SIN > Unmasked: Self-righteousness; “not guilty, your honour.”

Three modes of righteousness – which works?

At the outset here, I want to posit a definition of two terms: righteousness and imprimatur.  You’ll see why as we go along.

Righteousness:

Breaking the word down into its parts – right-eous-ness – and working from right to left: the word literally means ‘the state of being in the way of right’ (where right means true and ‘as it ought to be’).  Thinking of it theologically, it means the state of being in right relationship with God – and therefore on track to being (or ‘potentially’) in right relationship with other humans and the rest of creation.

Imprimatur:

An imprimatur is an official stamp of approval; an item with an imprimatur is officially authorised and approved.  A few hundred years ago, the only approved and authorised bible was that with the imprimatur of King James – hence the Authorised Version / King James Version.

Let me now link those two together as we begin this examination: there are three ‘modes’ of righteousness in popular thinking; only one has the imprimatur of God.  Only one mode or type of righteousness is approved by God, secures the divine stamp of approval, and delivers the status of righteous, the verdict of ‘not guilty’ and the declaration of ‘justified’.

Three modes or types of righteousness

One: self-righteousness.  This is that righteousness that we calculate, determine and append to ourselves: we set the terms; we give the assent; we declare it done.  Here you place all your trust in yourself.  In this mode of righteousness, God is who we say he is based on our preferred theology and his standards are those we assess and ascribe to him.  God ‘accepts’ me because I am a good person by the standards I use to measure good and bad.  The USA idea of good guys and bad guys – goodies and baddies – is typical of this approach.  God has to accept me because I’m a ‘righteous’ person by my definition and standards – which I have come to by careful study of the scriptures and religious rules.  You are your own imprimatur.

Two: other-righteousness.  This is that righteousness that comes from placing ourselves under a go-between – a mediator; righteousness which we derive second-hand from our go-between or mediator.  Here you place all your trust is another person or a system.  This ‘other’ person may be a priest, a pastor, a guru, a celebrity, a parent, a shaman, a cleverman – even just a friend.  In this mode, there is always that second ‘layer’ of authority.  In some circles, there are multiple tiers, all the way up to the supreme (yet still human) ‘father’.  God accepts you because you ‘go through the right channels’.  That person – or the system / hierarchy they represent – becomes your imprimatur.

Three: Christ-righteousness.  This is that righteousness that comes from placing yourself at God’s mercy by admitting that you are ‘guilty as charged’ and have no leg to stand on besides the one He provides.  Here you place all your trust in Jesus Christ as the only mediator between God and man who can actually deliver what you are seeking to obtain.  Jesus effectively becomes to us all the things we need for salvation and righteousness.  Apostle Peter makes this point in his letter to the Jewish believers: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.”  Jesus becomes our imprimatur

Of course, I’m not ignorant of the sea of religious debate around this.  However, my concern is not to attempt to prove one ‘system’ superior to all others; rather it is to lay out clearly that system which is central to our particular historical and cultural tradition.  In this respect, I am taking my cues from the writings of the sages in that particular historical and cultural tradition.  For us in the English-speaking world, there is enough given to us in our scriptures that we can genuinely come to the truth if that is our authentic pursuit.

And in that regard, two things stand out starkly to me as pivotal issues: there is one ‘mediator’ who totally has the divine imprimatur; and there is one approach to righteousness that, likewise, has the divine imprimatur.

·         There is one mediator between God and man: the man Christ Jesus – 1 Timothy 2:5

·         Jesus is “the approved” of God: on what basis?  At his baptism, God clearly declares: “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” – echoed by Peter in his letter some years later.  And Paul notes in his letter to the Romans that he was “...set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, having come of the seed of David according to flesh, having been declared the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.”

·         Paul notes (Romans 3:21) there is a righteousness revealed that is not dependent on the old law or on keeping religious laws and rules and protocols.

