The subject of righteousness is as controversial as the subject of perfection. What is righteousness? Some people say it is just doing your best and God does the rest; and many think they can establish this by certain quotations and texts in the Bible. Some say it is total sinlessness, and they are striving very diligently to be that way. If you believe in situational ethics, then righteousness depends on the circumstances. Therefore, you have many theories to choose from.
Most of us realize that righteousness has some connection with obedience to God’s law, for “Righteousness is right doing.” COL 312. Also, “All unrighteousness is sin.” 1 John 5:17. If unrighteousness is sin, then righteousness must be obedience; and sin is the transgression of the law. Therefore, from these definitions, we are correct in attaching the concept of righteousness to obedience to the law.
When you begin to study this topic of righteousness in connection with the law, you immediately begin to check yourself by the law. Am I breaking the Sabbath by my actions or behavior? Or is something I said lying? Is taking a particular thing stealing? Is using certain expressions and words taking God’s name in vain? And so forth. We have a long checklist of thou shalt nots, and we examine ourselves in this light. If we find something in our lives that seems to be a violation, we launch a campaign against it. We begin to pray and study and ask God to bless us. Finally, if by His grace we believe it, suddenly that sin disappears and we cannot see it in our lives anymore. Then we can say, “I am more righteous because one more sin is gone.” And hopefully, if we live long enough, they will all be gone. Is that righteousness?
There are many of us who have been trying to do this for years. Is the absence of sins righteousness? If you cannot find any sin in your life, are you righteous? Is righteousness established by not killing, not stealing, not lying, not committing adultery, not taking God’s name in vain? Is that righteousness? Many of us have thought so for a long time. If not doing all those things is righteousness, then we would all do well to join the hermits and the monks and leave society and give our minds to holy things. You will find out that you are not terribly tempted to be dishonest in a monastery. There are no temptations to steal there. There are many ways that man has devised to keep himself from the temptation to sin. But is that righteousness? If it is, why stay where you are. Let’s all join a monastery immediately. Most of us have thought that the absence of sin in our lives is righteousness.
We ask again: What is righteousness? When Christ looked at obedience to the law as being righteousness, He discussed the law as He understood it. He knew it very well because we understand He was the Giver of the law. A lawyer once came to Jesus and asked, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?” Matthew 22:36. “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Verses 37- 40. Jesus taught that a right concept of the law is embodied in supreme love for God and loving your neighbor as yourselves. This is a right concept of righteousness.
To Jesus, the keeping of the law was not simply the omission of sin. It was the doing of good. Most of us think it is the elimination of sin in our lives. But we often forget what Jesus said in Luke 11:24 about devils being cast out, and leaving the person empty. The devils came back in and filled the void. Just because the sin was gone did not mean there was any righteousness there. When all the sin is gone, a person is only empty. There is nothing good there; the life is just empty of sin. Righteousness is more than the elimination of sin in our lives. Righteousness is not a negative (not killing, not stealing) but a positive. It is love for God and love for our fellow man; and it is doing acts of love with an unselfish motive.
This is more than a profession. The Lord talked about those who professed but did not do. He talked about the two men where one said he would do it but he did not do it; the other fellow said he would not but he did. Jesus said the one who did it was blessed. “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.” Matthew 7:21. The doers are blessed. It is not enough to eliminate wrongdoing. Into my life there must come this loving, this right doing, or I am not righteous. It is not the discontinuance of acts of transgression, but the doing of acts of love for God and for man.
Suppose I have an automobile I wish to sell to you. You are my brother or sister in the faith, and as we are talking a deal, there is a good possibility that if I just deceive you a little bit about the mileage that you would pay me three hundred dollars more. So here is the temptation to lie to you and receive extra money on the deal. Why should I not lie to you? Should I not lie to you because it is against my principles? Should I not lie because liars will be lost? Or should I not lie to you because I love you? If I find myself in that situation, I can say to myself, “If I just told him the speedometer is off, that isn’t too bad, is it? I don’t want to be lost, but I would sure like to have that money.” I find myself torn between two desires: more money and the desire to be saved. Nothing wrong with that, is it? I choose between two desires, and I weigh it back and forth (the gears are grinding in my head), and I find myself wanting to have my cake and eat it too. I finally conclude that this fellow is a member of the church, so I should not lie to him; so I don’t lie to him. I go away and say, “Thank God I am not like other people are…I didn’t lie.” When I kneel for prayer that evening, I say, “You are sure doing good things for me because I did not lie today.” But in my heart, I am still dreaming about what I could have done with the extra three hundred dollars. Is that righteousness? I did not lie! I told the truth. Isn’t telling the truth righteousness? We have told our children this, haven’t we? But if we understand correctly, this is not righteousness.
