Righteousness -- part 2

Last time, I tried to explain that righteousness is a good thing.  I tried to explain that God is righteous, and He calls us to righteousness.  God sent Jesus so we could be made righteous, saved from sin to live in righteousness.

Now I'm going to try to explain how it works.

Righteousness is when we do things the right way, rather than the wrong way.  Doing things the wrong way is sin.  Sometimes we sin on purpose, and sometimes we sin by accident, but all sin leads to death.

God is righteous, but the world is broken by sin, unrighteous.  Righteousness leads to life, while sin leads to death.  God, in His great mercy, calls us to righteousness so we can have eternal life instead of the death we would reap through our sinful ways (Romans 6:17-23).

Before Jesus came, God gave the Law.  The Law explains what righteousness is; it shows what is right, good and pleasing to the Lord.

The Law explains who God is, and how we are to approach Him.  God is our Creator, Redeemer and Provider, and we must love and revere Him above all else (Exodus 20:2-3).

The Law discusses practical examples of righteousness.  Be merciful to the poor around you, and offer ways for them to become more prosperous.  Do not charge your brothers interest when they borrow money (Leviticus 25:36).  When a man is forced to sell himself into slavery to pay his debts, you must treat him kindly and free him after seven years (Deuteronomy 15:12).  Leave the overflow of your harvest on the ground for the destitute to gather (Leviticus 19:9).  If you see your neighbor's donkey or ox fallen along the road, you should stop and help your neighbor (Deuteronomy 22:4).  Love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18).

Jesus, when He was on earth in the flesh, explained that the Law is all about love: loving God and loving your neighbor.  Jesus explained that love is the heart of the Law--in other words, love is the heart of righteousness--and if we learn to love as God would have us love, we will find ourselves keeping the Law--becoming righteous--by default (Matthew 22:35-40).

Now, some people take this to mean that in this age, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, when grace has been poured out, we don't need to bother about the law anymore.  They interpret it to mean that love has replaced the law; instead of keeping the law, they say, we now love instead.  But as I read scripture, I believe that theirs is a faulty interpretation.  Love is not a replacement for the law.  Love is the fulfillment of the law.  Only by loving can we keep the law of God and be righteous in His sight.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.  ~Romans 13:10

The problem is that, being broken by sin, we humans are naturally unable to love.  Sin turns us inward, in pride, to focus on ourselves.  Love turns us outward, in humility, to adore God and shed compassion on the people around us.  Love comes from a healthy heart, but our hearts were diseased, broken, even dead, because of sin.

Jesus came so we could have new hearts.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.  ~Ezekiel 36:26-27

This is precisely what Jesus did for us.  He died, cleansing us by the shedding of His blood, and once cleansed, we become temples for His Holy Spirit, who is with us always, enabling us to overcome sin daily as we struggle and persevere.

. . . hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  ~Romans 5:5

This is how we become righteous, truly, substantively righteous.  God pours His love into us, so His love can then pour out of us, making us demonstrably righteous.  The Holy Spirit of Christ comes into our inner being and transforms us, miraculously, to be able to take our eyes off ourselves.  Only then can we authentically love and worship God in spirit and in truth.  Only then can we love our neighbors with deep compassion.

. . . and be found in [Christ], not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God that depends on faith.  ~Philippians 3:9

Christ did not annul the Law.  He fulfilled it, and in so doing, He makes it possible for the Law to be fulfilled in us.  He makes it possible for us to be righteous, through and through.

[Jesus said], Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.  ~Matthew 5:17

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.  By sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  ~Romans 8:3-4

Do you see?  We do not attain only a covering of righteousness that would disguise our sin and trick a Holy God into receiving us by mistaking us for His beloved Son.  Rather, God, in a series of miracles, graciously recreates us as new, righteous beings, empowered by His Spirit to grow in obedience, love and Christlikeness.

Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."  ~John 3:3

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  All this is from God . . .  ~2 Corinthians 5:17-18a

For our sake, He became sin who knew no sin, so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God.  ~2 Corinthians 5:21

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.  For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.  ~2 Corinthians 3:18

It all comes from Him.  Apart from Him, we can do nothing, we would be hopeless (John 15:5).  However, with Him, as we already read in Romans 5:5, hope does not put us to shame.

Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.  ~Psalm 34:5

In Christ, our sinful nature is put to death and we rise in the new, righteous life of the Spirit (Romans 6:6-11) through the resurrection power of God who raised Christ and likewise raises us to new life.  We are set free from sin (Romans 6:7, 18, 22).  Being set free from sin, by God, we are empowered by God to bear the fruit of righteousness, to extend the grace and love of God for the the healing of the world, and ultimately to live eternally in perfect fellowship with our holy God.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.  ~Romans 6:22

Sanctification is a tricky thing, because it is a process.  We are declared righteous by the blood of Christ, and deemed worthy to carry His Spirit in our bodies.  This is the first stage of salvation, called justification.  It happens in an instant, and we are amazed and full of gratitude to the Lord for this unaccountable miracle.   But justification is not the end of salvation; it is not the end of the work of God in us and on our behalf.  Justification puts the Spirit of Christ into us, and once He indwells us, the process of sanctification begins.  Unlike justification, which happens in an instant, sanctification is a slow, gradual process of ever-increasing righteousness in the life of a believer.  It happens over a lifetime.  It will not be finished until we die, or until Jesus returns.

Because sanctification is gradual, because it never reaches completion in this broken world, and because we are impatient, result-oriented beings, we tend towards two different errors in regard to how we approach sanctification. 

A few people try impatiently to commandeer the process from the Holy Spirit and hurry it along in their own strength.  They put on an act, presenting a precarious facade of righteousness that they think would be pleasing to the Lord, and demanding that other believers do exactly the same.  This self-fueled attempt to attain righteousness through independent striving is legalism.  Paul writes:

Are you so foolish?  Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?  ~Galatians 3:3

On the other extreme, there are people who renounce righteousness altogether, assuming that because they have been justified and forgiven in Christ, practical righteousness has no bearing on their lives.  To that line of thinking, Paul says:

What shall we say then?  Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?  By no means!  How can we who died to sin still live in it?  ~Romans 6:1-2

What then?  Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?  By no means!  ~Romans 6:15

To accept the grace of God in justification, but to proceed to live in sin rather than in righteousness, this is what we call license, or licentiousness, which is immoral conduct.  Unabated acts of licentiousness indicate that what a person is counting on to be his salvation may not be salvation at all.

We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him and the evil one does not touch him.  ~1 John 5:18

 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."  ~Matthew 7:21

The goal of salvation is not merely to nail down an assurance that we won't have to go to hell in the future, when we die.  Neither is it to make us live clean and decent lives in the present.  Both of these are good things, and both are byproducts of salvation.  However, they are not the goal of salvation.  The goal of salvation is that we would be restored to a right relationship with God, whereby we find our full satisfaction in knowing Him, loving Him and being loved by Him, a love which spills out of our lives and into the world, through acts of kindness and sacrifice for the good of our neighbors, patterned after the example of Christ who is our hope of glory.  The goal of salvation is that we would be made righteous, and thus be able to share in the ministry of Christ for the healing of the world from sin now, and to share in the full glory of God for all eternity.

This is real righteousness, substantive and holy, true and effective.  Let's consider Romans 5:19 together:

For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.  ~Romans 5:19

This is how we know that our righteousness is a real thing, a complete inward renovation that begins with a new heart, and ultimately shows up in the way we love God and keep His commands with the help of the Holy Spirit (John 14:15-27).

The one man's disobedience is the sin of Adam, the original rebellion against God.  Adam did not steal or murder or commit adultery.  Adam did not deface anyone's property or defraud his neighbor.  Adam just ate a piece of fruit that God had explained he should not eat.  Adam decided that his desires were more important than God's instructions.  In that one twisted expression of an unrighteous heart attitude, Adam opened the door to all theft and killing and cheating and destruction.  When the Bible says, "The many were made sinners," it doesn't mean that humanity was simply labeled with the unfortunate term, "sinners."  It means that a real, substantive, pervasive sinful nature sprang up in the hearts of men.  It does not mean that every human baby born, although fundamentally innocent, is cursed by being categorized as a sinner in the sight of God.  It means that every baby born arrives in the world with an egocentric world view and an eye towards figuring out how to grasp its own way.  We are--every one of us--born fighting selfishly for our own perceived rights, and thus the conflict begins and continues.

As it is written, none is righteous, no, not one.  ~Romans 3:10

It's real conflict, real sin, a real problem.  We are sinners, from the core of our hearts, with a desperate need for help to escape our deathly situation.  We need real righteousness.  Not imagined, theoretical, here's-a-cloaking-device-under-which-you-can-keep-sinning righteousness.  We need true, deep, new-heart-formed-after-the-heart-of-God righteousness.  Just as Adam made us sinners, from the core of our wretched hearts, in a similar but opposite and overwhelmingly glorious way, Jesus makes us truly righteous, in our newborn, Spirit-filled hearts.

Adam made us captive to sin, caught in a vortex that sucks us down to death.

Christ, through His radical obedience unto death, offers us true, life-changing righteousness resulting in eternal life.

Adam's act of disobedience cast aside our immortality for mortality and death.  It made us captive to the devil and blinded us from even perceiving our predicament.

