Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. -- Matthew 5:6
Whether we are conscious of it or not, whether we realize it
or not, the one thing that the human soul seeks is righteousness. If we pursue it consciously and
intentionally, we are blessed: But seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew
6:33).
On the other hand, not being conscious of our essential need
for righteousness leads us, often, to seek other sources of satisfaction to our
detriment. I get thirsty sometimes and
don’t realize it. Being dehydrated makes
me extremely anxious and irritable to the point that I will go berserk. I’ll start raving and cussing and throwing
things over nothing. After years of
experiencing this, I have learned that if I start feeling overwhelmed and
irrationally disturbed, I need water. It’s
the strangest thing to one moment be agitated and crazy, chug a quart or two of
water, and instantly be calm. You’d
think water was a tranquilizing drug.
Water is an essential, basic need that my body craves. When my distracted mind ignores the need for
whatever reason, the body starts sending signals that I may easily
misinterpret.
Righteousness is like water to the soul. As the body is seventy percent water, so
righteousness is the essence of the soul.
So what is righteousness? The
Hebrew tzedak/tsaddiyq or its Greek equivalent dikaios/dikaioo appears hundreds of times in the Bible. At root, the word means to be just or
equitable, clean and innocent of any wrongdoing. We sometimes say that it means right-standing
with God, that we do that and only that which is pleasing to Him. The righteous one is morally correct,
justifiable, and upright. If you are
righteous, you can look God in the eye.
It’s not just us dependent on righteousness. As we were talking about yesterday, man was
created as the lord of the rest of creation.
One of the reasons some Christians reject the idea of a universe 13 or 14
billion years old and carnivores of various kinds roaming the earth for
millions of years before man appears is that they say there was no sin in the
world until Adam’s fall, and without sin, there would be no death. You can address this by pointing out that members
of the angelic order whose existence precedes, we assume, the creation of the
material universe, had already rebelled and fallen. A second way to understand it, though, is to
see how God does not impute sin apart from understanding. As He allowed life on Earth to develop, only
when His hierarchical agent, man, entered the picture would God’s law have
begun to apply, e.g., … Apart from the law, sin lies dead
(Romans 7:8b). Adam’s job was to bring
order, equity, justice, and mercy – i.e., righteousness, to life on Earth. That’s still our job when we are ready for
it:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now (Romans 8:19-22).
We are to seek God’s righteousness, not only because this is
the very thing our souls crave, but because it is the very thing all of
creation craves, and it has to come through us.
Adam’s fall brought death to man even as it shattered, for a time, the
hope of the entire natural world.
Through Christ Jesus, we are delivered from the bondage of death and the
rest of creation once again may hope to be delivered from its bondage to
corruption.
It’s a beautiful thing when you think about it.
Meanwhile, man makes the mistake of pursuing his own
righteousness. We are so desperate to be in right-standing that we set up our
own standards of righteousness, rejecting God’s. I’m not going to put the link in, but I’m sure
you can do a search (use ixquick not google) for vegan cat food [ok, here it is]. There are people who believe that their cats
want to be cruelty-free. In a way,
looking at our verses above from Romans 8, there’s some truth to that view. But if you try to impose it from outside,
there’s a good chance your cats will be plotting at night to kill and eat
you. Name your kitty Cassius for he has
that lean and hungry look. If you want to save the world, you had better get your own bad self saved first.
I think if we could dig down under all the troubles and
suffering and ugliness in our world, we would find this craving for integrity,
justice, and righteousness driving us to do crazy things and destroy
ourselves. The first defense mechanism
was a fig leaf. It didn’t work. God had to clothe the naked, exposed souls of
our First Parents in the skins of slain beasts, shedding blood to shield us
from our pain.
Today our defenses are more sophisticated but no more
effective. We try and try and try again
to establish our own righteousness.
Self-righteousness and self-justification fail to satisfy the thirsty
soul, and we can’t seem to understand why.
I used to run every night when I lived in Texas. In the summer, even after sunset in the
Dallas suburbs, you sweat, a lot. One
Sunday afternoon, I was playing softball with my church youth group and belted
a line drive deep into the outfield. As
I sprinted around second base, my right calf locked up tight. I was still limping a couple of days later at
work. As I hobbled along, an athletic
co-worker asked me what was wrong. I
told him. He asked me if my urine was
dark. I laughed and said I hadn’t been
paying attention. He told me I needed to
drink water. He had a Dr. Pepper in his
hand, “This stuff or all the coffee you drink won’t fix it.”
We cannot fix creation until we are fixed, and we cannot be
fixed without the righteousness of God.
In the end, whether we sew together vegan fig leaves or the bloody skins
of beasts, whether our standards are ephemerally post-modern or staunchly
traditional, they will not quench the thirst of the soul. Only the righteousness of Christ meets the
absolute standard. Only Jesus can look
the Father straight in the face. Only
when we put on Christ are we perfectly justified and our innocence
restored.
