On Right Righteousness

 

On Right Righteousness

September 15, 2020

 

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

Righteousness is a big word in the Bible. In the Hebrew Bible people are often either righteous or wicked, with it being much better to be righteous than to be wicked. In the New Testament the Letter of James says in effect that doing good works makes you righteous. See James 2:14-17. St. Paul  says nonsense, righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ. See for example Philippians 4:7-9 and many other places in Paul’s letters. The Bible does indeed tend to tell us more about how to get righteousness than it tells what righteousness is or what it means for us to be righteous. In the Hebrew Bible to be righteous is mostly to obey Torah law, although to most of the prophets it was more doing substantive justice for the poor, the widows, and the strangers. In the New Testament you get to be righteous variously through good works—see Matthew 25:31-46—or by having faith in Jesus Christ. Still, apart from how you get righteous, just what is righteousness?

A Google search for a definition of “righteous” produces as the first definition “(of a person or conduct) morally right or justifiable, virtuous.” The online dictionary merriam-webster.com comes at the word a little bit differently. It’s first definition of righteous is “acting in accord with divine or moral law; free from guilt or sin.” The first Google definition of righteousness is “the quality of being morally right or justifiable.” These definitions all have in common that they suggest that being righteous or having righteousness has to do with being right. It’s not about getting facts right. It’s about doing the right things however you understand what the right things are.

Which is all very fine and good as far as it goes, but I don’t think these secular definitions (though one of them does mention divine law) get to what the meaning of righteousness in the Bible really is. I am convinced that the basic meaning of righteousness in the Bible is the state of being in right relationship with God. To be righteous is to be in right relationship with God. For Jews both ancient and contemporary the reason to obey the Torah law is because doing what God has directed you to do puts you in right relationship with God. For the Letter of James and to a considerable extent for the Gospel of Matthew the reason to do good works is that by doing right by other people, especially people in need, puts you in right relationship with God. For St. Paul it’s having faith in Jesus Christ that puts you in right relationship with God. In all three instances it is something we do—obey Torah law, do good works, believe in Jesus Christ—that puts us in right relationship with God.

I write this piece because I am convinced that there is a fundamental flaw in all three of these approaches to being in right relationship with God. The flaw is that these approaches all assume that we aren’t in right relationship with God. Somehow we are alienated from God. Somehow God is mad as hell at us, and we’re going to pay for it bigtime. These approaches all assume that there is something we have to do to get ourselves into right relationship with God. It’s up to us, and if we don’t get it right we’re in really big trouble. In effect these approaches all say we have to save ourselves through what we do, what we don’t do, or what we believe.

To understand why that’s a flaw in each of these classic approaches to the question of our relationship with God we start with understanding that our relationship with God, like all relationships, it two-sided. There is our side of the relationship, and there is God’s side of the relationship. It is, I think, God’s side of the relationship that we often overlook or misunderstand. All the biblical language about how we become righteous assumes, like I said, that there is something wrong, something disordered about our relationship with God and that there is something we must do to correct that relationship. From our side of the relationship that may be true. More about that anon. What we so often misunderstand is that from God’s side of the relationship there’s nothing wrong at all. And yes, I know many will find that statement shocking, absurd, and heretical, so let me explain.

On God’s side of the relationship between God and us there is nothing but boundless, unconditional love for us and for all creation. 1 John gets it absolutely right when it says God is love. 1 John4:8. From God’s side of the relationship we stand always and everywhere in that love. St. Paul could at times make it sound as if faith were something we have to do to receive God’s love, but he got it much more right when he wrote:

 

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39.

 

That’s what our relationship with God looks like from God’s side. As far as God is concerned absolutely nothing separates or can separate us from God’s love. Nothing. Ever. Period.

We call God’s love in action grace. Grace is how God’s love functions in creation and in our lives. Grace is not a reward. It is something we have to earn. Grace is not a reward for anything we do or don’t do. If it were it would be a payment, the completion of a contract, not grace. If grace is truly grace, and God’s grace is, it is absolute, universal, and unconditional from God’s side of the God-human relationship. To stand in God’s grace we don’t have to obey Torah law, though there’s certainly nothing wrong with obeying at least most of Torah law. We don’t have to do good works for the needy, though it is a very good thing to do good works for the needy. We don’t even have to believe in Jesus Christ, so much of Christian teaching to the contrary notwithstanding, though of course it is a very good thing to believe in Jesus Christ. God’s grace requires none of that. As far as God is concerned we are, everyone is, everyone always had been, and everyone always will be in right relationship with God.

Once again St. Paul got it mostly right when he wrote,

 

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 2 Corinthians 5:18-19.