Christ's act of obedience makes it possible for our souls to be joined to God for an everlasting future in glory.  It makes freedom from sin possible, and opens our eyes to the truth which sets us free.  By this one act of obedience, many are made righteous, given new, changed hearts, empowered to walk in grace and love.

Righteousness is the living manifestation of love, and love is humility, and humility is a heart compassionately attuned to the needs of others, trusting and obeying God in everything, because God is love.

Righteousness is what I long for.  Righteousness is what I need.  And righteousness comes from God, through Christ alone, by the mighty work of His Holy Spirit in our hearts.

He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.  ~Psalm 37:6

He restores my soul.  He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.  ~Psalm 23:3

Righteousness -- part 1

Righteousness is good.

I'm slightly astonished that this should need to be pointed out.  Yet, it does.

Righteousness is one of God's fundamental attributes.

For the Lord is righteous; He loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold His face.
~Psalm 11:7

God is righteous.

The Psalms are full of praise to God for His righteousness.

He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.  ~Psalm 33:5

Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast you save, O Lord.  ~Psalm 36:6

By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas.  ~Psalm 65:5

Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the high heavens.  You who have done great things, O God, who is like you?  ~Psalm 71:19

This is only a smattering.  Scripture is full of praise to God for His righteousness.

God's righteousness is part of His glory and His holiness.  It is both beautiful and desirable.

Let's try to define righteousness before we go any farther.  Sometimes it is helpful to define a word in terms of its opposite, in terms of what it is not:

Righteousness is the opposite of sin.

If sin is rebelling against the ways of God, then righteousness is cooperating with the ways of God.  If sin is doing the wrong thing, then we can see that righteousness is doing the right thing.   If sin is displeasing to God, righteousness is pleasing to God.

God's righteousness is bound up in His purity, His holiness, His perfect wisdom and justice, and the fact that He never makes a mistake.

Righteous people are kind, fair, patient, wise, honest and altogether trustworthy.  Righteous people exude peace, joy and love.  Righteous people reflect the righteousness of God as beacons of hope in a dark world.  Righteous people make mistakes, but they repent humbly and quickly, and seek to make amends.  Righteous people will never be perfect in righteousness (until they get to heaven), but they are always increasing in righteousness.

Within Christianity, there exists quite a powerful school of thought that renounces righteousness.   I'm not sure whether this stems from an irrational fear, or a blind justification for apathy towards sin, or even a base desire to preserve sinful habits.  Those who distance themselves from righteousness tend to associate seeking righteousness with what they call legalism.

Legalism (I've said this before, and I'll say it again) is when people think they can independently, through their own power, attain a standard of righteousness that would be acceptable to God.  Another word for this is self-righteousness, which is an oxymoron, and should never be confused with true righteousness.  Legalism is not when people aim to live lives that are obedient to scripture and pleasing to the Lord because they love Him.  Legalism is not when God's indwelling Spirit teaches and empowers righteousness in the inmost being of a believer.  Legalism is the farthest thing from righteousness.  Legalism grows out of pride, and pride is sin, and sin is the opposite of righteousness.  Those who are so concerned about legalism would do better to confront the problem of pride.  In today's world, we have fallen so far from righteousness that authentic legalism is essentially a non-issue.  Pride, on the other hand, is alive, well, and invading the lives of both believers and unbelievers everywhere.

We are called to be righteous.  We are called to live lives that are pleasing to the Lord.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.  ~Psalm 19:14

Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.  Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.  ~Psalm 51:6-7

But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.  ~Matthew 6:33

We are saved from sin, so that we can live good, righteous lives that benefit us and glorify God.

He Himself [Jesus Christ] bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  By His wounds you have been healed.  1 Peter 2:24

Salvation is a real and practical event by which the atoning sacrifice of Christ cleanses us, declaring us justified, innocent not by our own merits, but because He bore the wrath of God in our place.  Although in our natural state we are utterly unworthy, He declares us worthy to experience fellowship with God through the tearing of His own priceless flesh; Christ was and is the the only intrinsically worthy one.

And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on earth.  ~Revelation 5:9-10

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  ~Hebrews 10:19-22

As you can see from these scriptures, it doesn't end with our declared righteousness.  God continues pouring out more grace, transforming us (Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 3:18) into reigning priests under our High Priest, Jesus Christ, with clean hearts and purified bodies (Ezekiel 36:25).  God makes us new (2 Corinthians 5:17, Revelation 21:5).  We become righteous, internally righteous, substantively righteous and not merely theoretically or philosophically.  This is the mysterious and gradual, yet observable, work of the Spirit of God in us (John 3:8).

We will explore more about this real and miraculous righteousness, next time.

