Real Righteousness

He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him. (John 7:18)

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

Wow! I never saw the tight connection before between these two verses before. This really helps clarify for me some of the confusion about the word righteousness I have had much of my life. What I am starting to see more clearly here is the issue of where one's focus is. When my focus is on looking out for myself and my reputation more than for God's, then I am in the condition called unrighteousness. When I am choosing to live in relationship with God so that He can vindicate His reputation through me and I allow Him to transform me into a reliable witness to disprove the allegations of Satan against Him, then I am considered in heaven as righteous.

For too long people have viewed this word righteousness as having to do primarily with behavior or external activities. But the way the Bible defines righteousness is along the lines of how we are positioned in reference to the great trial of God. The testimony of our life determines the kind of witness we are in relation to the false charges that have been leveled against God's reputation. Truth at its most fundamental level is the real truth about God, not the provability of some set of facts or doctrines. Jesus did not come to give us a corrected list of doctrines to believe but to expose the lies about His Father that have torn the whole universe apart and vindicate His reputation in the way that Jesus lived.

The most damaging lie about God that Jesus came to refute with His own exposé is the idea that God is in any way selfish, that He is sometimes more concerned with His own reputation and gets His way even at the expense of others if necessary. This is such a natural assumption on the part of those of us born in sin that it is hard for us to imagine that God could be totally devoid of any such characteristics.

But the real truth is that God is totally unselfish, totally loving, totally other-centered and He is this way all of the time consistently, not just when things are going good. No matter how desperate circumstances seem to appear, God never resorts to anything even remotely akin to the attitudes and motives that He has been accused of harboring by His enemies. Righteousness and God are one and the same thing just as love and God are one and the same. We are all infected with the idea at times that God is not always fair, but this secret, or not so secret, feeling on our part is simply reflective of the confusion that sin has produced in our hearts through our fallen nature.

Jesus revealed the truth about God by living as a weak human under the most trying and severe circumstances while maintaining this attitude of totally selfless love and service to others. In fact, this was the most important reason of all that Jesus came to this earth as a human. To believe or claim that Jesus died for some other reason, like in some way placating an offended God on the behalf of sinners, is to actually reinforce the very lies about God that Jesus came to refute. Religion has then actually joined forces with the enemy of God by perpetuating the very lies that Jesus came to unmask, and in doing so is serving the enemy's schemes to keep us in darkness and fear of our heavenly Father.

All of this I am seeing in this very potent statement of Jesus in this verse. The very core of what it means to be righteous is found here, and that core is that what righteousness is really about is to vindicate the goodness and fairness of God while exposing the accuser's lies about Him by doing so. The closer we come to embracing this fundamental truth about God the more we will be living in true righteousness. For righteousness is simply reflecting the real truth about God's character and allowing Him to use us as channels to reveal His character to the world. In so living we become His truthful witnesses to vindicate His reputation and bring glory to Him.