Jehovah-tsidkenu

Last week we were talking about the righteousness of God. We talked about how God is perfectly just, holy, and fair in all His dealings with all creation. We could not say the same about ourselves. We are biased. Our opinions on what is fair and just are always changing. What I thought was fair at 5 years old is very different to what I thought was fair at 20 years old and to what I think is fair and just now. That is mostly because we are not omniscient like God. We do not know and understand everything. We only know in part, 1 Corinthians 13:9 and even so, the little that we know is limited by our level of maturity. So our view of fairness, justice and righteousness is always going to be incomplete.

God is not like us. He is holy, set apart, different to us. This is why we can trust God to deal with us and others in a manner that is fair and just. God not only sees our mistakes in isolation. He sees them in the context of our upbringing, the struggles of the generations before us, our heart posture towards Him and so on. So when God judges us or brings a consequence our way, He has considered everything, and He deals with us fairly. This is why when King David sinned against God in 2 Samuel 24 and God gave him three options for punishment the following happened:

2 Samuel 24:13-14, “So Gad came to David and asked him, “Will you choose three years of famine throughout your land, three months of fleeing from your enemies, or three days of severe plague throughout your land? Think this over and decide what answer I should give the Lord who sent me.” “I’m in a desperate situation!” David replied to Gad. “But let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great. Do not let me fall into human hands.””

David knew that God is fair and just but He also knew that God is merciful. When we sin against God, we can lean on His mercy, not to remove consequences, but to help us through. God is so good to us. Even when we make the biggest mistakes, He does not disown us. He walks us through. His goodness does not stop there, instead of keeping this righteousness to Himself, God chose to impute upon us some of His righteousness.

This does not mean we are perfectly just and fair. That’s only something God can do. To understand what righteousness is in our context, we need to take a step back and look at sin. What sin did is it put is in a spiritual debt that we could never pay back to God. We can never do enough good works to undo what sin did. So Jesus came and paid the price for our sins. He served our prison sentence and got us acquitted of our “crimes” (sins). Now, when we go to stand before the righteous Judge (Papa God), we can look to Jesus, and say to the Judge, “Your Son already served my time in prison”. Because of what Jesus did, we no longer stand before God accused of sin, we are made righteous (which means of right standing or justified or acquitted) by faith in Jesus.

God is righteous in and of Himself. We however, have righteousness added to us by faith in Jesus.

 Romans 3:21-24 says, “But now, independently of the law, the righteousness of God is tangible and brought to light through Jesus, the Anointed One. This is the righteousness that the Scriptures prophesied would come. It is God’s righteousness made visible through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And now all who believe in him receive that gift. For there is really no difference between us, for we all have sinned and are in need of the glory of God. Yet through his powerful declaration of acquittal, God freely gives away his righteousness. His gift of love and favor now cascades over us, all because Jesus, the Anointed One, has liberated us from the guilt, punishment, and power of sin!”

One of the Names of God is Jehovah-tsidkenu. The Lord our righteousness. Long before Jesus came, God wanted it known that it was only through Him that we can obtain right standing with Him and have right relationship with Him. If we rely on our own works to gain God’s approval, the prophet Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 64:6 that our own righteousness is a filthy rags to God. Jesus illustrates this for us in Matthew 22 where a King was holding a wedding banquet and He had special clothes for all the attendees. One man, however, was not wearing the right clothes and this is what happened:

Matthew 22:11-13, “But when the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasn’t wearing the proper clothes for a wedding.  ‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how is it that you are here without wedding clothes?’ But the man had no reply. Then the king said to his aides, ‘Bind his hands and feet and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

Only God’s righteousness can cover us and bring us into right relationship with God. This is a free gift to all who believe. So, let us throw away our filthy rags and put on Christ’s righteousness as our own.

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano.