and putting it to work for the kingdom.

And when we fulfill our responsibility to act as salt and light, standing for truth in our homes, our churches, in our culture, in truth living like Christ, living as a faithful ambassador of the king of heaven, living as a redeemed adopted child into the family of God, we are living with eternity in view and seeking God’s approval more than the applause of men. All those things are wrapped up in true righteousness. So Renton, as we bring this home today, how does a believer keep their eyes fixed on the ultimate moment that is standing before Jesus? And how does that eternal hope transform how we should live out our faith and responsibility in a clearly hostile culture that’s right all around us?

Renton Rathbun:

Well, what you’re asking really is from Colossians three that tells us to stop looking at the things of the earth and look on things above. And the things of the earth, we have to kill the things inside of us that want to sin. But in order to do that, our eyes have to be fixed on things above. And I’ll tell you, this is a difficult thing, especially for Americans. Americans, and especially the way technology has affected Americans, we see the world in a million different segments of living. We see a segment of our political life. We see a segment of our professional life. We see a segment of our personal life with our family, the life we live in our own head. And we have all these pieces. And we go to church and we hear, okay, that’s part of my religious life. I need to fill up in my religious life and then move to my other parts of my life.

And that is the antithetical idea of scripture itself, but particularly Colossians three where Paul says, “Stop looking at the things of the earth and fix your eyes on things above,” because that is the ultimate truth of everything. And so what I want to get across here is when we’re talking about righteousness, yes, we are talking about what Christ has done for us. So if you’re a believer, man, you should be so grateful for what the Lord has done for you, that it leads you to do those works that are prepared for you beforehand. And you think, well, what are they? Let’s get really clear about this now. And so this is the clarity. In Ephesians chapter four, we have ultimate clarity because we see how we learned Christ. If you look at chapter four, verse 20, it says, “You did not learn Christ in a way that the Gentiles are acting.

You learned Christ in a different way. You’ve been taught him.” And so verse 22, in reference to your former manner of life, the former manner of your life, your daily habits of your old life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit that you may be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self, which is in the likeness of God. And this has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. And so this new self that you’ve put on as a believer is in the likeness of God, created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. And the Lord, through Paul, wants us to remember what that will look like specifically. That your righteousness, standing before the Lord is costly and therefore your call is to continue acting in righteousness and holiness as gratitude for that cost.

This is why Paul goes on to say to put away falsehood. Don’t lie to each other. Do not sin in your anger that you have. Do not steal from each other. Do not let an unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit and let the bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander. It’s all put away. And you put away all your malice. He says to be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another. And at the very end of that chapter, after he goes through all these things that are to be expressions of our gratitude to the Lord through our righteousness, it tells us why we are to forgive one another, which I believe is the ultimate difficulty with us. And that is because he forgave us. And in our gratitude for what the Lord has done for us, we pour forth the works that were prepared beforehand for others.

Sam Rohrer:

Lord, I pray that all of those listening today will be encouraged. If they don’t know you, that they would put their faith and trust in you. And if they do, Lord, that we would live righteously so that we can hear when we stand before you well done, good and faithful servant. Dr. Renton Rathbun, thank you so much for being with us today. What a pleasure always to have you on board. His website that you can find his podcast, the rentonrathbun.com. And then of course our website, get the program, listen to it again, and share it with a friend.