RIghteousness Flows

I’ve been considering the topic of righteousness lately. It is one of those words that doesn’t really register with meaning in my brain. The first image I associate with the word is of an old surfer drawling “RIGHTeoussss!” as an exclamation of approval. The second is of a Puritan preacher in a wig hunting for old-fashioned words at random to fill his homily the next morning. Righteous sounds good, yes? Rightness. Right standing before God. Right action. Who doesn’t like being right?

Maybe the word doesn’t resonate because the stuff is in such short supply. Or maybe it feels too unattainable. What does righteousness have to do with being a human on planet earth? Nice idea for theologians and philosophers. Put it on the top shelf for the philosophers and moralists. It doesn’t ring a bell down here. I imagine an advertising group discussing how to sell a product as “the righteous choice.”

Here’s another layer. A Christian stumbles on the word and catches a whiff of its importance and decides to live a righteous life (whatever that means). Fail. Then he decides this life needs more definition, so he decides to do some specific stuff. He picks a few low-hanging fruit. He starts going to church, volunteers at the food pantry, gives money to a homeless guy, and tries to clean up his life while silently judging those less committed than him. Epic fail.

Finally, he learns that righteousness is imputed, or given by God. What was he thinking, forcing his way into legalistic righteousness? So he listens to some sermons and reads some books about Jesus’ righteousness on our behalf. Our Christian begins to breathe easy. Righteousness is from GOD. He begins to enjoy thinking of himself this way. He is holy because Jesus was holy. He is righteous because Jesus is righteous. He relaxes. This brings joy and a deep sense of peace. Of course, he would still love to behave righteously in a perfect world, and he feels he is growing, but he is trying to come out of law-thinking and embrace the grace life. He is glad God accepts him where he is on his journey. He is learning to accept himself there as well.

One sunny day, he notices his joy is waning. The thrill of imputed righteousness doesn’t quite cut it anymore. God is there, yes. Our Christian knows he is loved and accepted. But his conscience still bothers him. Some of his recent actions don’t seem quite like the Jesus he wants to become. He is forgiven and accepted on his journey exactly where he is... so why do his actions still bother him?

That old prophet Amos said this:
But let justice roll down like waters,
  and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24)

Righteousness flows. That’s an amazing thing to think about. Imagine righteousness not as a philosophical virtue, but as a flowing stream—an energetic substance in constant motion, always going from one place to another. A river has never stopped to consider its next move. The moment it does, it stops being a river. We think of practical, lived righteousness as an Old Testament concept. Imputed righteousness is the latest craze: a stamp of God’s approval flowing from the New Covenant grace of Jesus and completely divorced from what my actions—whether good or bad—actually are. This is Paul’s new righteousness, one that “appears” apart from works of the law and is simply “received” by faith. So why do we still live in unrighteousness and internal turmoil? Should we kill our bothersome conscience along with the old man?

Let’s say this: the writers of scripture don’t talk about two kinds of righteousness. Theologians talk about imputed or practical righteousness to help us understand two facets of the same thing, but the reality is ALL righteousness is given. It flows freely from its headwaters in God himself. How silly to think righteousness could ever start in the broken cistern of my humanity! Nevertheless, God expects righteousness from us. Isaiah said God was “appalled” that there was no one working alongside him in his righteous cause. He was surprised that humans were so universally wicked. Didn’t He make them in His image? Of course sin messed it all up, but they were still “made a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honor.” Had they so quickly forgotten how to partner with that energetic flow of God’s righteousness on the earth? All the prophets in the Old Testament record God’s dismay at the unrighteousness of His people. This isn’t right! People should be righteous! They ought to do better. There is no excuse given that our nature still bears God’s image.

But seeing how dire the situation was, God made a choice to not just put on a body but to really become a human being. He demonstrated righteousness like a physical therapist teaching you to walk again, or a coach teaching you to play ball. See? It’s easy. Just do this, then this, then that. Now you try it. Got it? No?

