For the Love of Righteousness

“Noblest of goals, brightest of coals, though righteousness is our aim, we have only ourselves to blame.”

These words stir something in me, a longing for something, a desire for a purpose higher than myself, and yet also a sense of failure as I sin again and again. No matter how hard I try, I always seem to make the same old mistakes over and over again which prompts the question, how hard am I really trying? 

Do I love God with my whole heart and my whole might? 

It’s a fair question and it necessitates a deep soul searching to find the answer. It also requires learning what righteousness actually is, and thankfully, there is no better resource for that than the Bible. Serving God is not easy, and it's made that much harder by trying to live with one foot in the world. We want to have our cake and eat it too. 

Practically, we cannot serve two masters, for they both require our full devotion. God demands our full loyalty if we set out to serve Him. It turns out, we cannot both serve God with all our might and be sinning at the same time. If all our effort, desire, and heart is devoted to God, then there will be no room for sin, which brings up an uncomfortable Truth. If we are sinning, then we automatically know that we are not serving God with all of our mind, might, and heart. 

God has given us everything we need to succeed in our journey, from forgiveness of sins to instructions in righteousness. We have only ourselves to blame when we don't put our whole effort into righteousness. This is really uncomfortable, isn’t it? 

It's a lot easier to stand there and say, “Well, everyone sins, and sin is inevitable, it's the trying that counts.” It's not wrong to say this, but it leads to comfort with sin, an expectation that it is always going to be there, and sooner or later we reach a place where we are okay with no longer trying, okay with not putting forth the maximal effort. 

Taking ownership of the fact that we are failing in our walk and the only one we have to blame is ourselves, is hard. It's a hard fact to swallow, a challenging truth to own up to, and we are left with a question. Where do we go from here? 

Well, we can either continue on the way we have been going, or we can make a change and pursue righteousness. We can learn how to love God to the exclusion of all sin and seek first the Kingdom.

So, how do we seek and pursue righteousness? 

The simple answer is, of course, put God first. I say simple because it tells us everything and nothing at the same time. What we really want to know is how we execute it; and how we can implement it. We all long for and desire to have a close relationship with God, and to pursue righteousness, but either we don’t know what it involves, or once we find out, it’s easier to do things the way we’ve always done them. Righteousness sounds exhausting to us!

First, God demands our full devotion and loyalty to Him and His ways. He doesn’t want lukewarm followers who never really commit to Him, and He doesn’t want people with dual citizenship. Our choices are citizenship to the world’s system or citizenship to His kingdom. He wants our full loyalty as agents of His kingdom. 

Matthew 22:37 NKJV Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'

Deuteronomy 6:5 NKJV "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

Every emotion, every desire, and every thought must be brought captive to our first and greatest commitment, putting all of our strength and effort into this task. God repeats this command several times throughout the Bible, with quite a few of them being in Deuteronomy. He wants to make sure we get it, but we seem to lack the fundamental discipline to put this commandment into practice. We lack the discipline. 

Discipline is self-control at its base element, but it goes beyond self-control. It involves choosing things and taking paths that are intentionally challenging and that are quite difficult to build strength. Mental strength, that is. Discipline puts us outside our comfort zone so that we can exercise self-control and do what we need to do every time. Doing easy things and never challenging ourselves is a good way to end up with weak self-control and little resistance to sin. 

Now, don't get me wrong. We cannot earn our own salvation, and we cannot keep the law so perfectly that we earn the reward God has for us. Keeping the law can never forgive us or blot out the sins we have already committed. Only one thing can do that: the sacrifice of Jesus. 

Righteousness is something else altogether. We didn't have to do anything, nor was there anything that we could do for the sacrifice of Jesus, but righteousness is an action word. The sacrifice of Jesus was freely given; righteousness is where we go from that point. It's how we operate our lives, and the fundamental blueprint we order our lives according to. We all have some philosophy that we order our lives according to, whether God's system or the system of laziness. Rightness is righteousness, and rightness is adherence to God's ways that He has laid out for us in the Bible. 

What we believe is important, but it is not righteousness. We have to actually act out what we believe, we have to put what we believe into practice. Ironically, though we may say that we believe something, or in something, we do not truly believe until we are willing to put it into active practice. It is easy to say that we believe in Jesus, but true belief is then living according to what He taught. If we are going to be righteous, then we are also going to be living a certain way, having our focus in a certain direction. In part of the beatitudes, Christ illustrated having our focus toward righteousness using the analogy of hunger and thirst.

Matthew 5:6 NKJV — Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

For they shall be filled.

