Preface Righteousness = justice in biblical vocabulary [Poetic parallelism “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne” (Ps 89:14) “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24)]
Introduction
Proclaiming God’s justice of God has always been central to the preaching of the church. Paul defined his gospel in these terms, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes… 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed …(Rom 1:16– 17). Yet today, the cry, ““Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”” (Gen 18:25) almost lies silent. Apathy, prayerlessness, biblical ignorance, worldliness and idolatry are symptoms of a failure to be grasped by a revelation of the righteousness of God.
This issue was forced upon me by an incident in Alice Springs last month when I was confronted with a weight of blame over something for which I was not fully responsible. It connected me to an old pattern of victimisation e.g. beaten by a teacher because he misheard my statement in the school yard and led to intense revelation about God’s justice.
To be human is to possess a deep inner sense of justice- that wickedness should be appropriately punished and goodness rewarded. When we think this doesn’t happen, people are outraged. I distinctly remember my mother crying out aloud at my father’s funeral (who died after a long and painful illness), “It’s not fair!” Deep down many people think life’s like that – newspapers are full of demands for tougher penalties for crime, or a fair go for aboriginal people. [Justice is an essential attribute for any ruler (Ps 72; Jer 22:13- 17) and is referred to hundreds of times in the Bible.] John Howard lost the last election over Australian Workplace Agreements because every Aussie understands you need to give people “a fair go”.
To see justice done is powerfully moving. When a former Argentine general was recently sentence to life in prison for crimes including torture, the decision was greeted with cheers, tears and applause from a crowd of survivors, parents of victims and human rights defenders. A mother overcome with tears of emotion said, “Today, real justice has been served. One cannot measure the grief and the happiness that I’m feeling,”.(The Weekend Australian 26 -27/8/08 p.17)
Since very few people, including Christians, live with a daily sense of the rightness of all of God’s actions, we need to go back to the beginning to understand why this is so.
The Righteousness of Man without God
“But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:4 – 5). Satan claims that for Eve to achieve complete God- likeness she must “know good and evil” in the way God does. His accusation is that by denying humans access to the tree of knowledge God is denying them equality with himself, God is depriving them of his best, he is selfish, he is unjust.
“So when the woman saw …that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate” (v.6). In believing she needed to become wise Eve treated God’s warning, “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”, as a foolish word. The first sin was a decision to become wise in one’s own eyes, something the Bible constantly warns against e.g. “Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil” (Prov 3:7 cf. 12:15; 26:5, 12, 16; 28:11; Isa 5:21).
To be wise in our own eyes is to judge that we know what is good and what is evil, this is nothing less than a state of self righteousness. It is to consider ourselves [like Satan] we know good and evil better than God does. From Adam on humanity offers no repentance for its actions, only excuses, people may feel bad about some of their actions but they remain inwardly persuaded that God is unjust– in excluding them from Eden and in the way he runs the world. All rebellion springs from this conviction, “God is unjust.” In a state of feeling right in one’s own eyes no one senses a need to repent, this is the worse thing that can happen to a human being for it is the essential reason why people go to hell.
It is an intoxicating experience to feel vindicated about your own moral rightness. Without Jesus human beings live constantly in a state of self justification – the chief weapon of achieving this is blame. Blame in families, work places, politics, religion, people can even justify blaming themselves, the person most blamed is of course God.
Fear and Loathing the Vengeance/Wrath of God
Not far below the surface in every human being is a settled hostility to the divine justice. The scriptures speak openly of people as “haters of God” (Ex 20:5; Deut 5:9; Ps 68:1; Matt 6:24; Luke 16:13; Rom 1:30) who “curse the name of God” because of the pain his judgements bring (Lev 24:15; Rev 16:9, 11, 21). Strangely, to us, whilst men on earth are chronically angry with God, those who surround his throne in heaven shout aloud in joy over the same punishments. “After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, 2 for his judgments are true and just; for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of his servants.” 3 Once more they cried out, “Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.”.”” (Rev 19:1- 2)
To bring this into the present, there is no doubt that the terrible events of 9/11 involved a prophetic judgement of God, but you cannot talk publicly in this way because speak of the vengeance/wrath/judgement God to lost people conjures up an image in their hearts of an almighty inflexible power that has a will to punish, to mete out just desserts and to inflict retribution (“its pay back time”). It is impossible to love such a God intimately. Sadly, this problem is common in the church. I remember a conversation with a Christian woman who, with unusual honesty, said to the Lord after her cancer, divorce and so on. “I’ll serve you, but I can’t love you.” We need to know – whatever our experience of life may seem to teach us, that any God of revenge or unfeeling punishment is NOT the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort” (2 Cor 1:1).
