<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 
 
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.  For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.    (<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Rom. 1:18-23)
 
There is no unrighteousness with God, is there?  (Ro 9:14b)
 
I have had an incomplete understanding for so long concerning the meanings of righteousness and unrighteousness.  When I think of righteousness, I think of personal characteristics and actions.  For instance, a person who is righteous is someone who is kind, loving, fair, giving, selfless, humble, etc.  In contrast, an unrighteous person is mean, evil, cruel, unfair, selfish, arrogance, etc.  Of course, there are heart issues we cannot see; ulterior motives.  A person may do all the right things but do them for all the wrong reasons.
 
That being said, I kind of always defined righteousness based on how a person acted.  And that certainly is true to a some extent.  But what about God?  I mean, when He does what He does, what makes it all righteous all the time?  And what implications does the answer to this question have on you and me?
 

Righteousness is Always Based on Truth

 
In his book, The Justification of God, John Piper writes:        
 
[The Greek word for unrighteousness] adikia is not merely the opposite of dikaiosunen [the Greek word for righteousness](Rom 3:5), but it is also the opposite of "truth" (aletheian) Adikia, therefore, is a disposition and conduct which contradicts truth, particularly the truth about God, namely, that He is glorious above all creation and worthy of all honor, thanks and trust.  The person whose life does not conform to this truth is in the grip of adikia.[1]
 
That's interesting.  So it's not just a person's bad deeds that characterizes him as unrighteous.  It's his entire disposition and conduct toward the truth.  In other words, what a person believes also determines whether he is righteous or not.  This correlation between righteousness and truth is evident in other places in the New Testament as well.[2]  Believing truth is an integral part of being righteous before God. 
 
But what is truth?  John MacArthur has a good insight on that when he writes:
 
Here is a simple definition drawn from what the Bible teaches: truth is that which is consistent with the mind, character, glory and being of God…truth is the self-expression of God. [3]
 
Truth is God's self-expression.  Whatever God chooses to express about Himself is all the truth that is available to us, all that we are entitled to.  In Exodus 3:14, God revealed His name to Moses, saying "YAHWEH," translated, "I AM WHO I AM."  Have you ever stopped to think what exactly God was expressing to Moses when He identified Himself as "I AM"?  In Exodus 33, after Moses asked to see God's glory (verse 18), God told Moses that He would make all His goodness pass before Him and He would proclaim His name "I AM.  And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and I show mercy to whom I will show mercy." Piper points out that the link between Ex 3:14 and 33:19 are inextricably tied together.[4]  The grammatical construct demonstrates that the second part of verse 19, "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious…" is nothing less than an expanded version of God's name, "I AM."  In other words, I AM is the self-expression of God's absolute sovereignty, demonstrated most clearly in His freedom to choose who will receive His grace and mercy.
 
Now if truth is God's self-expression, that which is consistent with God's mind, character, glory and being, then God's righteousness is God's ongoing purpose of esteeming those aspects of His nature that He has chosen to reveal to us.   God's righteousness gives supremacy to His name, which is an expression of His sovereign freedom.  Piper writes, "Is not the essence of righteousness to place supreme value on what is supremely valuable, with all the just actions that follow?"[5]  The Bible is clear that God's name, His glory, is what is supremely valuable.  And so God's righteousness is God acting in such a way that exalts the supremacy of His name.
 
In Ro 9:14-15, when Paul defends God's righteousness, what he is defending is this truth about God, i.e. God's self-expression.  The accusation Paul presupposed from his Jewish brothers was that God was acting unrighteously, being unfair, in how He elects people, excluding some Jews and including others based on nothing but God's own free will.  Now these Jews Paul is arguing with certainly had a point IF God's righteousness were based on human merit.  But 9:16 rules that out when it says, "So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy." 
 
Paul goes on defending God's righteousness by defending a key truth about God, namely His sovereign freedom.  In Ro 9:15, Paul quotes Ex 33:19 where God reveals this essential truth about His nature.  When Paul quotes Ex 33:19, he is referring us back to that self-revelation of God as one who does not act under any compulsion, but rather acts in accordance with His own nature, which includes mercy, compassion and grace, but ultimately boils down to one phrase: sovereign freedom.[6]
 

God's Righteousness is His Devotion to His Name

 
Verse upon verse is laid down in the Old Testament concerning God's righteous devotion to His name, that name being the self-expression of His sovereign freedom, a.k.a. truth.  Here are a few:
 
For Your name's sake, O Lord, preserve my life! In Your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble! (Ps. 143:11) 
 
Notice how "For Your name's sake," "YAHWEH," and "Your righteousness" all flow from the same thought.  The Lord's righteousness is the Lord acting for the sake of His name.  What is so breathtaking is that the psalmist, and we as believers, continually reap the glorious benefits of Yahweh's righteousness.  Nonetheless, that righteousness has as its primary motivation the exaltation of God's name.
 
"He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake." (Ps 23:3)
 
Again, God leads us into righteousness for His name's sake.  I've read Psalm 23 a hundred times but never caught this.  God leads us into paths of righteousness, i.e. God's truth, for the sake of His name.  Again, we reap the benefits, but God seeks first the glory of His name.
 
"I bring near my righteousness; it is not far off, and my salvation will not delay; I will put salvation in Zion, for Israel my glory." (Is 46:13)
 
Here is a jewel!  God is promising to bring His righteousness near.  Notice something: "for Israel my glory."  What does this mean?  Israel was a stiff-necked, idolatrous people when God went up with them from Egypt to the Promised Land (Ex 33:5).  Israel was God's glory because God magnified and highlighted His sovereign mercy by bringing a rebellious, murmuring people into a covenant relationship with Him and keeping covenant with them.  They were a living illustration of Romans 5:20: "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more."  God's infinite grace abounded in all its glory by bringing salvation to an idolatrous, rebellious Israel.  Where sin increased, God's grace, His unmerited favor, abounded.  And where grace abounded, God's glory was supremely exalted.  The greater the gap, the greater the glory!  And so Israel was God's glory because God, acting in righteousness, exalted His own name in Israel's salvation.   
 
