Word of Encouragement (4/20/2020)

This morning, let us praise God for His righteousness.

Righteousness is related to law. A person is righteous when he keeps the law. What does it mean for God to be righteous? Does that mean that God keeps the law? He certainly does. If breaking the law is sin, God does not break the law, for He does not, and cannot, sin. Is that because God is subordinate to the law? To put the question in another way: “Does God command something because it is right or is it right because God commands it?” If the former, the idea of “right” is independent of God and even higher than God. If the latter, the idea of “right” becomes arbitrary, making God a moral tyrant.

This is why it’s important to recognize righteousness as God’s essential attribute. What this means is that the idea of “right” is directly connected to the righteous being of God and therefore cannot be separated from God. God IS righteousness and there is no righteousness without God. The idea of righteousness is not independent of God or higher than God. As it is impossible for God to violate His righteous being, it is impossible for God to do or desire anything that is not righteous.

Because God is righteous, the Final Judgment is inevitable. As the righteous sovereign Lord of all, He must reward the righteous with His “remunerative justice” and punish the unrighteous with His “retributive justice.” Of course, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, no one can expect anything but God's retribution on the Judgment Day—except those who are saved by God’s grace. But, because God is righteous, even this saving grace of God has to be a righteous grace. God’s grace cannot be given to us without Jesus Christ paying the full penalty of our sin, thereby satisfying the justice God’s righteous demands.

This is also why, even though we are saved by God’s grace, we still have the warning and promise,

“Now if anyone builds on the foundation [of Jesus Christ] with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor. 15:12-15).

We can say that, even though all believers will be glorified by God’s grace equally, they will be rewarded differently according to his deeds. (Of course, it’s not that any of our deed is good enough to be rewarded by God on its own merit; even our best deed must be covered by the perfect righteousness of Christ. Even so, God’s righteousness demands that our deeds be rewarded accordingly.)

Let us praise God for His righteousness. He does all things right. We can trust Him to make all things right in the end, no matter how chaotic and hopeless it may seem at this moment. God cannot not execute His righteousness fully and perfectly. And as we worship a righteous God and as those who are saved by His righteous grace, let us grow in our righteousness in the likeness of our righteous God, with whom we have eternal fellowship!

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