Here's a excerpt from the book "Awake Unto Righteousness" by Claudia Baca-Moore
Righteousness and Judgement Day
There is nothing about us that God is angry at. Jesus has become the Mercy Seat. Every bit of God’s wrath concerning us has been poured out on Jesus. There is nothing in your life that God is disappointed in. “Oh, but Claudia, you don’t know what I do,” you might say. Perhaps you’re disappointed in you, but God’s not disappointed in you! You’ve gotta know that God knew there would be areas in your life that would seem to be a struggle to you. Yet He still calls you to be confident in Him. He’s confident in His ability, and He’s confident in your ability to trust Him.
“Blessed and happy and to be envied is the person of whose sin the Lord will take no account nor reckon it against him,” Romans 4:8, Amplified Bible. Allow me to bring something to your remembrance – it has got to be one of the most unscripturally ridiculous things that we hear! Too bad we hear it so often! I was watching TV the other day, and they were saying that when we get to Heaven, there’s video that’s going to be played on a big screen TV, right in front of God and everybody, showing all the things we’ve done wrong. Even the things you did when you thought no one was looking! Have you ever heard something like that before? Of course you have. For future reference, let’s call it the “big screen in heaven” doctrine. I’ll tell you right now, I don’t have chapter-and-verse to verify this doctrine. But it sure can be effective in shaming us out of sin – for a little while, at least!
It’s very possible that there will be a video played on that day, but it’ll show all the righteous things you did – even your righteous thoughts! The rest will be burned. “The work of each [one] will become (plainly, openly) known – shown for what it is; for the day (of Christ) will disclose and declare it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test and critically appraise the character and worth of the work each person has done. If the work which any person has built on this Foundation – any product of his efforts whatever – survives (this test), he will get his reward. But if any person’s work is burned up [under the test], he will suffer the loss (of it all, losing his reward), though he himself will be saved, but only as [one who has passed] through fire,” 1 Corinthians 3:13-15.
That’s the mercy and grace of God at work! If you saw all the sins you committed when you were on the earth, you wouldn’t be real happy, would you? It’d be pretty embarrassing, having all your buddies sitting by you, listening to them say, “I knew it!” and “so that’s what she was up to!” That wouldn’t be something that would bring us the “joy unspeakable and full of glory” feeling we’ve come to expect heaven to produce! It would bring sorrow and that would bring sadness. According to God, sin is not held to our account. Once we have received Jesus Christ, our old nature of sin is gone.
Are you getting comfortable with the idea that righteousness refers to nature, not actions? Which is to say, we’re righteous whether we’re naughty or nice. We’re righteous whether we feel righteous or not. We’re righteous because God has made us righteous.
There existed a group in Galatia that tried to establish their own righteousness through observance of the law. They said, “Listen, I know we started out believing in God. We had faith and righteousness, but now here’s what we need to do in order to be pleasing to God.” They began to bring in all kinds of rules and regulations to follow. The rules and regulations began to be lord, instead of Jesus Christ. Paul writes something to the effect of, “Didn’t you start off believing the Gospel? So why are you doing this on your own? Who has bewitched you?” Then he asked, “Why have you fallen from grace?”
In the church language of today, we say a person has “fallen from grace” if he commits adultery, or if he stops attending church. When you and I try to start establishing our own righteousness by how good we are, we truly have then “fallen from grace”. When we depend on grace, when we depend on the very nature of God, we have power over anything. When we fall into sin, we don’t necessarily fall from grace. We’ve just fallen from rational and intelligent thinking. We’re acting in ignorance. A fall from grace happens when we depend on ourselves to be made right before God.
I can never depend on me to be right before God without Him. But I can always depend on Him, because He keeps me right. He keeps me on the right path. He’s got his hook in our jaw. We may start getting pretty far out there in left field, but God gently reels us in, and keeps us going in that path. I can trust Him.
In my own Bible teaching ministry, I’d get to the point where I’d say, “Boy, I’m getting scared to preach a message that sounds so radically different than what I usually hear preached by others.” But God would assure me that He would keep me from falling off the edge. He encourages me to keep going, even if it feels like I’m out on a limb. Now, more than ever, I’m not one of those ministers who are scared of saying the wrong thing. Hey, if I say the wrong thing, my heart is in the right place. God is so gracious that He’ll cause you to hear the right thing! I never plan to, but if I say the wrong thing, God will watch over my words, like He watches over my heart. I have said wrong things at times before. I know you can’t believe it, but it’s true! I think it was, maybe, when I was 18-years-old or so…
And when we got born again, what most Christians don’t understand, is they were born again unto a righteous nature. Our nature becomes just like God and God is righteous, it’s what’s set Him apart from any other creation in all the universe. God was righteous. God is righteous. And He wanted a family so much and when Adam fell, God could no longer have fellowship with Adam and Adam could no longer have fellowship with Him. And so God paid the extreme price, sending Christ Jesus to the death, even the extreme death of the cross so that you and I could have an exchange of natures, so that the unrighteous, who was us, could become righteous. And Jesus, who was righteous, would become unrighteous. Jesus would become one with our sins so that we could become one with His nature. We need to understand that our nature is righteous. If we don’t, we’ll always be striving to somehow be right with God. We’ll always be looking for a way to “Oh, if only I could do this, then…” But I want to tell you – it’s now! We don’t have to worry “If only I could do this” because we believed in Christ Jesus and He’s done it all. He’s done everything for us.