I was recently asked a question about biblical convictions, or Godly convictions and how covenant convictions are different and why God would build that contrast for us today?

To begin with, what most refer to as biblical convictions (sometimes called Godly convictions) are actually designed by Satan to replace God’s true covenant convictions. They are dangerous substitutes because they go no further than to make a firm statement of belief that the things of God matter to us and are more important than our personal desires.

On the other hand, covenant convictions go to the heart of God to lay out the spiritual “things” that God placed in Jesus for us to touch Him to enable us to connect to Him and He to us to empower our walk with Him. There’s an actual equipping that takes place with the things of Jesus’ covenant that matter to God; they are the standard God set for pleasing Him, and this is how He defines righteousness. We daily put into action all the spiritual tools God sprinkled with Jesus’ blood and He works in us the fruits of righteousness.

Normally, covenant convictions are formed after conversion as the apostles instruct believers about the covenant agreement they just entered into with God (Acts 17:19). But Christians today find themselves outside that canopy of care and have a hard time seeing the reality of Christ in their daily lives.

All Christians experience this sudden drop-off point in their experience and often find themselves asking deep questions about their convictions. Most can’t make sense of why their beliefs do not hold water in their day-to-day living. They want to please God; they want to do what is right, but are not equipped with the terms of the new covenant, so doing righteousness is still out of their reach.

1 John 2:29
If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.

It’s important to know that convictions of right or wrong doing, when they are not covenant related, are not coming from God. God is correcting the idea that following personal convictions is the same as doing righteousness and living according to the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

I said that convictions of right or wrong doing, if it is not covenant related, are not coming from God. So, where do they come from? They are personal conviction that come from our own internal moral code that sadly have been accepted as God’s trusted GPS to receive signals from Him.

This is another important transition for the church and gives us a sense of the importance of restoration. Restoration has to do with returning to God what belongs to Him. Just as the articles of the temple were stolen and plundered by Nebuchadnezzar and later returned in the days of Ezra. The moral code stole the righteousness of Christ for itself and righteousness is now being returned to God, the rightful owner.

God forms covenant convictions to shape our walk with Him beginning with the foundation of truth. Casting God’s covenant aside, most create their own personal convictions about right living from the scriptures and from this false foundation continue to live out their struggle with sin. This is not God’s plan for two reasons:

1 – Personal convictions are a sign of one’s struggle with sin. You might say that you feel strongly that God is convicting your heart of doing something you shouldn’t or convicting your heart that you need to put God’s word into action. But this struggle to do the right thing is not the same as doing righteousness.

2 – Personal convictions are actually conversations with self. God is working through His restored government to change the conversation that Christians have about their convictions (struggle with sin) because this voice of conviction is tied to one’s own moral code and this is why questions about conviction will always circle back to self.

A covenantless believer can never get past their own language and system to challenge self. The strong conviction that righting a wrong within ourselves or others would seem at first to be Godly advice, or Godly counsel because we were all born into the challenge of right and wrong. But God did not create us for this challenge, God created us for Himself and so He teaches us righteousness, which is His covenant convictions that are formed of His truth.

Let’s learn a little more about how God defines righteousness. We’ll draw from Apostle Eric’s Terms Glossary.

God declares us righteous when we accept the standard that He set in Jesus to qualify our faith.

Righteousness means that even though God first showed His love toward us while we were lost in the kingdom of darkness, He does not accept us the way we are, in darkness, without Christ. God accepts our faith on the grounds of Jesus Christ to begin a covenant relationship. Only Jesus qualifies our faith as competent to meet God’s expectations.

1 Corinthians 1:30
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.

When we say that Jesus Christ is our righteousness, we mean that He is the exacting standard by which God measures our faith and judges our soul. Jesus qualifies our faith by His knowledge, stewardship, and tools to reflect His likeness, and this meets God’s expectation perfectly, thus He declares us righteous. Nothing of man is added to faith, and nothing of Jesus is missing.

We exercise our faith with His knowledge and, therefore, our faith is reflective of the power of who Jesus is. Only Jesus pleases God, as He said, “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). Unless our faith reflects Jesus, it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6).

God set a policy for our faith to reflect Jesus. The policy He set is in accordance with the token we receive. All Jesus’ tokens reflect Him and are life giving, so that we are not condemned with the world. The righteous are not condemned with the world, and that’s why God’s policy for faith to reflect Jesus is called God’s righteous judgments that He carries out daily for our benefit. That which the Holy Spirit provides for our daily labor is competent to fulfill God’s joy. When we run the race according to God’s rules, He justifies our faith, we are free to use the tokens that join us to Him and free from the condemnation of the law.