In the Bible, God’s judgements are a cause of hope for his people because they rectify and set things right – they restore the order of justice in the earth [e.g. “Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.’ 36 For the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone and there is none remaining, bond or free.” (Deut 32:35 -36).] In Psalm 94:1 the psalmist cries out, “O Lord, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth!”. This faith filled man cries out for vengeance because it is God’s righteous acts of judgement that restore justice to the oppressed, crushed, widows and orphans and (vv.5 – 6). This understanding of God’s righteousness is the backbone of the Bible and the source of all spiritual authority.
God’s vengeance is not an inner pent up rage waiting to be released as some sort of divine catharsis. God condemns because this is the only way to save his children from evil powers cf. “The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”” (Rev 11:18)
Most scholars think that we are so out of touch with the true meaning of biblical words for God like vengeance and wrath that we need to replace them with dynamic equivalents, such as “vindication” and “displeasure”.
God’s True Righteousness
God’s righteousness – that he puts everything in order, is at the heart of the gospel (Isa 61:1 – 4) it is is the power by which he creates salvation. God’s righteousness /justice/vindication is not his feeling good about himself – that he is in the right and we are in the wrong, it is his dynamic power to save. It is his action for the oppressed and weak, the hungry, the poor, the widow and the fatherless (Ps 146:5 -10). Jesus came to bring “justice to victory” (Isa 42:4; Matt 12:20) and he does this by “proclaim(ing) good news to the poor…liberty to the captives …recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”” …. [““Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.”” (Luke4:18-19;7:22).] In this power of putting things right Christ destroys the destructive power of evil and releases God’s goodness in the world. This is why in throughout the saints praise the judgements of God. How many of today’s choruses do this?
We are so deeply confused about the righteousness of God because our sin distorts everything. The rebellious human heart (Jer 17:9; Rom 10:3) constantly portrays God in the image of its own self- righteous vengefulness. The only power in the universe strong enough to create a love for the righteousness of God is a revelation of the cross.
[Perhaps an Old Testament example will help us see the truth. When the Israelites in the wilderness had sex with the Moabite women at the shrines of Baa,l God in his wrath sent a plague among the people. In holy anger at the people’s evil the priest Phinehas grabbed a spear and slaughtered an Israelite man and a Moabite woman in their very act of sin. Immediately the plague was stopped. Here is how God himself interprets the event.
“11 “Phinehas… has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people in my jealousy. 12 Therefore say, ‘Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, 13 and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel.’” (Num 25:11- 13)
God’s jealousy was expressed by Phinehas in an act of judgement that atoned for the people and turned away divine wrath so that peace came to Israel. The wisdom of the righteous makes atonement for sinners so that instead of destroying them God might reign over them in justice and peace. Ultimately, this is the work of the cross.]
The Justice of the Cross
When Jesus said to the rich young ruler, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” (Mark 10:17), he was not denying his own goodness, but pointing to his Father as the reality of his righteousness. The works of the Father were the justification for all he said and did (John 10:22– 30). [This is why he would not answer accusations at his trial.] This made Jesus completely free from self –righteousness.
We have often been taught that Jesus bore the wrath of God against our sin on the cross; this is true, but what does it mean. In the most important passage on God’s wrath in the bible, Romans 1:18 – 32, Paul three times describes wrath as “handing people over” to their own choices (Rom1:24, 26, 28). Because they take“ pleasure in unrighteousness” instead of believing the truth, God hands people over to their love of deception (2 Thess2:11- 12)
In such a state of rebellion evil penetrates the deepest depths of the human soul, mankind becomes a child of the devil (John 8:44;Acts 13:10; 1 John 3:10, and the words placed on the lips of Satan by the great Puritan Poet John Milton [in his epic Paradise Lost ] become true for us, “Farewell Remorse: all Good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good” (Book IV, 109 – 111) When evil good is exchanged for evil Jesus words become absolutely true, “If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matt 6:23).
This is the state of darkness into which Jesus is immersed on the cross. He is surrounded by evil, mocking, accusing and blaspheming voices. But since he is taking away all the wrath of God, there can be for Christ no righteousness, no justice, and no vindication from his Father. No vindication by a mighty miracle of deliverance from the cross, whereby God rends the heavens and comes down (Isa 64:1 cf. Matt 27:40), [not a sending of twelve legions of angels (Matt 26:53);], not even a whisper from the Spirit saying, “I do justly, I love mercy, I am with the humble, I am with you” (Mic 6:8). Jesus must suffer alone. He must experience God as one does not show righteousness, even for the just man. The extremity of his agony is to experience what fallen men believe about God in their deepest hearts (Rom 3:10 -12), it is to enter into the final confused terror of hell (Rev 22:15) where men will forever curse God as unjust.
In entering into the final spiritual state of every child of Satan , the face of God as the “Righteous Father” (John17:25) is totally obscured from Jesus; he must endure the supreme anguish of lacking any consciousness that he is the revealer of the Justice of God. In this state of experienced separation, it seems that Christ, who has never been “wise in his own eyes”, knows neither good nor evil. “Why have you forsaken me?” (Mark15:34).
