For
in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to
faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 01:17, NKJV).
This concept, the
righteousness of God, is important to understand primarily because it
is often called into question by life itself. It is also frequently
the opening salvo in human attacks on the character of God, in the
form of, “how can a righteous God... [fill in the blank with
whatever excuse or circumstance apparently justifies the question]?”
The best definition I can
give is that righteousness is the “state of someone who is as he or
she ought to be”. That is, that the person possessing this
characteristic is aligned with the universally understood qualities
of moral correctness.
Now, morality is a
squishy beast in this day and age. It has become victim to the forces
of relativism in that instead of representing an intended absolute,
it is now subject to the winds and currents of human thought and
imagination. That is almost never a good thing.
But in the case of
morality, it is all a show of smoke and mirrors to bolster the
logically untenable position of denying God's existence, for even the
most devoted follower of Relativism is personally offended by
unfairness or injustice when, let's say, someone cuts in front of him
at the line for the doctor's office.
If morality at its core
where truly relative, or circumstantial, there would be no
universally perceived offense since it would be entirely possible
that, to the rude perpetrator, it was moral to put himself first.
In fact, this innate
sense of fairness or justice that is shared by all functioning
humans, is inexplicable in purely naturalistic evolutionary terms.
Where did it come from, the primordial goo from which we all
supposedly originate?
We humans behave as if
there is indeed some universal standard of justice outside ourselves,
imposed from some external source that wrote all the rules
beforehand. We are merely players on the field, aware of, and
sometimes even following, those rules, but clearly not the author of
them. Even the most depraved psychopath knows (and delights) in
breaking them.
These rules of right and
wrong come from God, who is Himself perfectly “as He ought to be”.
And he wrote them in our DNA and conscience so that we are without
excuse when we break them.
This aspect of His
character, this perfect righteousness, is one of the many reasons He
is trustworthy, for as far back as Genesis 18:25 we discover that the
“Judge of the earth” will only do what is right.
For us, this
righteousness of God means that if we obey Him, we are protected from
His justifiable wrath against human depravity and sin; and to obey
Him, we need to know and understand what He commands.
Fortunately,
miraculously, mercifully, graciously, the single most important
command in this regard is to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and
you will be saved”.
It need not have been
that way. His righteousness could have demanded our own perfect
righteousness with the slightest misstep disqualifying us from
eternal life and guaranteeing our entrance into eternal punishment.
If that were the case, we
would be bereft of all hope, and it would have been better for each
one of us never to have been born.
But instead, His
righteousness, His perfect judgment has been tempered by His
measureless mercy and grace. He made it possible to gain entrance to
Heaven not by our own righteousness but by way of His Son.
In His brilliant and
glorious plan of redemption formulated in the eternal counsels of the
Godhead before the foundation of the earth, God declared the penalty
of sin (missing the mark of His standards of right and wrong) is
death, and that the soul that sins must die.
He created Adam, as our
representative, and gave this creature made after God's own image
every opportunity to obey the one restriction placed upon him, and
when Adam failed (as God knew He would), we all failed in him.
But He promised there
would come another representative, a Last Adam, who, through perfect
obedience, would fulfill all of God's righteousness and thus, as a
Man, qualify for Heaven.
And then came the most
incomprehensibly glorious aspect of this plan: instead of showing us
the way and leaving us to our own devices leading to inevitable
failure, this Last Adam, this sinless representative, took upon
Himself our death. He died in our place, taking our punishment, not
only on the Cross, but in being separated from God.
You see, God had declared
that Adam's sin would result in death for himself and all his
descendants after him. He likewise made provision for that required
death to be satisfied by the substitutionary sacrifice of His own
beloved Son, and thus grant life to all those who, by faith, become
Christ's descendants; who by belief in that provision would become
children of God rather than children of Adam.
But God's righteousness
demanded that Jesus must die for that exchange to take place.
For
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become
the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21, NKJV).
The world asks how can a
righteous God allow the evil so evident all around us to exist? How
can He allow babies to die and the innocent to suffer?
But the real question
that should be asked is this: how could a righteous God place upon
His sinless Son the punishment that we sinners deserve?
And the only answer that
satisfies is perhaps the most famous verse in the world.
“For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting
life. (John 3:16, NKJV).
So, when you find
yourself unsure of His love for you, remember this:
He
who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how
shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32,
NKJV).
Do not think for one
nanosecond that He does not love you, for in giving us His Son, He
proved for all eternity that His love for you knows no bounds.
You know the old saying
about how someone can “love you to death”.
There is only One who
has, and in doing so has really loved you to life.
Love,
Dad