·         There is a problem with being “unacquainted with the teaching about righteousness”. (Hebrews 5)

·         Peter, writing to Jewish christians of his day noted, “It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and then to turn away from the holy commandment passed on to them.” (2 Peter 2:21)

Now, with that context and background, plus what’s gone before in this series, it’s not hard to see that self-righteousness and other-righteousness is missing the mark, falling short and living by sight; which shines a spotlight on one of the strange features of old Israel identified by the prophets whose writings we have in our bibles: the protest, “we have not sinned”.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, this protest goes up from the earth to assault God’s ears as if the people had never heard a thing.  And in one sense, I suppose they hadn’t, if God ‘hardened the hearts’ of the people.

Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel all carried a theme that went roughly like this: “Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed.”

This is the same theme Jesus picked up on hundreds of years later speaking of the Jewish people of his day.  It’s the idea I referred to earlier about why Jesus spoke in parables.  Indeed, that is precisely what Matthew records (chapter 13) in his version of events when Jesus spoke to the people in the parable of the sower.

And this aligns with Paul’s understanding that, for a time, the Jews are blocked from entering the blessing to allow for the grafting-in of the Gentiles, the nations of the world.

And if you look at the record of Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 9, the Jews were not slow in raising the protest that if God was ‘blocking’ them, how could they be guilty of anything?  ‘Why does God still find fault’, they protest; ‘who can resist God’s will?’

One of the great laments of the old testament prophets of Israel was that, despite everything, they insisted they had done nothing wrong: ‘not guilty, your honour’, they would say; ‘we have just cause and clear justification for acting as we did’.  Jesus and Paul and Peter ran into exactly the same thing hundreds of years later.  What does that tell us?

Paul’s response was strident:

But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?  Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this?”  Does not the potter have the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use?

What if God, intending to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the vessels of His wrath, prepared for destruction?  What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the vessels of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory – including us, whom He has called not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles?  As he says in Hosea: “I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people, and I will her ‘my beloved’ who is not my beloved” and “It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, ‘you are not my people’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God’.

Then the light begins to dawn: Paul opens up some of the revelation given to Him by the Spirit of God – revelation that had not up to that time been revealed.  God chose Paul to be the bearer of the revelation reserved for that time following the death and resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  Paul continues:

Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the Israelites is like the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved.  For the Lord will carry out His sentence on the earth thoroughly and decisively.”

It is just as Isaiah foretold: “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have resembled Gomorrah.”

And here’s the kicker – from Paul:

What then will we say?  That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.  Why not?  Because their pursuit was not by faith, but as if it were by works.  They stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame.”

[You see that the ‘stumbling stone’ in ‘Zion’ is Jesus when you turn on the light of other references such as the letter to the Hebrews.]

Righteousness that is pursued by law (the Law, legalism, rules and regulations, protocols, etc.) cannot produce the right standing before God and the justification needed for salvation.  Why not?  A) because not everyone can understand and keep the law, so its discriminatory; and B) because self-effort and the struggles of go-betweens are just “works” (human effort) – which again is discriminatory.

As Paul put it: “God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that He might have mercy on us all.”

There is not a single person – ever – who can justly claim before God “Not guilty”; with the exception of Jesus.  And for that reason, plus the fact that He did not wince and pull back but went all the way through death to resurrection, God has declared Him ‘Son of God with power’: Jesus Christ our Lord.

Therefore: the righteousness of Christ, appropriated by faith, not by law (any kind of law), has God’s imprimatur and is the approved method of being ‘right’ in the sight of God.  And this righteousness was the subject and the content of the gospel Paul (and others) took throughout Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the Roman empire.  And for that, he had the imprimatur of God: note 1 Thessalonians 2:4.

Trying to secure a benefit by means other than that laid down by the giver of that benefit is what we call fraud.  Is it not then legitimate to label as fraud all attempts to gain the righteousness and justification of God by any means other than that laid down by God?

Therein lies the “sin” of old Israel; of the Israel of Jesus’ day; and of many people today.  We miss that important point; and we repeat the hackneyed protest, “we have not sinned”.  That’s self-righteousness, self-justification and failing to have the humble attitude that might allow us to hear and so to listen and so to be justified, and so to be His beloved.

Next: “Swear not at all”