Abide || August 29

The Righteousness of God — “tsedaqah”

The world will spend all week telling you who you need to become. Every Saturday morning, we’ll remember who you already are in Christ. Friends, welcome back to Abide.

Righteousness is one of those words that can sound very Christian without necessarily being very clear. We read about righteousness. We sing about righteousness. We are told to pursue righteousness, hunger and thirst for righteousness, seek God's righteousness, walk in righteousness, and somehow, somewhere along our Spiritual journey, I think it becomes fairly easy to translate all of that in our minds as: Be a really good person — Which is not entirely wrong. It is just wildly incomplete.

When Scripture talks about righteousness, it is talking about something much bigger than good behavior.

Righteousness describes the holy, just, and perfect character of God Himself.

God does not simply know what is right or follow some moral standard that exists outside of Him. He IS the standard. Everything He does is perfectly consistent with who He is. He is good without exception, just without corruption, faithful without contradiction, and holy without flaw.

Psalm 119:142 says, “Your righteousness is everlasting and your law is true” (NIV).

There has never been a moment when God has been slightly less good than He should have been. He has never acted selfishly, judged unfairly, broken a promise, manipulated the truth, or needed to circle back later and say, “Actually, I probably could have handled that better.”

I, unfortunately, cannot say the same!

This creates a fairly significant problem for us, because if God Himself is the standard of righteousness, none of us measures up to it.

The Hebrew word often translated as “righteousness” is tsedaqah. It comes from the root tsadaq, meaning “to be straight, right, or correct,” carrying the idea of conformity to a standard. But tsedaqah was not merely an abstract description of private morality. It was relational. It meant living rightly before God and rightly toward other people. It included integrity, justice, mercy, faithfulness, and the kind of life that reflected God's character within a community.

In other words, biblical righteousness is not simply avoiding a list of particularly scandalous sins and otherwise considering ourselves pretty decent.

It is alignment with God.

And Scripture is clear that we cannot create that alignment for ourselves.

Paul writes in Romans 3:

“But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known... This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:21–24, NIV).

Notice the word Paul uses: given.

Righteousness is not something we finally earn after enough years of behaving ourselves. It is not God's reward for the Christians who manage to become especially disciplined, spiritually impressive, or remarkably consistent with their morning quiet times. We do not slowly accumulate enough good decisions to finally reach acceptable standing before a holy God.

Righteousness is given to us through Christ.

Second Corinthians 5:21 puts it even more plainly: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (NIV) (emphasis added).

At the cross, Jesus took what belonged to us—our sin—and gave us what belonged to Him—His righteousness.

That is justification. When we place our faith in Christ, God declares us righteous because of Jesus, not because we have suddenly become morally perfect ourselves.

Paul says in Philippians that he wants to “be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own... but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith” (Philippians 3:9, NIV).

That distinction is incredibly important, because otherwise the Christian life quietly becomes one enormous attempt to prove that God made a good decision when He saved us— We know salvation is by grace, of course. We would never say otherwise. But then Monday morning arrives and we begin assembling our evidence: I read my Bible today. I prayed. I was patient with that person who was testing every fruit of the Spirit before 9:00 a.m. I did not gossip. I volunteered. I gave. I forgave. I listened to worship music instead of whatever song I actually wanted to play.

Surely God is pleased with me now.

And then there are the other days…The impatient response. The pride. The jealousy. The selfish decision. The temptation we entertained longer than we should have. The thing God told us to do that we conveniently kept “praying about” because obedience was not the answer we were hoping to receive.

Suddenly we feel unrighteous again.

But our standing before God was never being held together by our performance in the first place. If you are in Christ, your righteousness before God rests in Jesus.

That does not, however, mean righteousness becomes irrelevant to the way we live. This is where our walk with Christ refuses to fit neatly into either of the categories we sometimes try to create. Scripture does not say, “Earn righteousness so God will accept you.” But it also does not say, “Since Christ has made you righteous, live however you would like.”

We are given righteousness, and then we are taught to walk in righteousness.

Psalm 23:3 says, “He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.”

I love the wording there because David does not say, I located the path of righteousness and, through exceptional personal discipline, successfully kept myself on it.

“He leads me.” — God does the leading.

And this, I think, is where abiding becomes essential.

Jesus tells His disciples in John 15, “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine” (John 15:4, NIV).

We cannot manufacture the character of Christ independently from Christ.

We can modify behavior for a while. We can become more disciplined. We can learn Christian vocabulary, develop respectable habits, establish routines, curate our environments, and get remarkably good at appearing spiritually put together. Take a look at the Pharisees all throughout the New Testament…human beings are capable of an impressive amount of self-management.

