What is righteousness?

It is a thing very difficult to define if before us as an abstract quality. Take it up, however, in a concrete shape, and an answer is easier. A righteous man is one who is RIGHT in all his relations with God, and consequently with his fellow-men also. It may be asked, “What about the expression ‘the righteousness of God’” found in the epistle to the Romans? It stands in sharpest contrast to man’s sin. It would seem indeed that if sin had not invaded creation God’s righteousness would hardly have been drawn out into display, it would have remained latent in Himself. Holiness on God’s part is absolute. It is His nature; what He is irrespective of all creation outside Himself. Righteousness on His part is relative; it is the quality stamped on all His activities, what He is in every dealing and relation with others. Sin is the infringement of rights, His own rights. Righteousness is the maintenance of rights, His own and all others.

353 Our subject is righteousness, and specially the righteousness of God. Now this is used, as the terms imply, in an abstract and in a special sense. The word speaks of righteousness, and there is the special way revealed in which we can have it in a way worthy of, and suited to, God. When I read, "The righteous Lord loveth righteousness," or, "grace reigns through righteousness," I have the word used abstractedly: when I read, "the righteousness of God," or "the righteousness of faith," I have a special character or way of righteousness. We must keep in mind both. And first, what is righteousness? It is, I believe, the maintenance in my conduct, in my whole conversation, of what I ought to be (i.e., what I owe) towards others, the consistency of one's ways with the duties founded on relative positions. That is being personally righteous. Judgment maintains the same by the authority of another; but this, too, is righteousness. But God owes nothing to others. It is His consistency with Himself. A man is just when he recognizes the claims of others. "Righteous" is the same, only habitually the latter word carries more of the internal character of a man. "Just" refers more exclusively to actual relationship towards others. In Greek, both are dikaios. Dikaiosune is the habit and character required. But scripture necessarily introduces from its object a special use of it. Man has to do with God; and, hence, while righteousness in man's dealings with his neighbour is fully treated of, yet the first part of righteousness is what he ought to be for God — what he owes to Him — I do not mean as a Saviour, but in the relationship in which he stands, so as to meet the requirements of God as revealed. If man does this, he is righteous with God. But this has, in fact, become impossible. For man is a sinner; which means that he is in a state wholly inconsistent with the relationship in which he stands. Hence, God in judging is righteous in taking vengeance. Holy in repelling evil by His very nature, He is righteous in making good His claims in judgment against those who have not made good what they owed under them.

Righteousness, as contrasted with holiness in God, is the judicial estimate of, and dealing with what is right or wrong - involves responsibility to some one, and obligation in the one judged - and, in its exercise, the authoritative acceptance or rejection of what is presented to its judgment. It is used also for that which is the fulfilment of obligation, and acting according to what is due (and in this sense is true even of God), and satisfies that judicial estimate, but also for the just estimate itself too - the righteous Lord loveth righteousness - in all cases, its measure is consistency with the relationship in which we stand - in God, consistency with Himself and His own perfection, maintaining withal the obligation of those relationships in which He has placed us. It is thus doing right according to them, or judging justly how far right is done.

Now righteousness is constantly used in scripture for conduct suited to our position with man and God. So the law; if kept, it would have maintained man in consistency with his relative place as regards God and as regards man. The two tables contained the twofold obligation. Here, personal conduct is the ground of relative acceptance. I am righteous before God by personal righteousness. This may be spiritually carried on to the state of the heart, and has then been called inherent. Still it is my just acceptance in my relationship in virtue of my being perfectly what it demands. This the sinner is not. True, he receives divine life, so that there will be reality (of this a word hereafter). But this is not his righteousness: first, because He gets it in Christ, who makes Him righteousness before God in another way (God's righteousness and a new divine life going together); and, secondly, because, the flesh being still in him in fact, there is not perfectness according to the relationship into which the new life has put him — perhaps even positive failure. Hence his righteousness must be something else, and though he has divine life he must be accounted righteous beyond the measure of attainment in truth (blessed be God, according to the perfectness of Christ as He now is before God). His righteousness is not his conduct nor his nature, but his being seen and held by God as consistent with the relationship in which he stands before Him, that is, the revelation of His glory. God holds him for perfect according to His own glory in that relationship. What is that? Christ's actual one as risen and in His sight. I am crucified and risen with Christ, and in that standing am seen to meet the glory of God as absolutely there displayed. How this? Because Christ has actually glorified God in what He is, as so displayed, and I am so seen before God — am so placed in Christ.