This is where he tells his disciples they better display a righteousness that looked and smelled better than the play-acting righteous façade of the Pharisees. My pastor preached yesterday that when Jesus said that, he meant practical righteousness, not Pauline imputed righteousness. I’m arguing here that it is all the same stuff.

I say that because even John the Beloved writes,

“Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.”

All righteousness is practical. There has never been impractical righteousness. It’s not a filler word for a sermon. It is love in action, justice in motion, a flowing river of grace that manifests itself in a thousand forms through people who know they are bought with a price and no longer have the right to choose their daily action.

I don’t have the right to tell God “no thanks, I think I’ll live for pleasure today. Thanks in advance for your grace.” I’m dead with Jesus in the grave, new with him in resurrected life, expressing my radical freedom in my total slavery to him. Does this old bag of bones have any hope of actually doing the right thing today? Heck yeah. God lives inside here and all things are possible with God. Oh Lord, let your righteousness roll right through me like an ever-flowing, never-stopping stream today!

Here is where I get tripped up so easily. I wake up in the morning, already feeling condemned just because I’m tired, drank too much last night, had a weird dream, and am just not feeling it. But I know I have to get to this place of doing some good in the world, so I start planning. Some part of me feels righteousness would be easier if I could plan it out in advance. At 12:30, I’ll find a homeless person and buy him a hot dog. Check. At 3 p.m., I’ll give a listening ear to a friend and offer to pray for him. Check. At 4 p.m. I’ll keep my cool when I trip over my son’s shoes on the laundry room floor again even though we’ve had this conversation a million times, and patiently instruct him for his own good and not because I’m pissed. Check, check. Woo! Righteousness unlocked!

We both know it doesn’t work that way. Righteousness is a flowing relational process. It requires maintained relational proximity (this part IS a choice) to the source of righteousness, because just as quickly as water finds the lowest ground to flow through, that is how quickly we must choose to do the right thing. Righteousness happens in a split-second choice. Left or right? Decide now or the choice will be gone and you’ll be on to the next thing. Dam up righteousness and it becomes a stagnant pool of entitlement. Let it flow. It wants to work, to water the world and create life.

Practically, what am I suggesting you do?

1. Change your categories. Stop thinking of righteousness as either lived or given. It is both.

2. Stop thinking you’ll never do the right thing. Look in the mirror! God in you. He’s willing and working in you to do the stuff that makes him proud. “Righteoussss!”

3. Lose your mind. Lose your will. And lose your life again today. I don’t care if you did it last night. Surrender again for what Paul calls the “surpassing value” of knowing Christ.

4. Come back to the present. The time to choose a right action isn’t after you finish this cup of coffee. It is NOW. Either it is the cup of coffee, or you are using the coffee to delay what you know you must do. Every moment has value and purpose. Begin asking God what this moment is for.

5. Just do it. Don’t do it because you think you’re so hot. Do it for the right reason—but do it nevertheless. We are saved by grace but judged for what we do. Our actions display our hearts. So why not train ourselves for righteousness through the constant use of it? Sure, it won’t always feel easy. But I’d rather be trained like a dog than sit around like a king who has no earthly clue.

If I decide to enjoy the positional blessings of the Christian life without the actions of the Christian life, I should be pitied as Paul says, “above all people.” If it is all justification without resurrection power, then poor me indeed! If I choose not to really go along with God in my lifestyle choices, I might not lose my spot in heaven, but I’ll certainly lose everything else! 

In his letter to Ephesus, Paul reminds children that obeying their parents is actually for their good—that they might enjoy long life in the land. If obedience to human parents causes kids to flourish, then what would happen if I always obeyed my heavenly Father who actually has my greatest good in mind at all times? Would my life feel like a bummer, full of self-flagellating sacrifice, letting everyone walk over me like a rug? Or would I find the most delightful and divine peace and enjoyment, knowing whose I am?

As the Father Has Loved

 Last week was just one of those weeks. A backpacking weekend with men from church was providing some much-needed restoration as we rested and connected next to North Georgia’s beautiful Jack River. Around 11 p.m. on the final night, we were all saying goodnight when one guy said, “Hey guys, my phone is forecasting 3 inches of rain at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning.” We took a look at the rushing river 20 feet from us and the canyon walls around us and made a quick decision to hike through the night. We packed up, and I fell into bed at home at 7 a.m. Sunday morning.

