I’m sure I have brought this up on a previous podcast, but I’d like to highlight this thought from a different angle. It has to do with a definition I’m formulating of the word righteousness.
I think it could be asserted that living in the “fear of the Lord” or “walking in righteousness” sums up to a large degree the substance of what being a man or woman of God was in the Old Testament.
Righteousness for the apostle Paul was huge. He writes of himself that “according to the righteousness stipulated in the law I was blameless.” (Philippians 3:6) But then when he was shown that all his righteousness was as filthy rags he turned to Christ in order to “gain Christ, and be found in him, not because I have my own righteousness derived from the law, but because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness—a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ’s faithfulness.” (3:8-9)
So what is this righteousness “from God”?
I suggest that it is first and foremost the ability to see others — insofar as we are able — as God sees them, as being infinitely precious to him. That is a gift from God that Christ faithfully imparts to all who want it. Perhaps it is the result of the “salve … put on your eyes, so you can see” that Jesus refers to in Revelation 3:18.
What follows completes the picture: the more we see people as God sees them the more we will think, act, and speak accordingly. And we will be on our guard to immediately reject with utter loathing any thought that in anyway depreciates another person’s value. For that matter, every time we step into another person’s life our whole attitude will be one of, “I am here to help you, encourage you, build you up, see you strengthened, redeemed, restored, made fully alive.”
That is precisely the spirit in which Jesus approaches each of us, and he is called the “righteousness of God.” And thankfully he is more than willing to put his healing salve on our eyes.
