Righteousness (verb: right/redress/correct)
It
is very difficult to find a graphic of righteousness – at least until its
meaning is made very clear. And to make
its meaning clear, we need to consider both the root Greek word and the English
word that has come down to us through our particular history.
However,
I want to introduce this subject with two pictures I found using the
search-word ‘righted’.
In
this photograph, a truck is ‘righted’ by the use of a heavy-lift tow-truck,
after slipping and then flipping on a wet road.
In its ‘unrighted’ position, the truck is not going anywhere and it
unable to function in the most important of the purposes for which it was made:
transportation.
And
this artist’s graphic is intended to illustrate the plan to ‘right’ the cruise
ship Costa Concordia and refloat it. It
is both useless as a cruise ship and a hazard to many in its ‘unrighted’
state. Righted, it may be able to resume
duties as a cruise ship – or it may be unable to be salvaged and put to another
use.
These
two illustrations also demonstrate two of the main reasons things ‘go pear-shaped’
– go very wrong: treacherous conditions, and human error. In terms of righteousness and the condition
of man, both of these come into play.
The
Greek word used in the New Testament translates well into the English word
righteousness. But what did the word
mean when it was written two thousand years ago? And what does our word righteousness mean?
Let
me hyphenate the word so we can dig a little deeper: right-eous-ness.
The
syllable ‘ness’ is simply a suffix that turns an adjective into a noun. For example, dark (adjective) becomes darkness
(noun). It can be understood as ‘state
of being’: thus darkness is the state of being dark.
The
syllable ‘eous’ comes from the Latin eus
and does the same thing as ‘ous’ on the end of a word. In today’s English, we also use the suffixes
‘wise’, ‘wards’ and ‘ways’ to do a similar thing. For instance, clockwise (in the direction the
clock goes), backwards (in the direction of back) and sideways (in the
direction of the side). What it does to
a word is indicate a ‘way of proceeding’ or ‘in the direction of’ or
‘characterised by’ (like in virtuous: in the direction of virtue or
characterised by virtue). Righteous is
therefore in the direction of or characterised by right.
‘Right’
is an adjective, but it is also a verb.
And as you can see in the two pictures above, the truck and the cruise
ship can be ‘righted’ – set to right. It
means ‘to bring or restore to an upright or the proper position’; ‘to set in
order or put right’; ‘to redress’ (Macquarie Dictionary).
But,
before we finally string it all together, we need to consider one further
thing. For us humans, ‘right’ is
variable and subjective and open to interpretation. In order to measure human rightness, we may
need to find an unchanging, objective and ‘fixed seat of truth’ (as we saw in
an earlier post) to act as canon – a yardstick – to compare with. That yardstick is God Himself.
God is righteousness
God
is the personification of righteousness.
Wherever He goes, whatever He does, He is righteousness. In one sense, it could be the family
name. Like the original Smiths were
smiths by occupation – metal-workers – God’s name is His occupation. He does right because He is right. Paul wrote that
God’s intention in making Jesus to be sin for us was so that we humans might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor.
5:21).
According
to Psalm 112 (and others), His righteousness endures forever; in Psalm 48, His
right hand is filled with righteousness; in Psalm 71, His righteousness reaches
to the skies [heavens].
God is righteous
He
acts righteously because He is righteous.
If you like, the righteous family and household acts righteously because
they are righteousness. You could even say the ecclesia is the righteous brothers!
Job
37:23 – “…in His justice and great righteousness, He does not oppress.”
Psalm
9:8 – “He will judge the world in righteousness; He will govern the peoples
with justice.”
Psalm
89:14 – “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and
faithfulness go before you.”
Psalm
96:13 – “He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in His
truth.”
Isaiah
26:9 – “When your judgements come upon the earth, the people of the world learn
righteousness.”
Isaiah
51:8 – “My righteousness will last forever, my salvation through all
generations.”
So,
righteousness is two things simultaneously: the state of being characterised by
right as defined by God and exemplified in the attitudes and behaviours of His
household; and the process of being righted to match the character of God and
the standards of His household.