Our midnight hike past Jack River Falls

On Monday, Juniper and I flew to Washington, D.C. for the fun trip we gave her for Christmas. Washington is wonderful but also exhausting. We arrived at Dulles Airport on Wednesday to discover our plane had been pulled into security to investigate a strange beeping sound! Five hours later, we boarded the plane and taxied to the front of the runway—when the FAA grounded us, since the crew had been on duty too long. Thankfully, a young family we had been chatting with through the ordeal invited us to their home, where Juniper and I slept in the playroom after a late dinner and were up again at 5 a.m. the next morning.

I came home Thursday, and Levi was so excited to see us. Debra and Annabel had just left for a weekend college visit, and Levi had been home with Debra’s parents on call, feeling bored. That afternoon, he asked Juniper to watch the front flip he had been working on on our trampoline. As he dove headfirst into his flip, he rotated his hands and fell hard on them. I was making dinner just 20 feet away and heard the blood-curdling scream, thinking at first that he was playing around with his sister. By the second scream, I knew he was injured. I opened the sliding door to see Levi looking terrified, his forearms looking like they had developed an extra elbow. “Get in the car right now,” I barked, my brain switching to emergency triage mode.

I drove fast, my heart aching, my mind calculating what I would do if the police tried to pull me over. We got to Piedmont Hospital and, thankfully, were called back quickly. Levi was given morphine and finally relaxed. X-rays showed a clean break of the radius and ulna on both forearms. The right arm was worse, and a dark red spot under the arm showed where the bone almost came through. 

We were then sent to drive one hour through an appropriately dramatic lightning storm to Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital. A team of doctors worked, with little success, to get an IV into Levi’s foot. That was perhaps the most painful part to watch. Then I was graciously kicked out of the room while another team tried, again with little success, to reset the bones. After an hour, I was called back, and the doctor was visibly upset with himself for not being able to reset the bones properly. Nevertheless, they put him in a cast with instructions to follow up with the orthopedic surgeon after the swelling had gone down. The latest news is that the surgeon wants to operate on both arms, temporarily inserting a long rod to scaffold the healing process. This will put him in two long casts for three weeks, followed by another few weeks in a short cast or splint. If all goes well, he will be swimming in time for our family vacation in June!

For the last week, a new normal has emerged in our family. I’ve been home as Levi’s constant companion, helping him eat, bathe, and use the bathroom. Respecting the privacy of a 13-year-old boy while changing his underwear has been an interesting puzzle to solve. My work has given me space to figure out how much I can do, even from home. Levi’s little private school gave him the week off and even helped organize a meal train for us. I was supposed to be in Kathmandu in 12 days, but I’ve had to cancel that. After an intense year of globe-trotting and ministry growth, my world just got a lot smaller. For the next six weeks, Levi’s ability to both heal and finish school will be my main focus.

In the midst of bubble baths and playing phone tag with the surgeon, I remember that yesterday was Good Friday, a day that Christians worldwide celebrate the death of Jesus to reconcile humanity to God. The Father watched as the body of His Son was beaten and crushed under the weight of human cruelty. In the old days, when something terrible happened, you would cry out and tear your robes. When Jesus died, the earth shook, the sky turned black, and the massive curtain separating the temple’s “Most Holy Place” from the rest of the world was torn in two. I suppose the darkness, quaking, and tearing show us a picture of God’s emotion and empathy—having to watch the destruction of the person He loved most.

The day Levi was born, I felt an overwhelming sense of pride. To me, he was perfect. I imagined the bond we might share for many years to come. The next 13 years would invest countless memories into the substance of that bond: the toddler years, the big asthma attack when I was in Ethiopia, the first day of kindergarten, endless fights and reconnections with his little sister, that epic camping trip to the Tetons, and the road trip around Lake Superior... all of it reinforces the growing friendship between me and my son.