“The love of God is something more than a mere negation. It is a positive and active principle, a living spring ever flowing to bless others. If the love of Christ dwells in us, we shall not only cherish no hatred towards our fellows, but we shall seek in every way to manifest love toward them.” MB 58. In other words, if I really love you because of the love of Christ in my heart, it is not just avoiding doing wrong to you, it is taking every opportunity to do good things for you. That is a different kind of righteousness, is it not? Yet all the time we have been praying, “Lord, keep me from doing wrong things.”
Righteousness is very much different than most of us suppose; and I want to show you some quotations about our inability to be righteous, and how different righteousness is from what most of us believe it to be. “Because of his [Adam’s] sin, our natures are fallen. We cannot make ourselves righteous. Since we are sinful, unholy, we cannot perfectly obey the holy law. We have no righteousness of our own with which to meet the claims of the law of God.” SC 62. We are ill equipped, and we cannot do it. All our attempts at obeying the law are destined to failure.
“Because the law of the Lord is perfect, therefore changeless, it is impossible for sinful men in themselves to meet the standard of its requirement.” MB 50. In other words, it is too holy for me to meets its requirements. “The law of God is as holy as He is holy, as perfect as He is perfect. It presents to men the righteousness of God. It is impossible for man, of himself, to keep this law, for the nature of man is depraved, deformed, and wholly unlike the character of God.” MB 54. It is natural for us to do the opposite of what the law requires.
Paul talked about this in the book of Romans: “What then? Are we better than they [are the Gentiles better than the Jews?]? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.” Romans 3:9,10. Neither Jew nor Gentile is righteous. This might discourage those who are trying to be righteous. If you are trying to be righteous of yourselves, you won’t like what I am saying. If you have failed and are about to give up, you will like everything I am going to say.
If you read on in Romans chapter 3, it continues talking about our unrighteousness and our inability to keep God’s law. After verse 20 comes a transition where a very unique thing takes place. In the first twenty verses, Paul discusses the non-righteous; then it changes in verse 21 with the little word “but.” “But now the righteousness of God….” It first talks about the unrighteousness of man and all of man’s attempts to be righteous; then it says, “but now” something else has happened— “the righteousness of God without the law is manifested.” This righteousness is for us. “Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.” Verse 22. Paul is talking about people who try to be righteous, and he said none of them are. We all try to be and sometimes we think we are, but we are not. He said that this does not mean that all is lost in the pursuit of righteousness. He said there is a better kind—the righteousness of God which is unto all and upon all that believe, and it comes by the faith of Jesus Christ.
This righteousness of Christ is not the righteousness of some person billions of miles away. If you read Philippians 3:9 and put it with Romans 3, you will understand a little about this. Paul prayed about what he might possess when he finished his life: “And be found in Him [Christ], not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law [my attempts to keep it], but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” Paul says a human being can have that. It is unto to all that believe. He said he did not want his own righteousness. He only wanted the righteousness of God, which is found in Jesus and comes by faith in Him.
The righteousness of God in Christ is righteousness in a human. The righteousness of God is in divinity. But as Christ lived that Godly life, righteousness was found in a human being who lived just like we live. And that means this righteousness can be for us! And it comes to us in the Person of Jesus.
Paul is saying in Romans 3 that God is asking why we strive to keep the law when all are sinners and unrighteous. God is standing there waiting to give you His righteousness in the person of Jesus. Would you trade one for the other? Why do you try to achieve your own righteousness when He offers you something so much better?
Did you know that Jesus did not claim that His righteousness was His own. “Jesus saith unto him [Philip], have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father. Believest not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself: but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.” John 14:9,10. The words and righteous works seen in Jesus were not His but the righteousness of the Father in Him.
There are other texts that state this, such as: “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father hath taught Me, I speak these things.” John 8:28. “Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: for what things soever He [the Father] doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” John 5:19. Therefore, the words He spoke and His acts of righteousness were not His. They were the righteousness of God the Father in Jesus. And this is what is offered to us!
I want you to look at this righteousness of God much more closely, because we have imagined righteousness to be many things. Again, what is righteousness? What is the righteousness I may have, and must have? What is the righteousness that gets us into heaven?
