Confidence Before God is the Fruit of Righteousness

When righteousness is centrally established and becomes the goal and expression of our lives, there emerges a marvelous confidence that God Himself is our champion. We begin to realize that nothing can shake us from our place in His heart, and that He is the one watching over our every circumstance. King David was one who understood this principle to a wonderful degree. His writings reflect a deep confidence in the Lord his God who would protect him in the situations of life, and cause all things to be established in his favor. Meditate on this section of Psalm 7 that reveals the confidence of David’s heart before the Lord:

The LORD shall judge the peoples;

Judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness,

And according to my integrity within me. 

Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end,

But establish the just;

For the righteous God tests the hearts and minds. 

My defense is of God,

Who saves the upright in heart.

(Psalm 7:8-10, NJKV)

The confidence of David’s life was that he had made the righteousness of God the goal of his seeking. Therefore, because his life was in line with God’s righteousness, he could pray in an amazingly bold way – “Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness, according to my integrity within me!” David comes to the solid place of trust where he can depend fully upon the judgments of God, because he knows that his own heart is upright – in other words, he is as fully aligned as possible with the righteousness of God.

By contrast, there also came a time in David’s life when he acted in profound contradiction to righteousness. The story is recorded in 2 Samuel 11, and concerns the situation in which David, as the King of the nation, should have been leading his troops in the war that they were fighting. However, he remained in his palace, where one evening he went for a walk on the roof of his house. From there he observed Bathsheba, the beautiful wife of Uriah, bathing in the open air of her balcony. David lusted after this woman, sent for her, and impregnated her. In order to cover up the situation, the King sent for Uriah, who was one of his military commanders. David tried to get Uriah to sleep with his wife, but the man was too honorable to enjoy the pleasures of home while his soldiers were fighting. So, in a fit of horribly wicked behavior, David arranged to have Uriah placed in the hottest battle zone, where he was killed. David then took Bathsheba to his palace, and claimed her for his wife.

This situation was deeply displeasing to God, and brought great displeasure upon the life of David and his descendants. God sent His prophet Nathan to confront David, who responded with deep repentance, and wrote Psalm 51 as his song of confession. In that Psalm is a profound phrase that grips me each time I read it. Verse six of that Psalm declares that God “desires truth in the inward parts.” This is the formation of righteousness in the interior of our souls – to have our inward parts, our thoughts, attitudes, and secret longings conformed to the desires and ways of God. It is this alignment that God is after so that He might pour out His blessing on His people.

The Importance of Agreeing with God’s Opinion

Since these things are true, the only thing that really ought to matter to me is the discovery of what God thinks about me. Once I begin to understand His definition of reality in general, and my life in particular, then I begin to have the hope of coming to some sense of fulfillment and power. Consider the words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones as he writes of the ultimate importance of God’s priorities being established in our hearts:

We are not meant to control our Christianity; our Christianity is meant to control us. I am to be dominated by the truth because I have been made a Christian by the operation of the Holy Spirit within. I quote that striking statement of the apostle Paul which surely puts it so perfectly – “I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” He is in control, not I; so that I must not think of myself as a natural man who is controlling his attitude and trying to be Christian in various ways. No; His Spirit controls me at the very center of my life, controls the very spring of my being, the source of my every activity.

You cannot read these Beatitudes without coming to that conclusion. The Christian faith is not something on the surface of a man’s life, it is not merely a kind of coating or veneer. No, it is something that has been happening in the very center of his personality. That is why the New Testament talks about rebirth and being born again, about a new creation and about receiving a new nature. It is something that happens to a man in the very center of his being; it controls all his thoughts, all his outlook, all his imagination, and, as a result, all his actions as well. All our activities, therefore, are the result of this new nature, this new disposition which we have received from God through the Holy Spirit. 

Again, Jesus’ point in Matthew 6:33 is that the pursuit of God’s rule and the conformity of all things to His character is the most important quest of the human heart. When righteousness is the goal of our seeking, then God becomes involved in a profound way to add “all these things” to our experience. The things spoken of here are the physical needs of life – food, clothing, provision – the things that fill our hearts with worry when righteousness is not the goal. But when righteousness is the goal of our seeking, and when in the power of the Holy Spirit we conform our expressions of life to that righteousness, then everything else that concerns us comes into place according to the purposes of God our Father.

Receiving the Gift of Righteousness

The biggest mistake we make is when we attempt to be righteous by our own energy and strength. Instead of focusing on falling in love with Jesus, and allowing His Spirit to transform us, we try to “behave ourselves.” We try to act like Jesus without being transformed by His power first. We want to be good enough to gain God’s approval. This will lead us to frustration with absolute certainty. The Scripture is clear that with the single exception of Jesus there is no one who is righteous, not even one person!  If that is true, then we have a huge dilemma! How can we live up to the demands of righteousness if no one can do it?

The answer the Bible gives us is that because Jesus lived as a righteous man, we too can anticipate living in His perfection as a fruit of relationship with Him. We are told in Philippians 3:9 that righteousness does not come by our own strength, but by faith in Christ as a gift from God. When we acknowledge our failure to live as humans were intended to live, and ask for His forgiveness, God’s power changes us inside. He makes righteousness available to us as a gift. We are granted a new nature, a new kind of life in which righteousness is possible. Because of His sacrifice on the cross, He can impart righteousness to us as a gift, and then give us the strength to grow up into that reality.