If you’ve had those experiences with a child and then had to see their body broken, their brain flooded with pain you can’t fix, or their eyes filled with panic you can’t comfort, you know the feeling in your chest that your heart might physically tear in half. Your stomach becomes a knot of iron, your mind races in a thousand directions while a single thought captures your attention: You’ll do absolutely anything to help this child, and you are willing to destroy anyone who stands in your way. It is a wrathful sort of compassion.

So I can only imagine the Father’s emotions. My son isn’t perfect. He is flawed like all of us. But when I look at him, he seems perfect—just like the day I first met him and felt that profound pride. But Jesus literally was and is perfect. How much can a limitless God love a truly perfect Son? I wonder how, then, this God could stand by while His perfect boy was crushed beneath the weight of other people’s sin—marred beyond recognition—to restore our godlike image. If I were God, I would have scorched the earth, sent in the tanks, dropped the bombs, scooped my son into my arms, and held him close. But Jesus chose this path of brokenness. He chose it not once, but over and over again: before the Incarnation, in the wilderness, on the road with the disciples, at the Last Supper, and in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Son resolutely chose this path. So the Father also chose the path of standing by helplessly. Why? Because both Father, Son, and Holy Spirit wanted the prodigal race of humanity to be restored to their place of dignity, humanity, and connectedness to God. The whole Godhead endured pain that day. And while the Father’s full battalion of warriors awaited Jesus’ command, He kept going, kept enduring, and finally cried out, “Father, forgive them.”

It wasn’t like sin was so impressive that it could triumph over God. Rather, His love was so impressive that He willingly endured the trauma of sin and then overcame it through resurrection. My friend Paul shared his reflection about it with me yesterday. As he reflected on Christ’s suffering, an impression emerged in his mind: “Paul, your sin did not do this TO me; rather, My love did this FOR you.” Sometimes I imagine my sin somehow got the better of Jesus—victimized Him against His will. But rather than being impressed by the power of my sin, I’m feeling more amazed at the endurance of His love.

Here is another layer from John 15. Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, I have loved you.” That little word “as” is a common word for Jesus. It starts a simile and refers to an exact comparison, a mirrored reality. “As” can mean “same in measure, quantity, quality, and substance.” Jesus doesn’t say He loves you like the Father loves you. That would leave some ambiguity about the strength of the love being offered. Rather, Jesus loves you as the Father loves Him. If you don’t think you deserve to be loved by God, know that you are lovable simply because Jesus loves you, and you are worthy because He made you. This love isn’t exhausted, distracted, reserved, or conditional. It is the kind of love a perfect Father would feel for a perfect Son. That is His love for you.

One final amazing thing: Jesus commands His disciples to love one another in exactly the same manner, measure, and quality with which He loved them. That means, exactly as the Father loves Jesus, we are to love other humans. In fact, this is the essence of His “command”: to love others as the Father loved Him and He loved me. That means nurturing an internal greenhouse of positive regard toward others and an eager willingness to work for their good. In some ways, it is easier to remember that one command than to memorize lists of rules. But in another way, that one simple command reveals my heart and shows me how little I understand the love of the Father. I wonder what it would be like to see my neighbor when I’m out for a walk and, instead of feeling scared that they are judging me, feel an upsurge of focused compassion—gladness to be with them and passion for their well-being. I wonder how it would feel if my anger against my enemies was replaced by a hatred for everything that stands in the way of their blessing and belovedness. How would it be if the emotions I’ve felt toward my son were the same emotions I felt toward those who annoy, intimidate, or overwhelm me?

I look inside my heart, and that reality still feels like an alien planet. But much of why it still feels so foreign is because judgment still festers in my heart, choking out the little love seedlings Jesus keeps planting. It isn’t Jesus’ fault. His love is whole. His command is, “Now, remain in my love.” But daily, I go looking for peace, absolution, and justice outside His heart. What if His love overwhelmed me daily? How would that change my capacity to both receive and give that Father-to-Son love that is so rich and so compelling?