When the word righteousness is brought into view in relation to a Christian’s life in the world, it is portrayed as a state of being that requires a pious, stoic spirituality. However, that is not the truth concerning what God says about it.
The first thing is to review the word righteousness, as in the Old Testament, subject to study for its meaning in Hebrew. There is one aspect that is interesting in the structure defined in the noun format. This word (sedaqa) carries within it a sense of loyalty compounded by truthfulness; it also demonstrates mercy and right judgment, is faithful in fulfilling expectations, and exalts honor. This reveals there is an underlying manner of justice to which one must conform.
If you are righteous, then, by a legal spiritual process or term, you are accepted as rightly standing with the one most righteous, God, your heavenly Father. Ps 50:5-6 (AMP) Gather together to Me My saints [those who have found grace in My sight], those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice. 6 And the heavens declare His righteousness (rightness and justice), for God, He is judge. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]! Judgments that God makes concerning creation are faithfully done according to truth, and that truth is fundamentally righteous, as it is His word inherently carried in His nature to do so, revealed by the Holy Spirit.
Ps 96:13 Before the LORD: for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth: he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth. In Greek, the word righteousness (dikaiosynē) is “revealing character or quality of being that’s right or just.” This brings righteousness more into focus as God’s character is revealed as most right and just. So, we could say righteousness is the statute He has established by His nature, shown in His essence as the one occupying an eternally correct position. Therefore, faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God secures a believer in such a position with the Father.
If justice prevails in and through the work of righteousness, it will judge the world for its sinfulness, not those who are righteous. God loves humanity, so by His grace, He made a way for faith to establish a personal relationship with Him. Anyone in such a status is free from guilt of sin and, by faith, believes in Jesus as the Son of God and holds a righteous posture, having access to all spiritually defined inheritance in that relationship with the one who created them. This right is given to you as a believer through faith in Jesus Christ. His sacrifice reconnects the Creator with His creation and restores an eternal fellowship. John 1:12-13 But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
The world is not in the right standing with God, and it is why it is essential now more than ever that God’s children manifest a faith that is conscious of this stature in Christ’s righteousness, each believer is established in. 2 Cor 5:17-18 (GW) Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence. 18 God has done all this. He has restored our relationship with him through Christ, and has given us this ministry of restoring relationships. Believers need to know they are given a new way of living while alive in the flesh, reconciling others to God through Christ by the Holy Spirit.
Unfortunately, many do not know how to live according to a new nature, revealing that they do not know the truth about this spiritual stature; thus, a spirit of despair continues to prevent the truth from being seen. Many believers think of this relationship as an interaction He directs only toward them, not them toward God. If God is truthful, loyal, merciful, and long-suffering, then He is also by faith fulfilling righteous expectations, and much more as revealed in His nature and essence as a righteous God. All can be seen in the truth the Holy Spirit reveals for believers: those who believe in Jesus are legally accepted by faith and established in righteousness within a new covenant made in His shed blood, which was an acceptable offering of His right standing with the Father.
Each believer defines their faith before God, and if you look at how Jesus lived and behaved on earth, you see He lived to reveal His Father through a rightness in everything He did. And in the interaction of His disciples with Him, they were, through their faith in Christ, standing rightly with their Father God. John 14:6-11 (GW)Jesus answered him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes to the Father except through me. 7 If you have known me, you will also know my Father. From now on, you know him {through me} and have seen him {in me}.” I want to view something Jesus reveals. First, no one gets to God except through Jesus. Second, you will know the Father because you know Jesus; therefore, you know God through Jesus because you see God in Jesus.
8 Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will satisfy us.” 9 Jesus replied, “I have been with all of you for a long time. Don’t you know me yet, Philip? The person who has seen me has seen the Father. So how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Phillip’s statement indicates he was speaking for all who were there. Were they following Christ because He said He was the Son of God, but needed to affirm it by gazing upon God? This signifies that the faith seen here is not believing, then receiving, but seeing, then believing. 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? What I’m telling you doesn’t come from me. The Father, who lives in me, does what he wants.
Jesus had faith in what the Father was doing in and through Him. His witness and testimony were not based on what God did but on the fact that He would do what He says, and His obedience to that brought forth the signs, wonders, and miracles that occurred. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me. Otherwise, believe me because of the things I do. What He says is that an acceptable stature of belief must be achieved through interaction with Him to reveal the Father, who expects faith in what He says and does. This is a spiritual interaction based on a covenant that reveals righteous statutes applied to those within it, who, by the Holy Spirit, show that the Father is in them.
You, as a child of God, should know you are under a theocratic authority eternally dominating all cultural expectations that are common to the region you represent. In this case, the kingdom of God within you, where He resides.
Believers are righteous and are to perceive what this means so that everyone around them sees their interactions as having this right standing. I know questions often appear among the body of Christ, such as: Is one made righteous by a particular way of living? Do we have to earn such a status? Isn’t righteousness a pious way of life rigidly adorned with spiritual acts? Isn’t living righteously only a thing ministers can do? If you look at any denominational precepts, you see them upholding the traditions and customs of tenets; thus, you will think the answer to these questions is a resounding YES. However, God does not require us to be righteous through our efforts because we cannot.
Believers are all made righteous only through faith in Jesus Christ. He explains that any effort humanity makes to do so will be seen by Him as filthy rags. Filthy rags that, by translation, are, in His words, representative of a cyclically unclean event or an offense He compares to a woman’s menstrual garments that cover it but can’t remove the uncleanness. Isa 64:6But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Sin appears before God as unrighteousness, and judgment is an applied spiritual process that comes because it is in one’s nature to sin. Thus, intentionally shedding His blood, which is without sin and is righteous, is an acceptable offering for our sins and puts us in the right standing in the beloved, Christ.
It comes down to believers being reconciled from eternal death, as scripture describes, which is separation from God. 2 Co 5:20 Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. 21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
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