Clearly, we cannot live without food or water, and the primal urges that drive us to consume these things cannot be ignored for very long if we would like to remain alive. So, too, righteousness should be something that we cannot live without. We should seek it as fervently as we do food and drink, without ceasing. Our devotion is to God, and so righteousness is our focus with all the sacrifices that are required of us. It's a way of life, but it's above simply going through the motions, simply not doing things because it's the wrong thing to do. We have to desire it, so strongly that it is the greatest desire of our life. We can no more ignore it than we can ignore food and water. 

Seeking after righteousness necessitates a very close and strong relationship with our Creator. It requires that we dwell in Him, take up our residence with Him, and become one with Him. Ask yourself honestly, take a deep, soul deep, look within yourself, and answer this question with complete honesty: are you one with God?

Before you answer, here are some things to consider. What we do with our lives, outside of the Church, directly affects our oneness with God. If we are not righteous, we cannot be one with God. He cannot dwell where there is sin. 

1 John 1:5-7 NKJV — This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

1 John 3:4-9 NKJV — Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.

This is not an easy thing to hear, is it? 

It's straightforward enough, but we don't like to hear it because it convicts us. It pierces us through because we know that we are not living according to what it says. We all sin, every day, probably multiple times a day, and we don't like to hear that we are not living the way we should. If we are sinning, we know we are not abiding in God. We are not dwelling in Him. It also gives us hope, because according to this, living in a state where we do not sin, where we are constantly practicing righteousness is possible! We can do it! 

Sin separates us from God because it is contrary to God. If this doesn't quite make sense, imagine what would happen if you stole your friend’s watch and he knew about it. That would drive a wedge into your friendship, wouldn't it? 

It sure would, and the same thing happens when we sin. It drives a wedge of separation between us and our Creator. What's more, if we make a practice of sinning, we separate from God and run right to Satan. If we desire God, that's clearly not something that we want to do. 

The question we keep coming back to is, how do we dwell in God? 

We commit sin, so clearly we are not always dwelling in God all the time the way we should be. We are not fully yet born of God because we sin. We have to let God rule in our lives, and we have to keep our focus on Him. The seed we have in us is His Holy Spirit, and if we listen to it, we cannot sin!

We desire righteousness so much that there is no room in us for any desire contrary to God and His ways. We so deeply yearn for a relationship with God, a real one where He will call us His friends even as He did Abraham, that there is no room for unrighteousness in our lives. We are no longer serving two masters. We removed our foot from the world and placed it firmly in His way without looking back.

Micah 6:8 NKJV — He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?

Deuteronomy 10:12-13 NKJV — “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, “and to keep the commandments of the LORD and His statutes which I command you today for your good?

This is what God requires of us—our full and unrelenting commitment. He wants us to choose Him fully without giving glimpses back to our old mistress of sin, without any regrets and desires for Egypt. 

Romans 6:16 NKJV — Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?

Unfortunately, for most of us, we do take some looks back, and we find our old mistress quite attractive. She's got on enough makeup to hide the hideous features, and she looks great! You know what's under the makeup, you know what being her slave leads to, yet you can't help but look back. What God is telling us, is that if we dwell in Him there will be no room for looking back. If we pursue righteousness with our whole heart, there is no place for a mistress. Righteousness becomes our armor against sin. It protects our clean and shiny heart because there is no place in it for sin. 

Ephesians 6:14 NKJV — Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness,

It's only one piece of our spiritual armor because our warfare is about more than defense, but it is essential for keeping our heart clean and protected. It keeps the mistress out. To accomplish this, we need great resolve, and we've got to want it! We've got to want it more than anything else in our life, more than anything else in the world! We've got to have the discipline to keep us on the right track, and we’ve got to take ownership and own up to our mistakes. 

Ephesians 5:8-9 NKJV — For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth),

John 1:5 NKJV — And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Righteousness and the practice of it will bear fruit, but we cannot bear the fruit of righteousness on our own. We cannot be righteous on our own. Without someone to help us, and without the fiery desire for God, we might as well be chaff in the wind. Our righteousness must have a foundation, and it must be based on something. Righteousness is not just being a good person. 

Philippians 1:11 NKJV — being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

John 3:19-21 NKJV — “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. “For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. “But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”

We are glorifying God and praising Him when we seek Him with all our heart. We have to leave behind those little ties to the world, those things that require us to dwell with sin. We must dwell in the light of God and have our sins exposed. This is just as uncomfortable as it sounds, but we have to own up to our sins, and we have to change what we are doing. Our desire must be for God rather than the world. We have nothing to fear from the light. 

Our lives, if we so desire God, are a sacrifice to God. We present ourselves as a living sacrifice, with good and righteous deeds. We do not commit works of lawlessness, for we cannot present ourselves as a sacrifice if we have the blemish of sin. We cannot be a living sacrifice acceptable to God if we have blemishes. We must be sin-free to be an acceptable sacrifice.

