Before we give some scripture verse on the value of this word and how we are to acquire it. It is obvious to me in my daily travels in the market places of life that, this is a trait that is depreciating at a scary rate on this planet. As far back as I can remember, we use to laugh about it being all right to tell little white lies because, if we didn't; it would hurt someone's feelings. This type of understanding and jesting is not only ridiculous but also dangerous. As we look at the definition of this word, it‘s obvious that the two opposites that we see here is truth verses lies.

In John chapter 16:13 Jesus said, "When the Holy Spirit comes He would guide us in all truth" In John 8:44 Jesus said, "The devil is a liar and the father of liars." We are being influenced by two living entities. The Holy Spirit is our teacher of all God's truth verses; the devil who is the father of all lies.

Integrity is the life style of the Holy Spirit and we need a continual daily bathing of this revelation of truth from Him. It is our discerning of spiritual truth second by second in our friendship with the Holy Spirit that clarifies our thinking process to walk with integrity and being unafraid of the consequences of our decision-making. As born again believers who have committed their life to God; we now have the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us who can speak into our spiritual ear and we can rightly interpret God's truths.

I am clarifying this because, I have spoken too many people that have made a mental assent to accepting Christ but, have not been born again from above and had the real miracle of salvation take place in their being. Unless we have the Holy Spirit and are being discipled to recognize His voice in our mind and heart, we will be easily deceived and fall into areas of deception in our decision-making. Let us remind our selves and allow the Holy Spirit to continue to refer us to His word in scripture at all times. An ignorant Christian of God's word is a soul sick Christian.

Paul in his letter to the Romans in chapter 8: 9-11 said, "If the Holy Spirit of Christ really dwells with in you and is directing and controlling you. Then, you are living the life of the Spirit. However, those who do not possess the Holy Spirit of Christ, they are none of His. They do not belong to Christ and are not truly a child of God. If Christ lives in you then although your natural body is dead by reason of sin and guilt, the spirit is alive because of the righteousness that God gave you, which is His characteristic. Now if this same Holy Spirit rose up Jesus from the dead. He will also restore to life your mortal, perishable body through the Spirit who now lives in you."

This restoring that Paul is talking about is the new body we will get when we go to heaven. For now we need the Holy Spirit to restore our soul and fallen nature so we can walk in supernatural power to overcome the cunning deceptions of the devil in our own bodily appetites.

Those who have not made Jesus their savior are slaves on the down sliding scale of the moral barometer of these last days. Integrity to them is a constant changing scale of what is good today, can be changed tomorrow to accommodate their own value systems. Therefore, they have no Godly persuasion or evidence of His will being done in the earth in their lives. These people-needing Jesus in their lives is obvious. They have no eternity living on earth and an everlasting eternity in hell with out God. It is my honest prayer that none of us in the body of Christ is taking this lightly. If somebody had not come in the name of the Lord to get me saved, I could still be in this fallen condition.

Romans 8 continues to state; " if Christ lives in you then although your natural body is dead by reason of sin and guilt, the spirit is alive because of the righteousness, which is God's, who gave it to us as bring His own characteristic. Now this is a very serious statement to us who are born again believers. It say's that we should have died from one way of believing and accepted a new way of thinking and believing because, Jesus gave us something new into our being which is the living entity of Himself. You may say a new way of reasoning with His mind that we now have living inside of us. This new living characteristic of His is called righteousness.

Righteousness is not only an understanding of the word but also, the actual intermingling of God's Spirit and ours becoming one on an every day basis. We have to be obedient to what Jesus in Matthew 5:6 when He said, "Blessed, fortunate, happy and spiritually prosperous meaning, (as a child of God we will be enjoying His favor and constantly being set free with liberty) if, we are hungering and thirsting after righteousness. For in so doing we will be completely satisfied." Our hungering after Him allows our spirit to be influenced by His Spirit of grace. God's grace creates an atmosphere in us of experiencing His mercy and patience as He teaches us that there is no compromise in His statutes and purposes as He trains us to complete His perfect will in our life. We are righteous forever when we became born again however, to experience it; we have to at all times be interacting with the Holy Spirit.

The Greek word for blessed is makarios: It means to be fortunate and well. When we shake hands and say, "God bless you", it does not mean only that, God takes care of your needs. It means, "It is my prayer that your heart is well and staying hungry after God." It is this attitude of having a healthy passion after God that increases our integrity to walk in an uncompromising attitude in the market places of life. Where there is no passion for God. There is no hungering and thirsting after Him.

In the different seasons of our lives as we encounter people and make decisions on our every day values, it is only the Holy Spirits characteristic of righteousness that has the power to influence our soul, which makes up our intellect, will and emotions. Without this submissive attitude at work in us of His leadings, we cannot hold our ground and let our attitude be yea or nay so that our word means exactly what it says with meaning.

In 1Cor 1:17-18 the Paul says, "His integrity is not reasoning according to his own fleshly thinking, like the worldly man or the unsaved person. He does not say yes yes when he means no no. As surly as God is faithful and means what He says. Our message should not be yes when we mean no." There is a moral characteristic that must be met to walk in the fullness as God's child. Jesus said this because, He knew that there was the potential for us to stay in a condition of carnal thinking and stay double minded after we became saved. This is what hinders us from walking in the truth and stops us from functioning in our complete integrity as He intended.

When a person reasons with fleshly thinking his thought life judges between right and wrong concepts and when this takes place; it keeps him in a sin conscious train of thought. People who think like this cannot operate with a God like integrity. This is the way the unsaved function as we described earlier. For us who are born again people if we are still functioning like the unsaved. It puts Christ's death on the cross to shame and we become a disgrace or are falling back from receiving God's grace and favor.

