What does First B Jackson teach about righteousness?

At First Baptist Jackson, the teaching on righteousness starts with a clear and repeated insistence that no one generates it themselves. Whether Pastor Ray is working through Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 4, or Philippians 3, the point lands the same way: the righteousness that matters before God is not something a person earns or accumulates through heritage, effort, or religious performance. It comes through faith in Christ, and through Him alone.

Pastor Ray has preached Philippians 3 more than once, and each time the passage does the same work. Paul lines up his credentials, every reason he had to feel confident in the flesh, and then calls all of it rubbish compared with being found in Christ. Ray makes that concrete by offering his own version of the list: years in church, a godly family line, faithful service. The pull of pride at each point is real, he says, and that is exactly what Paul is addressing. The righteousness Paul is after is not his own, derived from law-keeping, but the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ. Ephesians 2:8-9 sits underneath all of it as the frame: saved by grace through faith, not of works.

That same thread runs through the church's teaching on Habakkuk 2:4 and Romans. The Hebrew and Greek word at the center of "the righteous shall live by his faith" carries both meanings, faith placed in God and the faithfulness of the God being trusted, and Ray's argument is that pulling those apart does damage to what the phrase is actually saying. You are declared righteous through faith placed in a faithful God, and you walk that out day by day through the same faith. Romans 3 and 4 press it further: God is both just and the justifier, the wrath that was due us fell on Christ, and what is credited to us is not a reward for effort but a gift, the same way Abraham's belief was credited to him as righteousness long before the law arrived.

Taught from Philippians 3:1-14 · Romans 1:17 · Habakkuk 2:4 · Romans 3:24-26 · Ephesians 2:8-9