Righteousness As Justice

A key to living in the way of justice as lovers of Jesus is that we have to understand righteousness. This thing is about you and I ushering into our midst "on earth as it is in heaven". This, my friends, is about the Kingdom of God.

 

The world is full of great, charitable organizations and NGOs. The UN, Unicef, Oxfam International, the Red Cross, the One Campaign and countless others are doing remarkable work around the globe. But while we might tread the same soil, feed the same mouths, clothe the same fragile bodies and even partner with these same groups, the Church was never called to be merely a social justice organization and we as people of faith in Jesus were never called to merely band-aid the worlds problems. Rather, if we know where we stand with a righteousness God and King, then we have unlimited access to solutions, strategies and power to bring true, everlasting justice on the other.

We are required and called on of the Lord:

However, we must ask: what is real justice in the eyes of God?

As people of faith we can pursue justice alone, but before long, we run into a predicament. All one has to do is a Biblical study on the word "justice" and we quickly find that in both the Hebrew and in the Greek, it is synonymous with the word "righteousness". The words "Righteous" and "Just", also "Righteousness" and "Justice", in the English Bible represent the same Hebrew and Greek words in the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament, the terms primarily translate forms of the tsedeq word group, and the New Testament members of the dikaios word group.

Righteousness is Justice. Justice is Righteousness.

So the question becomes, how can I pursue justice if I do not understand righteousness?
The answer: we cannot.

Here is one theologian's look at the problem Luther underwent when trying to compare Latin to English:


What is this big word righteousness? Simply put, God's righteousness means that God always acts in accordance with what is right and is himself the final standard of what is right (Grudem).

In regards to Grudem's definition of righteousness given above, we might be asking ourselves, what is right? "In other words, what ought to happen and what ought to be" that is right? (Grudem It is here that Grudem responds "whatever conforms to God's moral character is right".


God Himself holds the keys what is right in our world. Psalm 89:14 states, "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you." So if He holds the key to what is right, then He holds the keys to ending poverty, finding a cure for AIDS, caring for the world's orphans and widows, dissolving the human trafficking organizations around the world, solving the water crisis and everything else deemed unjust. In His righteousness, He holds the keys to ushering in true, everlasting justice on the earth.

Of course I want to see God's justice and righteousness on the earth, so what's the point?
The point is: intimacy.

It can only be through intimacy with God Himself that true justice reign on the earth. This is what the Gospel of the Kingdom is all about anyway—His will over ours! We all can have a lot of amazing ideas to "do justice" all around us, but unless we invite God into those ideas, they will always have a stopping point. They will always fail because they were our will, not His.

We can reflect on this Psalm:


This is not just semantics. As pointed out in Psalm 17:15, righteousness is about engaging the Father and seeing the face of God. In other words, intimacy.

PS: It is important to add...

This righteousness is what the Kingdom sits on (Psalm 89:14). Without it, everything would crumble. If God were of perfect righteousness without the omnipotent power to carry out that righteousness, He would not be worthy of worship and we would have no guarantee that justice will ultimately prevail in the universe. But if He were of unlimited power without righteousness in His character, how unfathomable it would it be to have unrighteousness at the center of our existence and nothing we could do to change it. Our entire existence would be meaningless and we would all be living in chaos. Praise God that "all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and right is He" (Deut. 32:4)!