Jesus says: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied….Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven….Seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness, and your other needs will be met as well. (Matthew 5:6,10, 6:33)
This post builds on The Faulty Walnut and God’s Remedy and Think and Practice Whatever is True and Think and Practice Whatever is Noble.
Jesus’ Righteousness and Ours
Elyse Fitzpatrick reminds us that Christ lived approximately 33 ½ years, or over 1 billion seconds, plus billions more split seconds. The Lord Jesus never made one decision, consciously or unconsciously, in all those split seconds that wasn’t completely consistent with loving His Father and His neighbors. And Jesus’ obedience wasn’t merely an outward show. He always did the right thing for the right reason. Christ’s whole lifetime was constant, unwavering obedience to God, from infancy all the way to death. In doing that, Jesus wove a robe righteousness sufficient to cover millions and millions of us. Yes, even us.1
Christ clothes His followers with His spotless righteousness. Then He commands and equips us to imitate His behavior, never perfectly in this life, but truly, by the Holy Spirit’s help. “Christ Himself bore our sins in His body on the Cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed.”2 Our Christian thinking and living must reflect whatever is right as God defines it.
Jesus-like Righteousness is Not Self-righteousness
The word righteous is not popular now, because we often tack self on to it. No one likes people who are smugly moralistic, judgmental, and intolerant of others’ opinions and behavior. The Lord Jesus and the Apostle Paul come down hard on self-righteous people. In Matthew 23, Jesus condemns the scribes and Pharisees six times for strictly sticking to their legalistic traditions to make themselves look better to others and better than others. They were lost and led others astray. They focused on the picky stuff and neglected the more important matters of God’s law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
True righteousness is one of the main themes of the Bible! When we call people caring, compassionate, committed to serving God and others, that’s righteousness. Here are some Bible truths about righteousness:
- God (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is perfectly just, holy, and fair in all His actions, decisions, character, and conduct.
- He creates and maintains right relationships between Himself and human beings.
- He commands right dealings between human beings.
- Jesus Christ is the Righteous One, upright and just, obeying the Father’s commands in every way—thoughts, words, and actions.
- Believers are righteous (justified) when we have a restored relationship with God through Christ.
- Jesus condemned the false righteousness of the Jewish leaders.
- God the Holy Spirit indwells Christ’s followers and He renews us in ethical, practical righteousness (sanctification). The Spirit makes us imitators of the Lord.3
An New Testament Example
Philippians 4:8-9 is about following Christ and it reminds me of a man in Luke chapter 19. Zacchaeus of Jericho was a chief tax collector and wealthy. He was despised by his Jewish brethren for siding with the Roman oppressors to humiliate and rip off the Jews. But God the Holy Spirit changed Zacchaeus and made him repent (turn from his wrongs) and make restitution for his sins. He didn’t do this in order to be saved by Jesus. Zacchaeus did it because Christ already saved him graciously. Now Zacchaeus showed his gratefulness to God. Zacchaeus gave half his possessions to the poor, and paid back four times the amount of his cheating! Jesus didn’t command him to do it. Zacchaeus volunteered to make amends because Christ made him a new saved-by-grace person who died to his old ways.
He was a converted tax collector and a hundred times more precious to God, and also far more helpful to his neighbors, than the scribes and Pharisees. They were know-it-alls who pretended to honor God with their lips, but their hearts were far from the Lord.4 They knew Bible content, but they didn’t really know the living God at all. And they refused to believe in Jesus, the One God has sent.5
We Are Not Righteous by Nature
Scripture says that we are all born as sinners and our natural tendency is to please ourselves more than God who made us and cares for us.6 Like King David, we must ask the Lord to change us from inside out, and give us righteous desires and deeds. David prays: Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin….Cleanse me and I will be clean. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.7
We Are Not Righteous by Being Good
Isaiah said: We are all infected and impure with sin. Our robes of pretended righteousness are only filthy rags. And our sins, like the wind, sweep us away.8 We can never be good enough to approach God on our own without Christ the Mediator.
One hymn says:
There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin.
Jesus only could unlock the gate of heaven, and let us in.9
We Become Righteous Only Through Jesus
Christ never did any wrong thing, but God punished Him as if He had. Jesus died as punishment for our sins. As a result, we become right with God when we belong to Christ. We become right, because Jesus is right.10 It’s a marvelous exchange! Our sin was poured onto Christ on the Cross, and His perfect righteous is poured onto and into us when we are born again. Now, in humble reliance upon the Holy Spirit’s grace, Christians strive to live as is proper for Christ-followers.
Jesus says: Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us. (1 Peter 2:12)
Prayer
Heavenly Father, You are righteous and we want to imitate You. Transform us into the likeness of Jesus, our Elder Brother. We know that we cannot accomplish anything by our own strength or abilities. So keep on filling us with the Holy Spirit. Keep on working in us. Give us the desire and power to fulfill Your purpose for us. Help us to walk in Your good ways and keep on Your paths of righteousness. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.11
Notes (various Bible translations used): 1 Adapted from Fitzpatrick’s Comforts from Romans, pp. 97-99. In Protestant theology, this is called Christ’s active or preceptive obedience in which He did all that God’s law required from us. See J. Gresham Machen, God Transcendent, p. 191. 2 1 Peter 2:24. 3 Adapted from The Concise Dictionary of the Christian Tradition. 4 Matt 15:8. 5 1 John 6:29. Some of these thoughts expanded from Pastor Helmut Thielicke (1908- 1986). 6 Psalm 51:5. 7 Psalm 51:2,7. 8 Isaiah 64:6. 9 “There Is a Green Hill Far Away” by Frances Alexander (1818-1895). 10 2 Cor 5:21. 11 Expanded from Prov 2:20; Eph 5:18; Phil 2:13.