Yet the truth is that on the cross “God put forward (Jesus) as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness”.” (Rom 3:25). The death and resurrection of Jesus for the world absolutely vindicates God as one who will put all things right – who has punished all evil and rewarded all good in his Son. When the Father saw the shed blood of the Lamb it provoked his justice to totally reverse the condition of Jesus – the resurrection is the vindicating justice of God. As Paul puts it; “He (Jesus) was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit” (1 Tim 3:16). [The execution of God’s twofold judgment in the death and resurrection of Jesus means joy for the world.] Jesus is the content of God’s own justice that restores all things.
Whilst in Alice Springs I posed this question to myself just before I went to sleep, “Do I love justice?”, Only in the morning could I answer “Yes!” for only then did I realise that Jesus himself is the reality of the restoring justice of God.
The Impact of Divine Justice
The impact of God’s putting everything right in the cross cannot be measured, but here is a radical example.
Luke records two responses to this prayer of Jesus from the cross,“34 , “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”. The first response is that the “35 rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!”. With evil hearts telling them that Jesus was in the wrong and they were in the right, they were full of a self righteousness judgement that totally blinded them to their need for divine mercy.
The second response is the penitent thief. [who senses that he is justly punished “we are receiving the due reward of our deeds” (v.41).] Unlike the other thief, who blasphemes [God in ] Christ (23:39), he has anger at neither God or man, he shows but one emotion, holy fear, and he rebukes the cursing man, “ “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?” (v.40). Even in the extreme agony and torture of crucifixion this man has had a revelation of the righteousness of God. We know this is because he is moved to ask IN FAITH for the restoration of eternal life, “Jesus, (he says) remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (v.42). His softness of heart is both amazing and inevitable! Inevitable, for this wretch had seen the face of God in Christ as a God who seeks to restore men to himself no matter what the cost. He had heard the heart of God in the words of Jesus interceding for the forgiveness of his murderers without any trace of anger, “Father forgive them…”. By divine revelation the thief is able to exclaim of Jesus, “this man has done nothing wrong” (v.41) and he knows, that if Jesus, God’s King, has done nothing wrong, God has done nothing wrong – ever. As Paul puts it, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19). The cross teaches us what this wretched, agonised, rejected and despised dying man knew, that God has never done anything wrong in the whole of his long history with humanity, and in his history with us.
The Righteousness of God in Him
The revelation of the righteousness of God - of a God who puts everything supremely right – is a power that grants faith (2 Pet 1:1), justifies the wicked (Rom 4:5) and raises the dead (Rom 8:10 – 11). In proclaiming the gospel, “21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5:21 cf. 1 Cor 1:30), Paul proclaims not our own individual righteousness in Christ and our immersion in a new order where everything is put right: “if anyone is in Christ, a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Cor 5:17).
Hebrews exhorts us, “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience” (Heb 10:22). When God sees the blood of his Son sprinkled on our faith – filled hearts he is moved to reverse our situation, his justice impels him to vindicate himself by reversing our plight, there is no wrath, his passion is to release resurrection life and joy in and through us for the world. The revelation of the justice of cross, God’s absolute faithfulness to his creation, creates faith, “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” (Rom 10:17). The cross is our eternal joy for it exalts God as the one who puts all things in HIS universe right Knowing such righteousness of God we, “love justice” (Isa 61:8); we join the company of the blessed, ““Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matt 5:6).
Conclusion
The revelation of the righteousness of God is the key to the restoration of that revival spirit that has broken out in the church again and again. Today, most Christian mercy agencies, separated from their roots in past revivals, have deteriorated into charities. For instance, the power of the Salvation Army motto, “Soup, soap and salvation” will only be restored with a fresh supernatural revelation of God’s all consuming passion to take the side of the defenceless. This alone is the Spirit that can disciple Australia.
I was returning on plane from Argentina some years ago and felt God speaking to me about our nation from the parable of the talents. I sensed the Spirit say that the third servant is a typical Australian. “He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’” (Matt 25:24 – 25) This servant did not believe in the justice of God, therefore he was afraid and hid his talent (which stands for whatever God has given us for the growth of his kingdom)in ground. As a nation we do not believe God gives people a “fair go”, as such, we sow sparingly – in time, talents, prayer, mercy, compassion….and so we reap sparingly (2 Cor 9:6).
Our Father is commanding us to put on “the breastplate of righteousness” (Eph 6:14) and to become wise, just, merciful judges – in biblical language, to be kings, priests, prophets and elders who stand in the gate and give impartial counsel and implement deeds of justice. God commands each of you to stand in the gate of the home, office, school, political arena, clinic, factory, sports club….to stand wherever he has planted you and work towards establishing your city as a “a city of righteousness” ( Isa 1:24 – 26). This manifestation of the justice of God by Christian righteousness is the only means by which nations are discipled. We are to bring forth “the day of salvation….by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left” (2 Cor 6:3, 7).