Why
is this important? For two
inter-connected reasons: first, it is a key part of the process God is using to
make us like Christ, sons outfitted for His household (that is, it is the
substance of our salvation); second, it is the key to growing up spiritually,
since not understanding the teaching about righteousness is testament to our
immaturity according to Hebrews 5:13.
The
act of rebellion by Satan and his entourage brought extreme chaos into the
picture and created treacherous conditions for man should he become separated
from his anchor of truth and right. His
rebellion also brought about the temptation that led to the human error factor
coming into play, resulting in that potential separation becoming a
reality. This resulted in the situation
and condition of UNrighteousness. Like the truck and the cruise ship on their
sides, unable to fulfil their destiny and continue their mission, mankind was
flipped and run aground and unable to fulfil his destiny or continue his
mission. This was partly by human choice,
partly by Satan’s treachery – but all, nonetheless, within the purview of God.
But
I have left the good news til last.
Knowing all too well our inability to redeem ourselves or to pay the
price to redeem each other, God in His unconditional love, took the initiative
and granted His righteousness as a grace gift to humans. This was to render totally ineffective
Satan’s strategy of temptation and treachery.
Just like with salvation and redemption, this righteousness is “by faith
from first to last” (Paul in Romans 1:17).
And again Paul, writing to the Galatians, powerfully makes the point
that “if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing”
(Galatians 2:21)
Many
– perhaps most – of us humans seem to think that through having laws and
obeying those laws, we become righteous – ‘good people’. We take that to the next level when we also
think that God rewards good people and that ‘heaven’ is made for good people
and ‘hell’ is made for ‘bad people’. Few
things could be further from the truth, so is it any wonder we are in one
unholy mess as a human race.
We
fail to get the significance of Jesus and of his role as the inaugurator of a
new covenant. Those ideas are how the
old covenant operated and it is no longer in force. God doesn’t justify anybody based on those
principles. Indeed, the old covenant can
only deliver the opposite of justification: condemnation. Apostle Paul made that very clear, yet we
still like to attempt the impossible, trying to live in the new covenant under
the terms and conditions of the old.
Law
kills – plain and simple. Law brings
knowledge of failure, followed by guilt and condemnation. It is unable and unfit to deliver
righteousness. And what’s more, if it
could, those who don’t know the law (or are incapable of understanding or
keeping it) would be lost. In God’s new
covenant, righteousness is a grace gift from God, through the Spirit, by the
work of Jesus so that it is accessible to all regardless of how ‘sinful’ we
think we are or are not. And that very
faith itself is available to us as a work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Grace
operating through faith delivers the only righteousness God accepts – end of story. All other visions of righteousness are
pipe-dreams. Paul teaches us that what
God’s character and will and reputation demands, God supplies in that the only
righteousness satisfactory to Him comes from the “provision of grace and the
free gift of righteousness” in Jesus. (Romans 5:17)
This
is righteousness. This is our righteousness. And, like salvation and redemption, it is a
work of God ever in His purview – always present to Him, but worked out for us
in the past, the present, and the future. At a point in time, in response to faith, God
grants us the free gift of righteousness; as we live life in partnership with
Him, He increasingly works that righteousness into the fabric of our lives (1
Peter 2:24); and, according to Paul to the Galatians, “by faith, we eagerly
await, through the Spirit, the righteousness for which we hope (Galatians 5:5) And again, what He asks of us is that we
honour respect and trust His promise.
And, as apostle Peter said, “in keeping with this promise, we are
looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.” (2
Peter 3:13)
It is only
fitting to end with another quote from Paul”
“What then shall 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
obtained it.” (Romans
9:30-31)
Now, you will
notice that, a few paragraphs back, I introduced the idea of
justification. This is the fourth of the
key concepts I am addressing. Let me
restate my earlier point: God doesn’t justify anybody based
on the principles of the old covenant. I
could have said, God doesn’t ‘make righteous’ anybody based on those
principles. To justify is to make
righteous, or to put the case for a finding of righteousness and declaration of
“not guilty” based on all the evidence and on the ultimate knowledge and good
will of the judge. As you can gather
from this, justification is a legal idea and a legal term. Next post!
Cheers,
Kevin.
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