2 Timothy 2:15 NKJV — Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Luke 16:13 NKJV — “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Romans 12:1-2 NKJV — I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

We've got to change, and we have to seek God with our whole heart. We cannot be conformed, even a little bit, to the world, because every bit we are conformed to the world is a little bit that is not conformed to God. As we move through these thoughts something else springs up and puts a hitch in our step. The catch-22 of this conforming to God is that we cannot do it without the blood of Jesus. 

Romans 8:1-11 NKJV — There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 

2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 

3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, 

4 on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 

5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 

6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 

7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 

8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 

9 But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. 

10 And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 

11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

Perfect law-keeping cannot forgive us of our sins. Paul makes that very clear here, and it's not an idea unique to Paul, for we find it in the Old Testament as well. We must first be forgiven and washed clean by His sacrifice for our sins before we can be conformed to God and remade after the pattern of Christ. Once we have been forgiven, then we can start with a clean slate. That doesn't mean we get to just live however we want to live, though. It's a clean slate, but it can get dirty again. To start walking in God's direction after we have been forgiven, we must walk away from the world and the lusts of the flesh; we are going to turn our back on the world. 

The lusts of the flesh sound intriguing if you know what neither of those things is, but once we get down to details, all attractiveness ceases. Or does it? 

Why does the darkness still have a pull, a temptation, on us every time we walk past it?

We know witchcraft is wrong, that demons, spirits, ghosts, and trying to communicate with the dead, are abominations to God. Yet there is still a draw, a draw to poke our head inside and take a look around, and to see what it is all about. 

I'm sure you've felt this draw, and I know I have. It often looks dark and ugly, and we wonder how we can possibly be attracted to it, but it still promises a mystery. It's still attractive, which is proven by the success of books glorifying it, and the hundreds if not thousands of young people who seek to become witches and wizards. 

Now, that is just one lust of the flesh. Most darkness is not so overt in its approach, and the bait used actually looks harmless, maybe even beneficial. An attractive face, a fun time, easy money, or fame are all baits used by the darkness because they cater to our flesh. There is nothing wrong with any of these things, except when they are the bait for a trap. 

The trap wouldn't work if it was baited with a meth addict who has rotten teeth and sore-ridden skin, or maybe the prison sentence that comes attached to that fun time. The point is that the darkness caters to our flesh and demands service to it through our flesh. As we examined earlier, we are supposed to be serving God with our bodies; a blemish-free living sacrifice. We cannot give what is portioned to God to Satan and expect good things to come from it. 

While we are on this topic, let's take a look at what these lusts of the flesh are composed of. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out what falls under this category on our own; simply put, whatever gets between our bodies being a living sacrifice to God is a lust of the flesh. AKA, sin.

Galatians 5:19-21 NKJV — Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

We've got a whole boatload to unpack here, but most of it can be summed up with the Ten Commandments. The fruits of the flesh are given in Galatians as a contrast to the fruits of the Spirit of God. It is a stark contrast! 

The biggest takeaway is that we cannot have these elements of the flesh at work in us and still have God's Spirit at work in us bearing fruit at the same time. A good tree will only bring forth good fruit and a bad tree will bring forth bad fruit. 

That means we deny our bodies the temporary pleasures of sexual immorality, the temporary pleasure of looking at something that we know we shouldn't for the greater pleasure of dwelling in God. Abiding in Him, as Paul puts it. The core solution, a key to the whole thing that we ought to keep in mind, is that temporariness which accompanies the works of the flesh. They are temporary, and whenever we yield to them rather than to God, we are sacrificing the big picture for a trinket. 

We have to keep the big picture in mind constantly, and we must maintain discipline. We can't afford to let it slip, but we all know what our life looks like when we do let it slip. Thankfully, to come back from this we have the mercy of Christ. We ought not to abuse His mercy, but He will pick us up when we stumble. We have a remedy when we fall and skin our knees, but the consequences for that fall, whatever they may be, that we incurred in this life will still be there even though God forgave us. It's better if we pursue righteousness and purge our lives of all the things that get in the way of that if we can. 

There are things in our life used by God to test us and see if we are going to be faithful in our pursuit of righteousness. After all, we must be faithful in the small things before we can be trusted with the bigger things. These challenges and difficult situations, rather than getting between us and God, are put there so that we can learn righteousness. The Bible is the manual that gives us the principles to apply in a given situation, our instruction in righteousness, but we still have to actually apply them. We have to learn how to use these principles that up until this moment have simply been classroom instruction. 

