Book 3 of Musings Righteousness Is Obedience to God
Righteousness is nothing more and nothing less than obedience to God at any given moment. We always are righteous for the moment.
The future provides additional challenges to the individual who seeks to please God.
I have thought much about what righteousness is. Have you?
There is righteousness; there is holiness; and there is obedience to God.
By and large, righteous behavior is fair dealing with other people. This kind of righteousness is written in our conscience and I think is understood by most people of the world
Holiness is closeness to God and the absence of unclean spirits.
Obedience to God is just that.
Let's think about righteousness for a moment. In this article I will be speaking mainly of God's view of us as righteous, rather than of the conscience-guided behavior that most people view as upright and fair, the righteousness of integrity.
The righteousness that has to do with God's view of us has been defined as "right standing with God." I agree with that definition.
The righteousness of religions is found in belief in and obedience to a prescribed set of behaviors. Sometimes these behaviors have to do with the way people dress, or cut their hair, or the words they use. Sometimes they have to do with religious service, or special prayers, or other ordinances of the religious group.
If the group fasts every Monday evening, then the righteous thing to do, if you are a member of that group, is to fast every Monday evening.
God declared Noah to be righteous, although the Bible does not state what standard God used at that time. It probably was God's eternal moral law that is written in our conscience. It is likely that Noah feared God and was honest in his dealings with other people. Also, he most likely shunned the violent behavior of his day.
Abraham was found righteous by believing God's promise, and also by keeping God's laws.
I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, Because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees and my laws. (Genesis 26:4-5)
Then came the Law of Moses. Righteousness was gained by obeying the Law.
Finally the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. If we would be counted as righteous by the Lord we must place our faith in Christ and the atonement He made on the cross.
God always has a problem with religious practices. This is because we choose the righteousness of religion rather than the righteousness of God.
The Pharisees were religious. One of their problems with the Lord Jesus was He healed on the Sabbath. Can you imagine? They could see people being delivered from every kind of torment, and all they could think of was Jesus was breaking the Sabbath commandment.
Religion always does this. It is a murderer of Christ everywhere He appears.
There was a time when eating pork was a sinful act. Then Peter was given a vision and eating pork no longer is a sinful act.
There was a time when we had to offer an animal as an atonement for our sins. Now we place our faith in the Lord Jesus as our sin-offering.
My point is, the righteousness that has to do with God's viewpoint of us may change from time to time and from place to place.
Is there any aspect of righteousness that remains unchanged? Yes, there is. What God views as righteous has to do with what God wants us to do right now. This means we cannot take refuge in religious rules. We have to keep looking to the Lord Jesus at every moment.
We know God counted the Jewish people as unrighteous even when many of them were keeping the letter of the Law of Moses. God regarded them as unrighteous because their hearts were far from Him. They did not know Him or His ways. They murdered Christ. They murdered Stephen. All the while they were observing the letter of the Law.
Paul showed the Jews clearly that it was possible to be righteous apart from keeping the Law of Moses. Abraham was said to be righteous on the basis of belief, before the Law was issued. Paul used this fact to show that it is possible for an individual to be righteous apart from the works of the Law.
Paul did not mention that God approved of Abraham for keeping God's requirements, commands, decrees, and laws. Paul did not need to mention these other aspects of Abraham's righteousness, because Paul's point had been made from the one incident-it is possible to be righteous on the basis of belief, apart from the works of the Law of Moses.
I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, Because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees and my laws. (Genesis 26:4-5)
Incidentally, I wonder what requirements, commands, decrees, and laws God was referring to. Probably to the commandments He had given to Abraham personally, such as the need to be circumcised and the offering of Isaac.
In addition, God wanted Abraham to walk righteously according to the eternal moral laws of God that are written in every person's conscience. God required that Abraham be blameless and upright.
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless." (Genesis 17:1)
We of today are responding in the Christ-murdering manner so typical of religion. We are seizing on a few passages from the writings of Paul and using these to escape from the necessity of having to live righteously in the Presence of Christ.
Just as the Jews used the Law to evade God's requirements, we are using grace to evade God's requirements.
Paul's use of Abraham believing God as a means of righteousness is being employed as proof we will go to Heaven by believing Jesus is the Christ. It does not matter how we behave, because Abraham was counted righteous merely by believing.
What a farce! What a total destruction of God's intention under the new covenant!
