Righteousness
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
Modern Israel today honors a select group of heroes whom they call “Righteous Gentiles”–people who made great sacrifices and took tremendous risks during World War 2 in saving the lives of Jews from the Holocaust. This small group of men and women, often unknown and undecorated people, is worthy of honor.
I quickly admit that historically Jews understand more about true righteousness than do Gentiles. One of their prophets, a great man of God, Isaiah, said, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away” (Isaiah 64:6). And Rabbi Saul, later known as the Apostle Paul, told the Romans that “there is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10, KJV).
The Hebrew word that Isaiah used is sadik which means “upright, just,” or, yes, “righteous.” There were two concepts behind this word: one moral or legal, and the other practical and personal. The first was in reference to what God expected of us, something which Paul knew the natural man could never be good enough to satisfy, and the second was the outworking of that goodness which, no doubt, led some to take great risks in saving the lives of Jews from the Holocaust.
When Paul wrote to the Romans, he put both Jews and Gentiles on trial before God and concluded, “All of us have sinned.” All of us have failed, all of us have sinned for two reasons: we like to sin, it is a choice we make; and then we can’t help it, it’s our nature.
So, are we to conclude that only God is righteous–whatever that means, and that all the rest of us are unrighteous, which we understand much better than its opposite? No, because the New Testament explains that God sent His Son to rescue us from our failure by allowing His Son to pay the price for our wrongdoing. Here’s how Peter put it, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18). Paul, of course, recognized the same truth. He told the Corinthians, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Did you notice the phrase, “we might become the righteousness of God”? That’s good news! It means first, God looks upon me and sees not my sin and failure but rather the price His Son paid, and thus accepts me as His child.
The outworking of this is that when He indwells my heart and life, I begin to change, as His life touches mine, making me into a different person. Paul described it, saying, “the old passes; all things become new.”
Paul Rader, the evangelist, had a brother who weighed over 300 pounds. On one occasion he was on a crowded streetcar and this mountain of a man lost his balance and lurched sideways, stepping on the foot of another passenger. Rader fully expected the man to vent his irritation; however, the man only said, “Well, praise the Lord!” Rader didn’t expect that. In fact, he was deeply moved. How could this man respond like that when he knew that He would have cursed the man – but not this man! Later he said this had a direct bearing on his understanding of the sin in his life, which brought him to Jesus Christ, who changed his life.
In Jerusalem is a row of trees planted in memory of the Righteous Gentiles, but it was a Roman tree in the same city long ago which allowed all of us to become righteous before God.
Resource reading: 1 John 1.