Rom 3:10 (NIV) As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one.

Ice cream, until a few years ago, came in half gallons. That was the standard. You knew what you were getting and could compare prices. These days ice cream comes in varying sizes that look like half gallons. To compare you have to look at the per ounce cost and do the math. It is rather frustrating.

My wife bought one of those party cookware gizmos. It was months before I knew what it was for but it had only one purpose – to squeeze the liquid from a can of tuna. It was handy until they changed the size of the can and the amount in the can. Now the thing is useless. Of course the company packing the tuna never told us they changed the amount of tuna. So here we are back to the per ounce cost method because the standard is gone.

Is there anything that remains the same and you can always count on it being exactly the same? Your first answer is God, right? Let’s try another answer – righteousness.

God is unchanging and His standard for righteousness is unchanging. The standard is sinless perfection. Sorry, I don’t meet the grade. No matter how hard I try I’m not righteous. Are you? Of course not for there was only one sinless perfect person and that was Jesus. He died as a sacrifice for our unrighteousness.

The "Good News" is good news because we don’t have to meet God’s standard of righteousness. Jesus covered it for us with His blood. But what we do have to do is to strive for righteousness because His sacrifice means nothing if it doesn’t call us to be more like Him each moment we live.

That "Good News" is also good news because we don’t have to beat ourselves up over our failure to achieve righteousness. There is regret and remorse for failure as there should be and with it there should be a desire to do better. The only true failure is when you quit trying to live a righteous life.

I loathe numbers, math drives me nuts. One year of accounting taught me how much I hate math. I make mistakes. There I said it! But, math is important and is a part of everyday life. So, even though I don’t like it and it doesn’t like me; I have to co-exist with math and use it. Righteousness is like that, you may not like it but it is a part of your life as a Christian. God tells us over and over again in His Word that we should live by righteousness. The only way to do that is to learn from Jesus’ teachings and put those teachings into practice every day. We can be better people than we are with effort and prayer.

God's Wisdom:  "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied:  'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Matt 22:36-37