Remember those magic eye posters that were popular in the 90’s? I was thinking about these last night during our mid-week service.

Wednesday nights our pastor has been teaching on Divine Approval. The main topic has been on righteousness. Many people do not have the revelation that they are righteous in Christ because of it being a free gift from God and not being based on their past/current actions. In other words, many think they are not righteous because they have done things out of line with the Word or will of God. They have sinned. Righteousness is not based on your sins.

Last night the statement was made along the lines of, “there is a difference between righteousness and holiness.”

Righteousness is a free gift from God and it doesn’t matter what you have done. Holiness is produced from righteousness. Holiness is the action of living according to the Word. Sin is missing the mark. Forgiveness is given when asked when you recognize you have missed the mark.

I had a revelation in this concept last night as our pastor was teaching on this. Revelation in the Word is a funny thing, like magic eye pictures. You know it’s there but you can’t see it until you look for it. You may even know what it is you are supposed to see but until you focus your eyes in a specific way, you won’t see it.

It’s interesting the instructions for magic eye say the following –

“Hold the center of the printed image right up to your nose. It should be blurry. Focus as though you are looking through the image into the distance. Very slowly move the image away from your face until the two squares above the image turn into three squares. If you see four squares, move the image farther away from your face until you see three squares. If you see one or two squares, start over! When you clearly see three squares, hold the page still, and the hidden image will magically appear. Once you perceive the hidden image and depth, you can look around the entire 3D image. The longer you look, the clearer the illusion becomes. The farther away you hold the page, the deeper it becomes.”

This is the same as reading the Word. We can hold our Bible, we can put it right up to our nose even. We can quote scripture like there is no tomorrow but until we see BEYOND the end of our nose, we will only see a jumbled picture.

I like how the instructions say, “The longer you work at it, the clearer it becomes.”

Just my thoughts for the day.

Romans 1:15-17 (KJV)

So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

Romans 5:17(KJV)

For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)