As I pointed out previously, God made other kinds of demands on Abraham-other than just believing. But we ignore this. Why? Because as is true of religious people generally, we do not like to seek God each day. We are looking for a formula we can apply while our heart is somewhere else.
At one point Abraham was declared righteous because He believed the promise of God. At another point Abraham was made the Father of all who believe on the basis of offering Isaac.
Both points required faith. The first point demonstrated faith by belief. The second point demonstrated faith by action.
When we turn away from the Law of Moses and place our faith in the atonement made by the Lord Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven because of the perfect atonement. We are declared righteous because we have believed. Christ died for the sins of the whole world, according to the Apostle John. But the whole world is not counted righteous because the world has not believed. When the world believes, then it will be righteous; because God has commanded us to place our faith in the atonement.
Suppose Abraham had believed the promise and been declared righteous, and then had refused to be circumcised. Would he still have been counted righteous? You know as well as I-the once-righteous Abraham would have been judged a rebel against God, not because of any inherent righteousness in circumcision but because Abraham had disobeyed God.
If we are going to build our doctrine of grace on the God's dealings with Abraham, then we had better apply the whole picture.
In our case, we turn away from the Law of Moses and place our faith in Christ and His atonement. We now are declared to be righteous by faith.
But-and this is the point-why are we righteous? On what basis? We are righteous on the basis of obedience. When naked belief is called for, we obey God, turn away from our own works, and trust what God has said through the Apostle Paul. We do what God has commanded.
Now notice: we can do as the Jews did, which was look to the Law as being the source of righteousness. They worshiped the Law instead of God. They did not realize their righteousness depended on their obedience to God's will. There was no inherent righteousness in refraining from eating pork. The righteousness existed in the obedience.
So it is today. There is no inherent righteousness in the fact that we believe in Christ. Satan and his angels are well aware Jesus Christ is the Holy One of God who has come to save us from our sins. Satan knows this is true, but this does not make him righteous. He and his angels are not qualified to enter the program of redemption.
We, as a sinner, have obeyed God. We have turned away from our own works and placed our trust in God's righteousness through Jesus Christ. Now we are as righteous as though we had kept the Law of Moses perfectly.
But what is next? It is at this point that Christian teaching produces moral chaos.
The current teaching is that we should persevere in our belief, try to do good, and when we die we will go to Heaven. We have been saved by faith.
This concept is destructive of the Kingdom of God.
What is next is not merely a perseverance in our belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. What is next is that we deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. We present our body each day as a living sacrifice to God. We count ourselves crucified with Christ, resurrected with Christ, and living with Him and in Him at the right hand of God.
I wonder how many Christians in America have taken up their cross of self-denial and are following the Lord each day? I wonder how many are counting everything as garbage that they man win Christ and attain to the resurrection from the dead?
No, they are maintaining their head-belief in theological facts. This is the Christian counterpart of the Jewish worship of the Law of Moses. Both are religious actions. Neither produces righteousness. Both have missed God's intention.
It will never be possible for God to give a covenant that will produce righteousness in people until we recognize that the righteousness comes from our determination to live in Jesus Christ each moment of each day, always looking to Him for His will.
Sometimes Christ says, "Believe only."
On other occasions He tells us "wait for the promise of the Father."
He may tell us to go. He may tell us to come aside and rest. The righteousness is not found in going or staying, the righteousness if found in obedience to the living Christ.
God has showed us what is good. We are to live uprightly (the world understands upright behavior), love mercy, and walk humbly with God. How dreadful is the current belief that because we are saved by grace it is not absolutely necessary to live uprightly, to love mercy, or to walk humbly with God! How could we possibly have gotten ourselves into such theological confusion? It is as Stephen said, we always err in our heart. We do not understand God or His ways.
We understand, therefore, that righteousness is not found in religious ordinances. Today we do not eat pork and are righteous. Tomorrow we eat pork and are righteous.
Righteousness is not found in keeping the Sabbath, or in being circumcised, or by believing the facts about Jesus Christ. Righteousness comes only as we obey God right now-right this very minute! For what was acceptable in the past may not be what God wants today. The past is yesterday's manna. The day of salvation is always today.
Let us make God glad by our determination to find righteousness by gaining Christ; by living in His resurrection; by sharing His sufferings; by thus attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. What counts is our embracing of the new creation that is being wrought in us. The new creation is the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, Because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. (Romans 14:17-18)