Righteousness - What’s the Catch?
We are so often told that in this world, nothing is given for free. When someone offers us a freebie, our involuntary response is, “What’s the catch?” It is ingrained within us that we must give something before we get something. It is implied in so many ways through various life experiences. When you get a top mark in school, you are given a gold sticker accompanied with a smiley face drawing. In university, being in the top percentile implies better job prospects. In a corporate environment, a stellar work performance equates to an increased bonus. We need to work for what we want and deserve.
And then we come to God. And church. To be honest, it can get a bit complicated sometimes. Journeying with God isn’t always easy. Most of us have those seasons when we feel dry and disconnected. Bible reading becomes a chore. Praying becomes a rushed five-minute obligation after we wake up or just before we fall asleep. Gradually, it almost seems as if Christianity is a to-do list. If we check all the mandatory boxes, we’ll be fine.
So how does all this relate to righteousness? From personal experience, the concept of “nothing comes for free” was deeply ingrained within me. So much so that I didn’t realise it was shaping the way I understood righteousness, and my relationship with God to a certain extent. Subconsciously and even consciously, I tried to “earn” righteousness for a long time. I knew in my head that I couldn’t be righteous even if I tried my utmost and gave it my best shot. Like it says in God’s Word: “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness…” It was clear that only Christ was my righteousness. Not me, not my actions. But in my heart… things were different. The various life experiences I had with teachers, coaches and peers had shaped expectations, formed views which carried across into Christianity and honed perfectionism within me. Nothing comes for free. I had to earn it, to prove that I deserved it. To show that I was worthy of the good things coming my way.
Now I must let you know – as I journeyed through this process, I genuinely loved God. But at a deep level, righteousness was a hard concept for me to grasp in the heart. It is something that has taken me a while to understand, and even now I can’t say my heart has fully grasped the magnitude and depth of it. In short, I was always striving to show God that I was doing all the things I did for Him, hence I could climb another rung up the ladder of righteousness, into His good books.
We can’t work our way into God’s good books. Righteousness in God’s world comes through grace, given intentionally and willingly.
My heart started to change one ordinary day. I was walking into campus, pondering upon all the things I should have done but didn’t do. All the things I shouldn’t have done but did. And I felt ashamed before God. In my heart, I resolved to try harder. To do more of this. To do less of that. But then, I heard this gentle, still voice within my heart. (Have you ever had that moment when you just know, know beyond any reasonable shred of doubt, that God is speaking to you? No fire, no dramas, no fainting. Just a still, small voice. Well, this was one of those moments.) What he said was extremely liberating, beautiful and divinely profound. The exact words were this, “I have never valued you by performance.” A burden I didn’t even realise I was carrying, lifted off me then. I think my heart was doing somersaults and my spirit, a cartwheel. (I can’t do cartwheels in real-life. I would probably land myself in the ICU.)
Since then, God has been teaching me in different ways about righteousness. What it means to be righteous in His sight is so different from the human culture of “you-get-what-you-work-for”. It simply means that Christ justifies you and I. We can’t work our way into God’s good books. Righteousness in God’s world comes through grace, given intentionally and willingly. Righteousness is not earned by our merit or performance. It’s not a “me” mindset, like the one that troubled me for so long. It involves us shifting to a “Jesus” mindset: always focusing on what Jesus does and can do inside us, rather than a distorted view of us desperately striving to “make it” in God’s kingdom. We are a work in progress. We don’t always get it right. We make mistakes along the way. But we are already valued and deemed righteous because of Jesus, who changes us each day and leads us from grace to grace. The best thing? There’s no catch. At all.
As John Bunyan writes, “I saw also, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, ‘The same yesterday, today, and forever’. Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away… now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and love of God.”
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