 

I’d say that God has always reconciled the world to himself, but Paul is spot on when he says that God does not count our trespasses against us. God knows how fallible we mortals are and how much we need God’s forgiveness. In Christ Jesus we see that God does not hold our trespasses against us, for in Christ God enters into and sanctifies even the worst we humans can do through God’s presence and solidarity with us even in the most horrific of circumstances. So let’s understand that from God’s side of the God-human relationship our righteousness is never an issue. As far as God is concerned we are always in right relationship with God.

As are as we’re concerned it can seem quite different. Why does the Bible spend so much time on and offer so many different answers to the question of how we gain righteousness, that is, how we get into right relationship with God? Surely it’s because we humans so readily perceive that we’re not in right relationship with God. We see how disordered human life is even if we don’t think our own life is particularly disordered. We know that we’re hardly morally perfect. We know that God has no end of reasons to be angry with us. Then we project our humanity onto God. We think, we’d damn an awful lot of people if we could. God could, so we assume God does. We think we have to do something to avoid that well-deserved fate. So we come up with Torah law, convincing ourselves in the process that it doesn’t come from us but from God. Or we think we have to do all sorts of good works to make up for how bad we think we are. Or we think that at least we have to believe in Jesus, whatever that means (and we usually misunderstand what it means), so that we can convince ourselves that we’re doing enough of what God wants so God won’t damn us to an eternity of torment in hell. We come up with different things we have to do to put ourselves in right relationship with God, but we certainly tend to think that there is something we have to do.

Yet when we finally realize that from God’s side of the relationship we’re already in right relationship with God it all seems a bit silly. We don’t have to put ourselves into right relationship with God. God has already done that. How could we possibly have to do anything to put ourselves into a relationship we’re already in? We couldn’t, and we don’t.

There is however one thing we must do if we are going to live into the right relationship with God that we’re already in. We have to realize that we’re already in it. We have to realize it not with our minds only but with our whole being, body, mind, and spirit. For when we finally have a deep understanding of God’s grace everything changes. We no longer live in fear of anything because we know that God is with us, holding us and loving us, no matter what. We no longer lack the courage to do what’s right for we know that even when the world fights back, which it will, we still stand forever in God’s grace. We no longer condemn anyone for believing differently than we do for we know that God loves them as much as God loves us, which is to say endlessly and unconditionally. We will still struggle to forgive people who do things we consider to be evil. We are after all human not divine, but we can at least try to understand that God forgives everyone even when we can’t.

Perhaps as importantly as anything else, we can finally come to love ourselves. A late friend of mind was fond of saying the he thought we do love our neighbors as ourselves, which is to say not much. We know how fallible we are. We know all the mistakes we’ve made and continue to make. Perhaps we even think that God would be thoroughly justified in judging and condemning us as Psalm 51 says God would be. See Psalm 51:4. When we truly realize how much God loves us guilt vanishes. Alienation from God, others, and our own true selves is overcome. When we truly get God’s grace everything changes.

One of the things that changes is our motivation for doing what’s right. People have accused me of teaching a theology that takes away people’s reason to act properly, namely, their fear of God’s righteous anger and its horrendous supposed consequences. My theology does indeed calm fears of that divine righteous anger, but it doesn’t obviate all reason for doing good. It’s just that when we truly get God’s grace we no longer do good works and avoid bad ones to earn God’s love and forgiveness. We do them out of our love of God and as a response to God’s love of us. We act not out of a sense of necessity or fear but joyfully out of love.

That’s right righteousness. It is doing what is morally right not because we have to but because we want to. It is giving thanks to God for God’s limitless grace that is ours always and everywhere. Do you want to follow Torah law by observing the Sabbath an keeping kosher? Fine. May doing so bring you closer to God, and may God bless you as you do it. Just don’t think please that by doing it you earn salvation. You’ve already got salvation. Do you want to feed the hungry, house the homeless, cure the sick, and educate the unlettered? Fine. May doing so bring you closer to God, and may God bless you as you do it. Just don’t think please that by doing it you earn salvation. You’ve already got salvation. Do you want to believe in Jesus Christ? Fine. May doing so bring you closer to God, and may God bless you as you do it. Just don’t think please that by doing it your earn salvation. You’ve already got salvation.

So let’s all get over the notion that we have to earn righteousness or that we have to be righteous in order to gain salvation. We’ve already got salvation. We’ve got salvation because God’s grace is universal and totally unconditional for all people. Every last one of us. No exceptions. Not now, not ever. In response to that greatest of God’s gifts let all the people say a heartfelt and joyous Amen!