Ellen White wrote: “The righteousness of God is absolute. This righteousness characterizes all His works, all His laws. As God is, so must His people be.” 1SM 198. What does the word “absolute” mean? We know basically that it has a high and exalted meaning. Here is what the dictionary says: “Free from imperfection or perfect; positive or certain; free from limit, from restriction or qualification.” In other words, it is unlimited righteousness. There is no restriction on it. It is as high as high can be. The definition of absolute is: “determined in itself, and not by anything outside itself.” In other words, God’s righteousness is not judged by someone or something else. It is determined in itself. It is not dependent or relative. It is ultimate and intrinsic as absolute moral law! There is nothing more exalted or inherent in itself, and in Himself.
One final definition of the noun absolute: “All reality considered as the final or total fact or existence.” It is the final, total fact of righteousness. There is nothing after it, and there is nothing more complete.
When you put all these definitions together, the righteousness of God is all of that. That word “absolute” characterizes all His works and all His laws, too. The law is absolute. There is nothing greater, and nothing more perfect.
Do you think you can keep that law? You have to be a good Pharisee and totally deceived to think you can keep that kind of a law. One bad thing about many of us is that we thought we exalted the law when we really depreciated it. We have deprived the world of a correct view of the law, for we have not presented it correctly as the epitome of righteousness. And so people think that they can keep it. Any attempt of a depraved, degraded sinner to keep that law degrades that law. We have been degrading it for years. It is ridiculous to think that sinners can keep that law. It is too perfect, it is too high; and you are only depreciating God and His marvelous law and His government by thinking that you can do it. We must put the law back where it belongs—as absolute.
“His law is a transcript of His own character.” COL 315. Any obedience to God’s law must be a likeness to God, right? If the law is God’s character written down, then obedience to that law makes you like Him, right? Yes, obedience to His law is likeness to Him. Therefore, true obedience is Godlikeness. John talks about this: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He [Jesus] shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” 1 John 3:2. If we are like Jesus, and Jesus said, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father” (John 14:9), then if we are like Jesus, we are like the Father; and law keeping is having the character of God, or God-likeness. This character, this law, is absolute; and this righteousness, this obedience to God’s law, is God-likeness.
Now let’s look at it from another viewpoint lest we misunderstand what the righteousness of God really is. John taught that “God is love.” 1 John 4:8. As the beloved prophet thought of describing God (and he knew God well because He knew Jesus so well), he proclaimed that God is love. In that one word he described His whole character, of which the law is a more lengthy description. As Moses asked to see God, he saw God’s character there in Exodus chapter 34 where in verse 5 He talked about His love. God is love, and since the law is a transcript of His character, His law has to be love. That is why Jesus said: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart…and thy neighbor as thyself.” Matthew 22:37.
Christ, who knew His Father and in whom the Father dwelt, knew that God’s character was in that law. He knew that God was love and so He knew the law was love. Therefore, Paul tells us that “love is the fulfilling of the law.” Romans 13:10. Love is perfect obedience to the law. It is supreme love for God and love for your neighbor. That fulfills the law!
I want to come to one conclusion: Love is righteousness, and righteousness is love. If God is love, and the law describes His character, and the law is the character of love, and obedience to that law is love, and obedience is righteousness, then righteousness is love. Do you agree with me? Righteousness is love.
This means that all those years I had been trying to do something else that I called righteousness. Somehow I was totally deceived and missing the boat. Righteousness, if it is love, is not trying to avoid hurting you. Righteousness is doing good things for you and blessing you in every way I can think of. That is righteousness, because righteousness is love.
“Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Matthew 5:6. Here is Ellen White’s comment on this beatitude: “Righteousness is holiness, likeness to God; and God is love (1 John 4:16). It [righteousness] is conformity to the law of God, ‘For all Thy commandments are righteousness,’ (Psalm 119:172); and ‘love is the fulfilling of the law.’ (Romans 13:10). Righteousness is love, and love is the light and the life of God. The righteousness of God is embodied in Christ [that love is, you see]. We receive righteousness by receiving Him.” MB 18. “Righteousness is love,” and never forget that.
If “Righteousness is holiness, likeness to God; and God is love,” then righteousness is love. I am amazed that we have lived so long pursuing righteousness and so few of us have discovered that righteousness is love. If there is love in my heart, planted there by Jesus, then there is love for you, because He loves you tremendously. When there is love in my heart for you, I find it difficult to lie to you or cheat you; and I surely don’t have any trouble loving the Lord with all my heart and strength and mind. It is not an attempt to make the outside look perfect or flawless. It is goodness coming out of the heart that embraces and loves humanity. That is Christianity.
There are people in the world dying for lack of real Christianity because they can find so little of it. It is becoming worse and worse because the churches do not offer the love of Christ that will change our lives. We offer all kinds of other things, but we do not offer this. This is a different understanding of righteousness than most of us follow in our lives. It is obedience to the law, but it is far more that that. It is a law of love; so obedience is loving people.
