Righteousness

Word of the Day: Righteous

Verse of the Day:

Righteous means to be morally upright; without guilt or sin. Straight from the dictionary. The words righteous and righteousness are used over 500 times in the Bible. But the two words have two hugely different meanings. 

To be righteous and to be in God’s righteousness are different. And they mean different things in the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament it described the trait of the covenant as judged by God. In the New Testament it described the trait of being born again in Jesus Christ. I am describing this in very simple terms. 

Righteous is almost always used in the Bible as a character trait, someone strong and morally good who has faith in Christ. Only God can judge righteousness. 

But will we ever truly be righteous?  Yes, I believe when you accept Jesus Christ as your savior and repent or turn away from sin and live a life filled with following Christ - you can be righteous or really close to it. 

We won’t ever stop having sin in our lives. If you think you don’t sin - trust me, you do. But our walk with God and our deepened relationship through prayer and His word, begins to separate us from sin more and more. We recognize sin more easily and we don’t dismiss it. And we desire not to sin. 

One of the major problems in the world today is that sin is acceptable. Society has softened sin and hardens our heart. Instead of placing the emphasis on righteousness, we have desensitized sin. Sin is forgiven. But just because it is forgiven it doesn’t mean we should continue in it. Just because Grace abounds doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to be righteous. 

When you are “right” with God you are righteous.

I don’t understand all the usages of righteousness and righteous in the Bible. But I do know that I was neither until I was saved from my life of horrible living. I also don’t believe I will be completely righteous. But I believe we can strive to be really close to it. 

I think grace relieves us of guilt. A lot of us struggle with the guilt of sin. And that’s a good thing to a degree. It means we have remorse. It means we have a soft heart. It means we care. Grace doesn’t remove sin and it won’t remove guilt. But you shouldn’t stay in guilt. Just like fear, guilt is a weakness. The stronger your faith the less your guilt. 

Back to righteousness. The closer your walk with God, the closer you will be to being righteous. And just like your walk with God, if you don’t intentionally work on your righteousness, it can veer off track. 

Righteousness is a purpose-driven goal. You must be actively pursuing it. Not passively waiting for it to happen. I think a lot of people (this was me) wait for God to work in their lives. They depend on Gods Will to intervene and work for their benefit. And that’s a little backwards. We should be showing God that we deserve His Will. When we work to pursue righteousness we are showing God that we are deserving of His Will for our lives. And don’t really think of it as work. It is removing those things in our lives that aren’t righteous. 

Think of it this way, if their is sin in your life it is taking the space of the righteous things in your life. If you are cursing every five seconds - where is the room for compliments, forgiveness and grace?  If you are idolizing money and material things, shouldn’t you be worshiping instead or discipling someone?  These are brief examples, but I think you get the idea. If we are using our time for things that don’t bring God glory, we are not refining our righteousness. 

Specifically think about sin today. You know when you sin. All I’m asking today is that you make it come to the front of your brain and you work not to sin. It is an exercise in being righteous. 

“She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”

‭‭John‬ ‭8:11‬

“And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭31:34