We must use self-control. “You think you know how to be self-controlled? Okay, here's a situation requiring great self-control to be patient. Now prove it.” It's never as easy as it sounds on paper, is it? 

In this way, when we run into a difficult situation, we can rejoice because here is another chance to prove ourselves! Here is another chance to be faithful in what we have been given and to walk toward God and away from the world, a chance to apply all that classroom learning that we've acquired.

James 1:2-4 NKJV — My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

Romans 5:3-4 NKJV — And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.

We rarely run short on opportunities to practice what we have learned, and even if we don't do well the first time, we can come back and take another run at it. When we fail, we need to take some time to debrief ourselves, and without emotion, go over what went wrong and what we could have done better. Then the next time, we use what we learned and we do better! This is discipline. 

Now, let's assume that we've gotten to a place where we have gotten so good at practicing righteousness that we are actually just about perfect. Or we think we are anyway. There is a dichotomy to righteousness, and it can actually be taken too far to where it is a bad thing. Most good qualities can. We must have a balance in our practice of what is good, or it will turn into a negative quality. The negative side of righteousness is ego. 

When we get to a place where we are doing pretty good by our own estimation, and maybe other people have even said as much, ego is there to exploit that weakness. We become self-righteous. In working to become righteous, it's pretty easy to go too far and allow our ego to get in the way. We start looking down on others and thinking, “Well, if they were just like me they wouldn't be in that situation,” and we look down on them for where they are at in their journey. We ourselves are so righteous that we would never make a mistake like that, but low and behold, we just failed our own test. Our way of doing things is not the only way or even the best way things can be done.

Philippians 2:3 NKJV — Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.

We often forget the journey to get where we are, all the trials that produced all the lessons we have learned, and we judge others for making what is likely a similar mistake to the one we made when we were in a similar situation. Either way, we aren't supposed to be judging others ourselves. We did not get where we are on our own, not one of us. We had other Christians to help us along the way, but even more than that, none of this would be possible without the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins. We are supposed to be looking out for others and trying to help them, reaching down and giving them a hand to pull them up to the level we are at, not stomping on their heads to keep them low because our ego can't handle the challenge of them being as good or better than us. Our way of doing things is not the only way or even the best way things can be done!

Philippians 2:4 NKJV — Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

Again, we do not do this from the point of view that we are so great and they need to be like us. We are all climbing the ladder to become like Jesus, and we are helping them become like Him, not us. We do not judge them according to where we are. 

Romans 12:16 NKJV — Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.

2 Corinthians 10:17-18 NKJV — But “he who glories, let him glory in the LORD.” For not he who commends himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends.

Romans 12:3 NKJV — For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.

The thing to remember is that we are not where we are because we are so great. We must walk with humility and operate without our ego. We cannot operate as the cohesive unit we are supposed to operate as if we allow our ego to get in the way. There is no room for egos in the body of Christ, or any team. 

If we are not operating with humility, no need to panic, God will humble us pretty quickly. This is rather painful, and it is far easier to ask God for humility before we reach the point where He has to take action and humble us. That is the key to operating as we should in the first place—asking God for His help and guidance through His Spirit. 

A single-minded focus on the kingdom of God and keeping the bigger picture in sight is essential for righteousness. We cannot dwell with God if we are sinning, and walking righteously is possible. God is testing us and growing us into the effective team He needs us to be, and righteousness is a product of that. We must weed out those things that we know are not according to righteousness (I don't think I need to be specific here. Common sense should show that these are the things we watch, listen to, read, and spend our time on), and pursue, hunt, and achieve righteousness. 

We must take an honest assessment of ourselves and try our faith to see whether we are really following and loving God with all our might. We must examine ourselves and find where our weaknesses lie, and where we are falling short. The duty of man is to seek after righteousness and perform the work God has given us to do on Earth the best we possibly can. If we are, there will be no room for sin in our lives. 

Most of us have sin in our lives, so achieving this will necessitate giving up things that we really don't want to give up, things that we make excuses for to keep in our lives. We must be willing to give up everything for the sake of the kingdom, even that movie we really wanted to see, or that song we love, or that book that is totally awesome. 

More than giving up these things, we must be willing to trade the temporary pleasures that come from fulfilling the lusts of the flesh for the permanent crown of life waiting for us in the resurrection. We must take ownership of our shortcomings, and then work with all our might to get rid of them and walk as Christ has walked. “Doing our best” is more than just an easy phrase we spout to excuse sin. We must repent of our sins, and then, with a shiny clean heart, we must take our foot out of the world, place it with our other foot, and stand planted firmly in God's way. For the love of righteousness, we must be willing to leave the pleasures of sin in the past and walk forward to a future bright beyond any imaginings, to a kingdom where there is no sin, and to the Creator of the universe.