But transformation is different — Transformation reaches into the places where no one is watching. It changes what we love. It changes what we desire. It changes how quickly we repent. It changes the way we treat someone who cannot offer us anything in return. It changes what we do with power, disappointment, money, anger, inconvenience, success, offense, and fear. It slowly brings the person we are becoming into greater alignment with the character of the God we belong to.

And that kind of righteousness grows through relationship.

We remain close to Jesus because He is the One doing the transforming.

The longer I walk with God, the more convinced I become that distance from Him does not usually make me dramatically evil overnight. It mostly makes me more convinced that all of my instincts are correct.

My preference becomes wisdom. My irritation becomes righteous indignation. My control becomes responsibility. My fear becomes discernment. My impatience becomes efficiency. Give me enough time without bringing my heart honestly before God and I can give almost anything a respectable Christian explanation.

This is why we need His Word. This is why we pray. This is why we repent. This is why we remain.

Not because Bible reading earns us righteousness points. Not because God becomes more willing to love us after a particularly impressive quiet time. Not because spiritual disciplines are a payment we make in exchange for His approval.

We stay close because we need Him to continually straighten what has become crooked in us. We need His character to expose ours. We need His truth to correct the stories we have started telling ourselves. We need His kindness to lead us toward repentance. We need His Spirit to convict us when we have become comfortable with something that does not reflect Him. We need His mercy when that conviction reveals just how much transformation is still necessary.

And, thankfully, righteousness is not merely about what God is removing from us. It is also about what He is growing within us.

The biblical idea of tsedaqah reaches outward. A person being transformed by the righteousness of God increasingly becomes someone who acts justly, loves mercy, tells the truth, keeps their word, treats people with dignity, gives generously, forgives freely, refuses to exploit others, and cares about what God calls good even when obedience costs something.

Righteousness changes how we live because closeness to God changes what we love.

That transformation will not be completed in a week. We talked a couple of weeks ago about God's patience with our sanctification, and I am still very grateful that spiritual maturity does not operate on the timeline I would apparently prefer. But there should be movement. There should be a growing willingness to let God correct us. There should be places where His desires are becoming ours.

Not because we are trying to become righteous enough for Him to keep us — Because He has already made us His.

Matthew 6:33 says, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Seek His righteousness. Not your own impressive version of it. Not the version that earns admiration from other Christians. Not the version that happens to agree perfectly with everything you already think, want, and prefer.

His.

That means there will be moments when abiding with God changes our minds. There will be things we once defended that He asks us to surrender. There will be attitudes we considered harmless that His Spirit begins to expose. There will be relationships where righteousness looks like forgiveness, situations where it looks like courage, opportunities where it looks like generosity, conversations where it looks like telling the truth, and circumstances where it simply looks like obeying God when our feelings have submitted a strongly worded objection. That is part of being transformed.

The goal of the Christian life is not merely becoming a somewhat nicer version of ourselves.

It is becoming like Christ.

And we will never become more like Jesus by becoming less dependent on Jesus.

So remain — Stay near enough for Him to correct you. Stay near enough for Him to comfort you. Stay near enough for His Word to confront the things in you that the world happily excuses. Stay near enough for His grace to keep you from turning conviction into condemnation. Stay near enough that, little by little, His character begins showing up in the way you actually live.

We do not abide so that God will eventually declare us righteous. In Christ, that verdict has already been secured. We abide because the God who has made us righteous is also making us righteous. He is bringing our lives into alignment with what He has already declared to be true of us in Jesus.

This Week's Reflection

This week, pay attention to where your understanding of righteousness tends to drift. Do you find yourself trying to earn God's approval through your behavior? Or do you sometimes emphasize grace in a way that allows you to avoid the uncomfortable work of obedience and repentance? Ask God to show you where you may be trying to establish a righteousness of your own instead of receiving His and allowing it to transform you.

Spend some time with Romans 3:21–24, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Philippians 3:9, Psalm 23:3, and Matthew 6:33. As you read, ask the Lord a simple question: Where is my life still out of alignment with Your character?

Then stay close enough to let Him answer.

Not so you can fix yourself before coming back to Him. Not so you can assemble a better spiritual record. Come close because He is the One who leads us in paths of righteousness. He is the One who changes us. He is the One who makes crooked things straight.

Righteousness is His before it is ever ours.

And the closer we remain to Him, the more our lives begin to look like the God we belong to.

Keep walking with Jesus, friends.

bytaylormcgee