Another statement in the Spirit of Prophecy teaches that righteousness is love: “But notice here that obedience is not a mere outward compliance, but the service of love. The law of God is an expression of His very nature; it is an embodiment of the great principle of love, and hence is the foundation of His government in heaven and earth. If our hearts are renewed in the likeness of God [talking about the new birth], if the divine love is implanted in the soul, will not the law of God be carried out in the life? When the principle of love is implanted in the heart, when man is renewed after the image of Him that created him, the new covenant promise is fulfilled, ‘I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them.’ And if the law is written in the heart, will it not shape the life? Obedience—the service and allegiance of love—is the true sign of discipleship.” SC 60.
Obedience is the service and allegiance of love. That is a different kind of obedience. Don’t you like that? If we have someone serving us and allegiant to us out of love, doesn’t that make us feel good? Wouldn’t you like to be sweet to someone else? If it is good to receive this love, how much more blessed to give it? Then it is a double blessing—you as the giver, they as the receiver.
If we go back to Romans 3:10 where we started, it says “There is none righteous.” If you use the definition that righteousness is love, it says there are none who love. Paul said we are no better than the Jews. They did not love and neither do we. You say, now wait a minute, are you telling me that there are none that love? That seems quite extreme.
In the Bible we find the fall of Adam and Eve. After one sin—just one—and probably on the same day, by that one sin, Adam and Eve were estranged from each other. One sin in one day; because when God came that evening and asked, “Where are you?” Adam said, “Eve did it.” And she said, “The serpent did it.” Believe me, Eve knew that Adam did not love her anymore. They were birds of a feather in sin so they were hiding together; but not in affection. They were ashamed. Look at how little love remained after just one day from just one sin. And in only one generation, from a perfect place in perfect love, sin brought about the complete opposite of love; for Cain did the opposite of love—he killed his brother. In one generation we see love on one extreme and hatred and murder on the other. He hated his brother and killed him. Why? One sin brought about this degeneracy and love was gone.
What is it like after six thousand years of sin? We have been deceiving ourselves about this thing called love. If one sin brought about such estrangement and lack of love, think of what six thousand years has accomplished. Our understanding of love is extremely feeble; and remember that righteousness is love and love is righteousness. Our understanding of righteousness is very meager. When the Bible says there is none righteous, it means there is none loving. We find in our hearts this selfishness coming up all the time. The love that is of God is a self- renouncing love, a self-denying love, a self-sacrificing love. Love not only forgets itself, it does good things for other people. It plans good things for other people. That is genuine love that Christ demonstrated to us. This is a most unusual type of love, and righteousness is love.
Now do you understand why we cannot produce that kind of love? If one sin caused all that separation, all that estrangement, and caused that love to flee away from Adam’s heart after one sin, just think how we have been chasing love out of our lives for years. We cannot produce it, and yet this love is the fulfillment of God’s law. It is perfect righteousness. Where does it come from? It only comes from Jesus.
Jesus said: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” 1 John 13:34. Do you love like Jesus loved? I don’t. I thought I did once in a while. All day long Jesus cared for people. The people His family hated and His nation hated, He loved. It did not matter who they were. He loved them all. He loved those people the Jews called “dogs,” and taught His disciples to love them, also. And when He was hanging on Calvary’s cross, He said, “Father, forgive them.” Do you call that love? That is a different kind of love than I have. I cannot manufacture it; I cannot plan for it; I cannot conceive of it. I must receive it from God. God so loved the world that He gave to us His only begotten Son. His love for us was in Jesus. Righteousness is found in Christ. We receive righteousness by receiving Him. Love is found in Jesus. We receive love by receiving Jesus. I cannot do something that takes the place of it. I must receive it until it changes my whole life, and makes me love those I once hated. A whole transformation takes place. Why? Because the love of Christ has come into my soul.
“While the law is holy, the Jews could not attain righteousness by their own efforts to keep the law. The disciples of Christ must obtain righteousness of a different character from that of the Pharisees if they would enter the kingdom of heaven. God offered in His Son the perfect righteousness of the law. If they would open their hearts fully to receive Christ, then the very life of God—His love—would dwell in them, transforming them into His own likeness. And thus through God’s free gift, they would possess the righteousness which the law requires.” MB 54,55. Righteousness and love are in Jesus. When I open my heart and receive Him, the very life of God— His love—will abide in me; and He will change my life by that love until that very righteousness the law requires is in me and demonstrated in my life.