The Bible speaks of a reality that is called “righteousness,” and it is the truth of how things really are, rooted in the character of God who created all things. There actually is a standard, an perfect reference point from which every particular thing takes its meaning. That standard is God, whose character is made visible and accessible to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Consider this passage from the writings of Paul:

He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. (Colossians 1:15-18, NKJV)

Your life is part of the “all things” that Jesus created out of His own desire for relationship with human beings. God chose you before He created the universe,  and designed you from the very beginning to look like His Son Jesus, in whose image you were made. You were His idea! Therefore, since God thought you up, there is only one definition of your life that can possibly be right, and that is God’s idea of your life! He has a complete understanding of who you are, and Jesus is in full agreement with the Father about you! He means for you to look just like Jesus, and to the degree that you begin to look like Him in your attitudes and actions, you will begin to touch righteousness. God knows who you really are, and He is determined that you will receive everything you need to be just like He designed you!

Jesus said in Matthew 6:33 that the most important thing is to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. If we will do that, then everything else that can possibly seem important will be added to us as well. Nothing is more important that to come into alignment with how God designed us to be.

Powerful People Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

One of the things that Marie and I enjoy is looking at cars and dreaming about what it would be like to tool down the motorway in a variety of luxury SUVs or sports models. Marie is captivated by the Porsche Cayenne, and fantasizes about the thrill of driving one. I particularly like BMW’s, and am intrigued by their motto: “The relentless pursuit of perfection.” The motto points to the elusive but conceivable goal of their company – to produce cars that touch perfection. What a wonder it would be to drive the ideal road machine, the perfect car! Now if there is a reality in the realm of automobiles that can be termed “perfection,” that means there is a standard, a norm that draws our thoughts and serves as a reference point for our dreams. That standard would be the objective reality against which every car would be measured.

You see, we tend to look at life this way. There is something inherent in us that longs for perfection, and we are exhilarated when our experience touches something that approaches it. When people or situations fall short of perfection, we are invariably disappointed even though we may have a cynical response that is resigned to accepting less than the ideal. The fascinating thing is that the teachings of Jesus in the Bible encourage this pursuit of perfection. As a matter of fact, Jesus indicates very clearly that perfection is there for us who will seek after it. He calls it “righteousness.”

The difficulty that we encounter when we think of perfection is that it makes us feel like we have to live up to something that is foreign to us. We think of ourselves as fundamentally flawed, and we have no hope that we could ever live up to a standard called “righteousness.” But God created us for glory, not for frustration. The human race was broken by sin, but Jesus made the way clear for everything that was in God’s heart to be restored to us. We long for perfection because it is our birthright, to be fully realized when we see Him face to face. But this perfection is not something merely to be attempted in an external, behavioral way. Our hearts were made to be captured by the perfection of Jesus, to fall in love with Him, and to be transformed in such a way that the actions of our lives would become like Him as well.

Essentially the term “righteousness” means to live in a way that is consistent with God’s perfect pattern for your life. This perfect pattern is the man Jesus. You were created to be like Him. To be righteous is to have our inner person – our hearts, our thoughts, our attitudes – aligned with the pattern of Jesus, with His thoughts and attitudes. From that internal alignment we can begin to live externally in line with the behavior of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Righteousness means to be in perfect alignment with how God sees all things to be in the reality of His life, and He promises that those who seek after it with intensity will be fully satisfied. This line of thought may cause one to ask “How do I discover what God thinks and how He sees all things?” The answer to that question is that in a spirit of worship and prayer we begin to search the Scriptures and study the person of Jesus who perfectly reveals God’s character.

The Bible is full of thoughts and actions that are attributed to righteousness, and to the lifestyle of righteous people. Consider for example this list of character traits that are attributed to righteousness in the Book of Proverbs:

• The Outlook on Life
o They are hopeful (Proverbs 10:24)
o They are concerned about the welfare of God’s creation (Proverbs 12:10)
o They understand justice (Proverbs 28:5)
• The Response to Life
o They are covered with blessings (Proverbs 10:6)
o They give thought to their ways (Proverbs 21:29)
o They persevere against evil (Proverbs 24:15-16)
• How the Righteous are seen by Others
o They are appreciated (Proverbs 13:15)
o Their conduct is upright (Proverbs 21:8)
o They do not desire the company of godless people (Proverbs 24:1-2)
o Others are glad when they triumph (Proverbs 28:12)
o They care for the poor (Proverbs 29:7)
o They detest the dishonest (Proverbs 29:27)
• The Quality of Life
o They stand firm (Proverbs 10:25)
o They are delivered by righteousness (Proverbs 11:6)
o No real harm befalls them (Proverbs 12:21)
o Their income results in treasure (Proverbs 15:6)
o They avoid evil (Proverbs 16:17)
o They are bold as lions (Proverbs 28:1)
o They will be safe (Proverbs 28:18)
• Short-term Results of Righteousness
o They walk securely (Proverbs 10:9)
o They are rewarded with prosperity (Proverbs 13:21)
• Long-term Results of Righteousness
o God protects them (Proverbs 10:29)
o They are never uprooted (Proverbs 10:30)
• Eternal Expectations
o They will earn a sure reward (Proverbs 11:18)
o They will attain life (Proverbs 11:19)
o Their life will end only in good (Proverbs 11:23)
o They will stand firm (Proverbs 12:7)
o They will have a refuge when they die (Proverbs 14:32)
• God’s Opinion of the Righteous
o He delights in their good (Proverbs 11:20)
o He will cause evil people to bow to them (Proverbs 14:19)

This is an amazing list of character traits and promises, isn’t it? Those who pursue righteousness with all their hearts will indeed be a powerful group of people! We would encourage you to meditate on these things, asking the Holy Spirit to help you understand what it means to live in righteousness in such a way that these statements become true of your life.

Gary Wiens