A good friend of mine once told me that, in his opinion, there was nothing more scary than righteousness.
When I tell that to people, usually one of their first responses is ‘huh’? We like righteousness – after all, so much of our religious language that we toss around is aimed at making certain the we know who is righteous, and who isn’t – who the ‘winners’ are, and the losers.
When I meet people for the first time outside of a church setting, they usually either know what goes on in the Christian church – our culture, if you will – or they don’t. If they don’t, I usually feel like I’ve gotten off lucky. If they do, sometimes I get trapped in horrid conversations from which there is no escape.
“How do I witness to my brother?”
“My nephew/neice/godchild/grandchild/friend is talking about converting to the [name whichever other denomination here] church. What can I tell them to convince them that they’re wrong?”
Certainly, Scripture uses a great deal of language of righteousness, but with a hitch – usually, it’s a righteousness that is an attribute of God, not of humans. We like to forget that we are not God in God’s place, and make all kinds of judgements.
But isn’t it interesting when we get choosy over who we vent our righteous indignation on? Marital infidelity is an easy target, especially when it’s the latest celebrity or sports star. We can make snide remarks over the headlines and feel safe in our insulated, cozy realities.
Yet in that reality, things are much different. How do we feel about the same behaviour in our friends? In our family? When it is our children who go astray, do we tut and tsk and judge as quickly?
We know we don’t.
And I don’t think we should. Because there’s a lot to be said for the kind of forgiveness that costs a lot.
Jesus tells the story about two debtors, both with large debts, and both of whom are forgiven. Who loves the forgiver more? Of course, the one of whom much was forgiven.
But we don’t always play it that well, at all. Jesus’ host certainly didn’t get it, as he watched horrified as a woman embarrassed herself and made the teacher unclean. She shouldn’t even have been there!
Yet Jesus accepts her ministrations. But not in a way that gives him power over her. He doesn’t exploit her condition, doesn’t bargain with her. He simply tells her, “your sins have been forgiven.”
What my friend meant when he said that there was nothing more scary than righteousness is that there is no faster way of destroying relationships and alienating ourselves from others than by focusing on our own self-perception of righteousness – what we think we’re doing right.
This is what Paul is talking about in Galatians 2:17: but if, if our endeavour to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? This is always a dilemma to Paul, because the pull be judge of others is so strong, especially since he has such a keen awareness of just how much more he knows than others.
But Paul’s point is that having Christ’s forgiveness doesn’t free us to make comparisons of others with ourselves. Instead, it should mute us, makes us so aware of our own shortcomings and desperate need for grace that we would never judge another by any standard. Because if, after we receive the grace of Christ, we use that grace to judge others – who is ‘saved’ and who is not – we are rejecting that grace in favour of law.
We are trying to be God, in God’s place.
And that’s where we get trapped. Our lives, once forgiven, are not meant to be weights on one side of a scale, tipping over to one side when others are judged by our own holiness, or righteousness. They’re beacons, illuminating the pathway that we all follow in the name of Jesus Christ, letting others see who we are, when Christ is in us.
Amen.
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