The Righteousness of God

2 Corinthians 5:17-21

“Righteousness,” like “salvation,” is one of those complicated words in our Bible. It could mean something along the lines of “right conduct,” as when Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:20). Of course, even in that context, the word could mean something like “right standing,” a position with respect to a certain measure, like the Torah. Paul often will talk about this sort of righteousness in Romans. For still another meaning, we could understand it as “justice,” as when Paul writes, “But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?” (Rom 3:5). Although these different meanings overlap each other, in significant ways, we see how they also stretch in various directions depending on the context.
One thing that is clear, however, is that “righteousness” is a rather lofty thing. It is reserved only for the highest and the best. Those whose lives are marked by right actions are the ones said to be righteous. Those who have not flaw with respect to the law are the righteous ones. Those who enact fairness in their dealings with people, regardless of the characteristics of the people, are righteous. People can do these things some of the time, modeling righteous behavior, but such behavior has to be the standard quality before a person can be considered righteous. Righteousness is a special thing, a distinction of someone exalted above the rest.
This is why I find it so remarkable that Paul writes, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). Paul does not talk here about our own righteousness, that status which God has conferred upon us in Jesus Christ, but rather he declares that we become the righteousness of God. As if righteousness was not lofty enough, we get to be the righteousness of the one whose very being defines what righteousness is. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this means in a certain sense that whenever somebody talks about the righteousness of God—“God showed his righteousness today”—that person is means those whom God has redeemed in Christ Jesus. We are the expression, the definition, of God’s righteousness!
This is a sacred status which we carry, and we ought to take it seriously. God has conferred this upon us in an act of self-sacrifice, putting his reputation on the line to be identified with us. This is the point which Paul is trying to drive home as he narrates again Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, a ministry which happens through Christ and which he passed on to us. As Paul says, we are ambassadors for Christ, the ones who carry his message—his work of reconciliation, his righteousness—into the world. The question we need to ask ourselves is, Are we being the living embodiment of God’s righteousness as he intended us to be? -TL

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