Day 16, Year 1 There Is Life in the Way of Righteousness

“In the way of righteousness is life, And in its pathway there is no death.” (Proverbs 12:28 NASB)

Opposite to selfishness and defiance of the truth is obedience and behaving according to God’s righteousness and truth. In today’s verse, “righteousness” in Hebrew is tsedaqah, and also means “justice, or righteous acts” (not the meaning in the eyes of the public), with a broad scope that covers various aspects such as “righteousness of judge, ruler, king, or law, righteousness of God’s attribute or Davidic king Messiah, righteousness in a case or cause, as ethically right, justification or salvation of God, righteous honesty or merits that lead to prosperity of people.” This illustrates that the path of righteousness encompasses both aspects of God and mankind. Among these, practicing God’s righteousness in believers’ character and behavior is perhaps more crucial, as it enables us to prosper and be blessed by God. This word also reveals a crucial truth—humans’ righteousness should align with God’s righteousness. This can only be achieved through the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ such that we could truly practice His righteousness and thus receive His blessings.

In the past, Moses called upon heaven and earth for the Israelites to choose life and God’s righteous path so that they could be saved from the power of death. Indeed, very few religions in the world place as much emphasis on righteousness as in the Bible. Some so-called Christian doctrines hold that people can become righteous just by declaring their belief or being baptized etc., but not substantially grow in God’s righteousness. But this is unbiblical, as claiming the grace of God they accentuate ends up encouraging more sinful acts. Hence, it could be considered a doctrine of the devil.

Indeed, Jesus’ salvation is the righteous Lord’s substitution for unrighteous believers to bear our punishment of sins. This act of declaring sinners as righteous aims to first deliver us from the vicious cycle of sin and injustice (Matthew 1:21), and subsequently bring about our transformation in God’s righteousness (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:21).

Reflection questions:

1) In your journey of following Jesus, have you perceived a growing presence of God’s righteousness inside you? If not, where do you think the problem lies? And how would you cling to the Lord to solve it?

2) How do you feel about and deal with those who claim to be Christians but behave unjustly like unbelievers?