All that I am trying to say in defining righteousness is wrapped up in the Sermon on the Mount, and especially the conclusion of that sermon. What is righteousness? It is love. That is obedience to the law, for the law is love. It is the character of the Father, and that is love. It is likeness to God, and that is love. All of this is wrapped up in one very small statement in Matthew 5:48: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” He could have said, “Be ye therefore righteous” or “loving.” We look at that and say, “I give up; I will never be that good.” Stop looking at yourself. Who do you think you are? It does not say look at yourself. It says look at the Father; and look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Is He able to do that? He did not say to look at yourself and see if you are as good as the Father. He did not say that at all!
“The Jews had been wearily toiling to reach perfection by their own efforts, and they had failed. Christ has already told them that their righteousness could never enter the kingdom of heaven [do you ever feel that way?]. Now He points out to them the character of the righteousness that all who enter heaven will possess. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount He describes its fruits [the fruits of righteousness], and now in one sentence He points out its source and its nature: be perfect as God is perfect. The law is but a transcript of the character of God. Behold in your heavenly Father a perfect manifestation of the principles that are the foundation of His government. God is love. Like rays of light from the sun, love and light and joy flow out from Him to all His creatures. It is His nature to give. His very life is the outflow of unselfish love…He tells us to be perfect as He is, in the same manner [not to the same degree]. We are to be centers of light and blessing to our little circle, even as He is to the universe. We have nothing of ourselves, but the light of His love shines upon us. We are to reflect its brightness. ‘In His borrowed goodness good,’ [not mine—I am only a steward of His goodness] we may be perfect in our sphere, even as God is perfect in His.” MB 77,78. He has a huge circle. I have a small circle. He is saying I should be a center of light to my little circle. We can do that if He abides in us.
She goes on: “Jesus said, Be perfect as your Father is perfect. If you are the children of God you are partakers of His nature, and you cannot but be like Him.” It isn’t striving to be good. You cannot avoid it if you partake of His nature. “Every child lives by the life of his father. If you are God’s children, begotten by His Spirit, you live by the life of God. In Christ dwells ‘all the fullness of the Godhead bodily’ (Colossians 2:9); and the life of Jesus is made manifest ‘in our mortal flesh’ (2 Corinthians 4:11). That life in you will produce the same character and manifest the same works as it did in Him. Thus you will be in harmony with every precept of His law; for ‘the law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.’ Psalm 19:7, margin. Through love ‘the righteousness of the law’ will be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Romans 8:4.”
This is an amazing thing. What is righteousness? It is obedience to the law. What is the law? Love, a transcript of God’s character, and God is love. Righteousness is love. God so loved that He gave. He gave me the Prince of love, did He not? He gave me the God of love. Jesus lived a life of love for me and for His Father. He loved me so much that He finally gave His life for me. Behold what manner of love! And by beholding that love, I am transformed into His likeness. I love Christ and I love you until I am like Jesus. And when I am like Jesus I am like His Father. But now is manifest the righteousness of God unto all and upon all them that believe. It comes by faith in Christ.
It is our misunderstanding of righteousness that has led us into a weary struggle. We have pled with God to stop us from sinning, and God has been saying all along that He wants to make us lovers. We get the cart before the horse. The power that enables a person to love other people is in Jesus. When you love them, you won’t hate them, you won’t lie to them, you won’t cheat them, you won’t kill them. But you cannot make yourself like that. He transforms all who will receive Him and He makes them right. It is His love—His righteousness—that comes into me. I can receive that. I can believe it with all my heart. I can reach out and embrace it. In fact, it is difficult not to embrace it because I want to so much. Don’t you? It is so wonderful to be loved like this.
We have a problem understanding how He can love us so much when we can be so unloving and unrighteous. But He does. He loved David who was a murderer. He loved Peter who cut off the ear of that servant (he wasn’t aiming at his ear). He loved Moses who was going to deliver Israel by killing the Egyptian. Does He love you? Surely He does. How much He wants that love to be in our hearts, so that the world will see God in all His love and all His righteousness and beauty. He is so precious to us that we can hardly wait for Jesus to come back; and He will carry us up through the heavens and introduce us to His Father, the God of all love and light. And we will fall down and adore Him, this God who is love. And over and over we will sing “Hallelujah!” And we will never get tired of telling Him how much we love Him. And He will never get tired of listening, because He is a God of love.
Don’t you want to be like Him? I do. And it is so easy to reach out and receive the gift of heaven—the perfect gift of love. God can make the hardest soul a loving Christian. May God help us to be holy, to be righteous, to be loving, even as He is righteous.