Easter

We went to Ohio for Easter.  Ohio is ahead of Minnesota in terms of the coming of spring, but it is behind central Illinois.  This became particularly apparent when we arrived home on April 22, and I saw how far my flower beds had progressed in the two weeks I had been away and how they had missed me.

Of course, Ohio holds a treasure far beyond spring flowers.  Ohio holds a baby boy who, on Tuesday, reached the ripe old age of four months.  Soft blond hair, bright blue eyes, full of grins and giggles, he is a delight.  If only we could always keep our beloved children as safe as we can when they are babies, held close to our chests, their dear little heads perspiring softly in the curve beneath our chins.  Is there any joy in life greater than the soft dependance of a baby's body as it sinks heavy and limp in sleep against your heart?

On Good Friday, we were driving to Alistair Begg's church, Parkside Bainbridge.  We were on one of those seventy-something highways that run around and through Cleveland.  The light waned in early evening, as gray rain fell insistently.  A wave passed through my body and I forgot where I was, listening to the rumble of the tires on asphalt, suddenly swept back to some distant autumn in the northeast, driving to drop people off at college, cold and sad.  I had to shake myself and struggle to remember.  No, this is spring.  Easter.  Good Friday.  Ohio.  I have a grandson.  I am a grandmother.

I was going to write about righteousness, what righteousness is and why we need it.  Instead, I sit here and remember Easter in Ohio, and a little baby boy who sat up alert and attentive in an Easter morning church service, when the trumpets began to play.  He turned his soft, squishy face toward the music like a sunflower turning toward the sun, his body tense with excitement.

Jesus died to make us righteous, and rose again, the first one to break free from the bonds of sin.  Our little baby doesn't know about these things.  He only knows about drinking milk, turning his orange sphere of circles in his hands, kicking and splashing in his bath, laughing when we play peek-a-boo or pretend to sneeze, and crying when someone puts him down for a nap or pulls a shirt over his head.  He doesn't know he is plagued with the natural selfishness of humanity, or that he needs a Savior, or that the God of the Universe humbled Himself to death on his behalf.

He doesn't know, but I pray he will learn, and believe, and find redemption, freedom and joy in Christ.

A spring happening

The ground is greening, and a flush of pastel buds softens the lines of the tree branches, which have been stark and bare for months.

We planted grass in our backyard, and tufts of soft green are starting to rise from beneath the straw we scattered as protection atop the seeds.

Last night we went into town to set up the chairs for today's Bible study.  It was actually warm enough that the thought of ice-cream didn't chill my bones, so I told Shawn we could stop for some on the way home.  He always wants to stop for ice-cream.

A few miles down the freeway, Shawn started rummaging around in the compartments in his car, and he said, "Oh no!  Oh rats!"

"What?" I asked, worried.

"I don't have my wallet," he replied, morosely.  "We can't get ice cream.  You don't have your purse, do you?"

"You told me I didn't need to bring anything," I reminded him, because he had.

He felt terrible.

"It's okay," I said.  "I'm not mad at all."

"But you invited me to get ice-cream," he said.  "You never want to get ice-cream.  And today you did, and now we can't."

"It's okay," I said.  "I was having second thoughts anyway.  I'm not the least bit mad.  I was thinking we probably shouldn't be eating ice-cream, and now we will do the healthy thing."

He looked unhappily ahead at the road.  We got to church and set up the chairs.  He was still grinding his mind, trying to figure out a way to purchase ice-cream without a wallet.  We got into the car and began the sad drive home, through the dark of an early spring evening.

Black sky, black road, smell of newly plowed fields, bright headlights, shining white stripes along the shoulder of the road.  Two warm, dry hands layered one another on the console between two front seats as the engine hummed and wheels rolled round and round and round.

Duffy and the Snow Leopard

Duffy likes to watch television only if the program is about animals.

So, we have been watching Planet Earth on Netflix, and Planet Earth 2.

The second episode of Planet Earth 2 is about animals that live in mountain habitats.  It opened with a lonely snow leopard roaring somewhere in desolate Siberia, and Duffy was riveted.  Throughout the showing, Duffy alternately stood before the TV with front paws reaching for the screen, ran in circles barking, and sometimes--like when the camera zoomed in on a huge grizzly bear, and when the snow leopard returned at the end--he scurried to hide behind our coffee-table-trunk, close to the safety of our familiar legs and feet, diligently peeking out around the corner.

Duffy is the most dominant, stubborn dog we have had.  He's full of chutzpah and creative ideas.  He'd rather walk five miles in the park than lounge on anybody's lap.

But after watching the snow leopard, Duffy was markedly subdued.  He wanted to be held.  He was downright cuddly.

So now, when he is full of beans and peppercorns, we say, "Duffy, do we need to watch the snow leopard show?"  He doesn't know what that means yet, but he might learn.