Obedience is better than sacrifice. It becomes us therefore to seek to please the Lord in our conduct by quietness and simplicity, rather than by aiming at big things in an ostentatious way. Thus we may be found walking with God like Enoch, who had the conscious witness that he pleased God. "Wherefore," says the Apostle, "we labour, that whether present or absent we may be accepted of [or, agreeable to] Him" (2 Cor. 5:9). We may observe how closely obedience is linked with righteousness, that leading principle which is the great moral law of the creation. God the Creator is sovereign, and in the nature of things His will must be law to the creature. His will must be right, and from this comes the big word righteousness which is so often misunderstood — a word that runs right through the Scriptures. To say obedience is right is simplicity itself, and the result is beautiful moral order; disobedience, on the contrary, is wrong, and the result is disorder and chaos.

"Righteously." A righteous man is one who renders what is right to all outside himself; to God first and foremost. When the Lord Jesus said, "Render therefore to Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's" He was preaching practical righteousness.

When the thoughts and affections are governed and kept in order by the truth, there will be a good conscience, a holy and a righteous walk with God and before men. This association of ideas seems beautifully united in Ephesians 4:24; "And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness;" or, the "righteousness and holiness of truth." The truth produces both. Hence the beauty of the divine order. First, the heart; second, the conduct. Righteousness is the due attention to what we owe relatively to God and man. As says the apostle, "And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men." (Acts 24:16.) This is practical righteousness — a righteousness which gave the apostle amazing courage, holy boldness, when he stood up before his enemies. Holiness is rather that which repels evil — instinctively repelling that which is contrary to God. Thus the happy combination of the "righteousness and holiness of truth" forms the sterling metal of the Christian's breastplate.

There is no need, we may by the way remark, of altering the force of "righteousness" here or elsewhere. It does not mean "benevolence" as the Geneva Version renders it with many a commentator, but comprehends it. (Cf. Matt. 6:1-2.) Righteousness means consistency with relationship; and what can be more consistent than generous remembrance of want in others, especially in the household of faith, on the part of those who own that all is of grace in their own case?

"If ye know that he is righteous, know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him." Like obedience, it flows from life. As He is righteous, so every one that doeth righteousness hath been begotten of Him. There is thus the communication of righteousness because of the new nature. Here we come to the question of practical righteousness about to be discussed in the verses that follow, with a slight exception to be also pointed out. It is not now love, nor yet is it obedience as such, already treated in this 1 John 2:3-6 and 7-11. In the latter part of 1 John 3 we have, after righteousness, love again, just as in 1 John 2 we had obedience first and then love in the general course of the Epistle. There is thus an important link between obedience and righteousness respectively with love; which is indeed the bond of perfectness, as we read in Col. 3:14.

It is interesting to inquire what is the difference between our obedience and our righteousness. Yet is not the answer sufficiently plain? Although righteousness is always obedient, in itself it is an expression not only of submission to divine authority but of consistency with relationship. This seems to define its own proper meaning. Even if the force of God's righteousness be sought, it is no less applicable than elsewhere; it means the consistency of God with His relationship; just as it is with Christ's righteousness or with man's righteousness, greatly as they all may differ otherwise. In His case there is the perfection of Christ's consistency with His relationship; in our own case we have to lament the shortcoming of our consistency with ours as Christians.

317 Practical righteousness is the just judgment of good and evil, according to God's estimate of them, and acting on, and owning God's authority, and our responsibility in respect of it; it is made good in the judicial acts of God, of which the measure, as regards us, is our duty to God and our neighbour. In this we have failed, and now in grace through faith are dependent on Christ's work, not on ours; through that we rest on God's righteousness. On this, blessed as the teaching of Scripture is on it, I do not now enter.