True Godliness is the fruit that is born in our souls when we live out the process God placed in Jesus for our daily contact with Him. The work that takes place in us is Spirit-breathed instead of flesh-breathed (personal convictions).

In truth God is making a separation between grace that carries the conviction of faith for righteousness (the standard set in Christ) and the personal convictions that flows naturally from the moral code, the God-Code and the signature which forms part of the features of the flesh we were born into.

As I said earlier, God first teaches us the things of His covenant to make our faith competent to reflect Christ. He first establishes His standard for our faith to measure up against Jesus’ foundation knowledge and then we are equipped to discern how God frames our faith around His covenant. When God says that Jesus is our righteousness, this ever abiding, changeless scale is what He is talking about.

Romans 4:13
For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

Romans 3:22
Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:

Righting a wrong has many different colors and flavors as it filters through one’s own prejudice to form personal convictions. Personal convictions are tied to who we believe we are or should be in God’s eyes that is formed from our own personal moral code.

It is a popular saying that when something seems bad, we can turn it around and find something good. This advice plays straight into the hands of the moral code which is geared toward such turnarounds to find things that are agreeable to our own light (the light of the aspiration). When finding things that are agreeable to our own light the soul finds temporary closure which is not the same as the peace and rest of Christ that God issues as faith meets His standard.

When the advice offered by our internal moral code is applied to faith then something goes terribly wrong. This conviction is used to build faith on the grounds of good intentions and the goodness of man — the light in which we want to be seen — which is not the same as the divine nature God wishes to create in us. God now points out a different path to walk and a different light to embrace.

God teaches that righteousness is about how He declares us righteous because we meet His expectation (His standard). He accepts us on the grounds of Jesus Christ not on the grounds of personal convictions of wrong and right. This means that God sets the expectation and motivation for faith to respond by reciprocating Christ in His knowledge, thus approaching God with what He sanctified.

When a person is not walking in a covenant relationship with God, they use the law of Moses to manage what they should and shouldn’t do. Trapped in convictions formed by the moral code, they use the law to confirm guilt (thus replacing the law of grace and truth), touching the transgression which calls sin to remembrance, defiling the conscience.

While a person earnestly desires goodness and temperance, the law cannot bring that to pass, the law cannot create the virtue of Christ. The law only points out the falling-short thereof.

As faith labors according to the standard of Jesus’ righteousness, the Spirit sets temperance in each vessel. The goodness of man is not the same as the goodness of God which holds the quality of Christ as His permanent virtue worked in the soul through the process of regeneration.

It is as we embrace His new knowledge and tools for fruit bearing in our daily cycles of growth that God brings the healing and forms the fruits of the Spirit that He promised.

So many Christians talk about the transition they want to make from transgression to innocence, but so few make the transition to Jesus’ covenant that makes this possible.

The transgression speaks of Adam’s disobedience to God’s commandment and innocence speaks of removing the transgression. Man’s conviction of wrongdoing is about trying to remove the mark of the transgression which is only possible by following the pattern set in Jesus Christ given to the church by His living apostles.

Framed within the covenant, God gives the new law of grace and truth so that we can see Jesus (His virtue). We must touch Jesus in obedience in order to express the substance of His virtue in reciprocation. God sets the standard for our faith to be measured and expressed with Jesus Christ alone. Touching the transgression is calling sin to remembrance whereas touching Jesus in grace and truth is bringing Him to remembrance for healing to take place.

Righting a wrong through personal conviction is looking back at the transgression and the condemnation the flesh carries to confirm guilt and look for ways to unburden the conscience.

God wants believers to move forward with Him as they now touch Jesus in His new law of grace and truth to allow Him to qualify them by faith framed according to the terms of His new covenant.

Righting a wrong through personal conviction is about establishing innocence before God but it is Christ that establishes our innocence by removing the mark of disapproval that is upon the unchanged soul. God is calling believers to embrace Jesus Christ’s covenant wherein He packaged the standard whereby He establishes our innocence before Him.

Upon touching Jesus in His new tools and knowledge a believer can now cease touching the law which confirms the transgression of the flesh. Instead, they are now allowing God to transition them away from the habit to trust the conviction that flows naturally from the fabric of their first birth.