The word for righteousness means justification = (guiltless and blameless in God's sight), innocent = (ignorant of evil,) and holy = (set apart for Him and pure.) Hebrews 5:13 tells us that, "Unless we are skilled and have come to understand how to walk in this Spirit of Righteousness. We will continue to live as babes because we lack the skill of living in the righteousness mentality reasoning of Christ."

Jesus was betrayed and put to death because of our misdeeds (or sins) and was raised from the dead to secure our justification (or put us in right standing in God's sight). This act by Him absolved us from all guilt before God.

It is critical we understand that, we do not become more righteous by doing more things in God's service or that; we lose our righteousness by missing God's will from time to time.

Jesus did not save us because of any works of righteousness that we had done. It was only because He had pity and mercy on us. It was God the Fathers, premeditated plan of uniting Himself to humanity, without us doing anything to deserve it. It was by our new birth experience in Christ Jesus and being regenerated by the Holy Spirit that we became part of the eternal family of God. It is by His grace, which is His unmerited favor that; we have His LIVING power working within us. In turn, this enables us to conform to His will in purpose, thought and actions, and become heirs of eternal life. This can only become a reality as we experience His unconditional love.

Jesus himself is our righteousness and the continuing revelation of this fact being made more real to us every day gives us the spiritual passion to seek after Him. We could have a real zeal and hunger for God and if what we were seeking was not His righteousness but our own, our endeavors would be doomed to failure from the start. I have found as I talk to the Lord everyday, it clears my mind of the negative influences bombarding my mind. I hope you can relate, but we live in a sick society. Experiencing righteousness takes place by hanging out with God and receiving His pats on the back that can keep us free from condemning and guilt ridden thoughts.

In 1Cor.15:34 Paul when writing to the Corinthian church felt it necessary to encourage them when he said "awake from your stupor and return to sober sense in your minds and sin no more. For some of you have not the right knowledge of God. You are willfully and disgracefully ignorant and continue to be so. You lack the good sense of God's presence and the true knowledge of Him. I say this to your shame."

Pursuing righteousness is like us breathing oxygen to stay physically alive and there is an endless revelation of its meaning. It is not like a doctrine that once you understand it, you have it. Righteousness is something that has to be interacted with the Holy Spirit so it can be kept alive and operating in our spiritual being. It is the actual life of Christ inside us, which gives us our relationship with Him. It is His constant reminder that we are always totally accepted by Him no matter what happens in our lives. It is the power of this truth that lets us know that, nothing will ever separate us from His love and keeping power. In turn as this conviction within us grows stronger, we can begin to believe and act upon what He says and have all that He promised us. It‘s then that, our behavior in actions change.

We cannot allow ourselves to become dormant like the Corinthian church. When this happens, we can be tormented at times with guilt and shame which can begin to dominate our minds and hearts as it did the Corinthian church. The devil then lies to us by making us believe that, some of the afflictions and hardships of life we are experiencing is because, God is angry and has stopped loving us.

The devils only intent is to put a wall of separation and skepticism between God and His Children. Our understanding and deep-rooted conviction of righteousness is what overcomes the devils lies that are trying to operate in our thoughts and consciousness. Without righteousness operating in our being, our integrity has no staying power.

We have talked about and said that righteousness is a living entity of the life of Christ through the Holy Spirit interacting with us daily. We desperately need to have this passion for God so we can continually bathe in the understanding that God loves us no matter what. You cannot help but see a pattern within the New Testament of how the born again believers were continually being misled to fall into this over active concept that, we need to help God out in saving ourselves. I believe that many in the body of Christ have been lulled into a understanding that there is no way that, God could love me so much as to just let me get to know and enjoy His company and that, He will take care of my needs.

It is bad enough that the devils whole sole purpose is to make us doubt God in any form. However, we should not help him out by teaching within our church's conditional love themes of laws and regulations. When we do this, it compounds the problem and cripples the body of Christ more. This is a whole topic in itself. It actually goes against the interpretation of righteousness and puts doubt in the mind of the believer. One of many examples from scripture of this principle is found in Gal.5:4-9. Paul the Apostle wrote to the Galatians to set them straight in their thinking. He said, "If you seek to be right with God through the Law, your efforts are futile. You have severed yourself from a vital living relationship with the Holy Spirit and have fallen away from knowing that God's love is given with out you trying to earn it."

For when we don't live by laws, we have the strength and enjoy living in righteousness and we let the Holy Spirit work within us. When we live by dos and don'ts, we cannot be energized by the Holy Spirit and follow Christ with the passionate love that the Holy Spirit has put in us. He goes on to say that, you were running the race as an heir and Son of God nobly. Who has hindered and stopped you from believing the truth as the Holy Spirit has been revealing it to you. This is an evil persuasion and not from the Holy Spirit who wants you to live in great freedom to explore your relationship with Him. It only takes a little slight inclination to error, or a few false teachers to pervert the truth and lead the whole church astray."

If we live by trying to measure up to be accepted by God, the passion that we need to seek after Him is being nullified. It hinders our functioning in flowing in God's characteristic of righteousness. Its only as we hunger and thirst after God's love and are experiencing it that, we are able to guard our hearts and mind from contaminating thoughts that cause us to be unsure of our eternal connection with Him.

                      Stop working so hard to be good.

Learn to be pliable and ask God to show you how to give up and surrender to the Holy Spirit. So many of us have been brainwashed into becoming good little doer's and helpers. Our works in words and actions will only have validity with integrity if, they are extensions of the Holy Spirit working through us.