The Creator is under no obligation to act for the sake of the creature.  God is always righteous for His own name's sake.  Those who honor His name receive the benefits of His righteousness, and those who profane His name receive their just punishment that flows steadily from His just righteousness.  But the key in these previous passages is that God acts not for the sake of men but for the sake of His name (see Ezekiel 20:9, 14 and 36:22).  It may sound contradictory saying that God acts freely without constraint upon Himself and, at the same time, saying that those who honor His name receive the benefits of His righteousness.  But when one understands that God's righteousness is God's devotion to His own self-expression, which includes sovereign freedom, most evidently demonstrated in showing mercy in unconditional election, then giving honor to God's name is understood to be the acknowledgement and wholehearted devotion to that freedom that God has in showing mercy to whomever He wills, including us who once abounded in sin and are now free to honor His name.   God's name is sovereign freedom and honoring His name means honoring His freedom in having mercy, in showing compassion, and also in hardening whom He wills.  This is why Abraham was credited with righteousness in God's sight, so that he could believe in God's sovereign freedom to give him a son when it was otherwise physically impossible.  Abraham was righteous in honoring the righteous name of God.   
 

Implications to Us

 
Truth is the self-expression of God revealed to us in His word.  God's righteousness is God's ongoing purpose of esteeming His name.  That being said, our righteousness must follow suit.  Righteousness before God is the esteeming of God's self-expression, i.e. truth.  And it follows that unrighteousness is anything that would seek to defame, demean or distort that truth about God which is plainly laid out for us in His Word.  In other words, untruth is a form of unrighteousness.
 
John Piper, in explaining 2 Th. 2:9-12, confirms this idea that unrighteousness is akin to "untruth."  The Lawless One mentioned in this passage is described as coming "in all deception of unrighteousness to those who are perishing, because they did not receive a love of the truth that they might be saved.  On account of this, God sends to them a working of deceit that they might believe a lie in order that all who do not believe the truth but delight in unrighteousness might be judged." [7] 
 
Notice some things in this passage:
§         "deception of unrighteousness" – leading others away from truth is directly tied to unrighteousness
§         "deception of unrighteousness…love of the truth" – because people did not receive a love of the truth, God sent them a deception of unrighteousness.  Those who do not love the truth will be deceived into unrighteousness.  Both "truth" and "love [of] the truth" are held in contrast to "unrighteousness"/"deception of unrighteousness," showing that truth and unrighteousness are in fact polar opposites.
§         "believe in truth…delight in unrighteousness" – there is a direct contrast here is between believing what is true and delighting in what is unrighteous.  From these contrasting terms, one could not only infer that truth and unrighteousness are opposites, but also that believing and delighting are opposites.  In other words, it is more than mental assent to a set of beliefs that makes one righteous; one must delight in truth in order to be considered righteous before God.  
 
Now, how does this apply to us?  Romans 1:18 says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold down the truth in unrighteousness."  Piper writes:
 
Unrighteousness is a disposition to reject and conceal the truth that God is worthy to be glorifies and thanked above all creation (1:21).  It is the power that inclines a person "to exchange the truth of God for a lie and worship and serve the creature above the Creator."[8]
 
God in His righteousness exalts His name.  According to Romans 1, man, in his unrighteousness seeks to suppress the glory of God's name and His sovereign freedom (v18).   He seeks to be like God (v23; cf. Is 14:14), to attribute to himself those characteristics solely reserved for the Most High – attributes such as sovereignty, glory, freedom of will, etc.    
 

Jesus Christ, Righteousness and Truth

 
Now how does Jesus Christ fit into all this talk about righteousness and truth?  Simply put, Jesus Christ is Righteousness and Truth.  He is truth in the sense that He is the very expression of God, being God Himself.  And He is righteousness in the sense that He has esteemed the name and nature of His Father by His blood-atoning work on the cross.  His bloody death on the cross was God's sole means of justifying an idolatrous, rebellious people.  God's righteousness was demonstrated most fully in Christ's atoning work on the cross because God brought honor back to His name by offering His own Son as the propitiation for our sins. 
 
How does Christ's righteousness bring glory to God?  By vindicating His Father's righteousness in passing over sins previously committed (Rom 3:25).  God's name, which He esteems as most valuable in the universe, was utterly dragged through the mud by His continual forgiveness of sins without justice.  Jesus's death on the cross bore the consequence of all the sins of His people for all time so that He might freely bestow mercy on His elect and esteem His name in doing so.  And we who are called by God and fall upon Christ receive the benefits of Christ's righteousness on the cross, namely eternal life.  But we must remember that Christ's righteousness on the cross had as its primary aim the esteeming of God's worth, the glory of His most excellent name.
 
So here's the next question: If Jesus Christ is our righteousness, then what's the point of us being righteous?  After all, Christ has paid the debt in full and we now have righteousness – right standing with God – credited to us.  The answer is simple, yet we could spend a life time discussing it.  Christ, our righteousness, is our righteousness through faith, through believing.  But belief must be right belief – belief in truth.  Christ's righteousness highlights ultimate truth, which is Christ Himself, the self-expression of God.  And when we believe in Christ, we are made righteous before God through the righteousness of Christ.  This is called the imputation of righteousness, for it is not from us, but credited to us.  Christian righteousness brings glory to God's self-expression in Christ by highlighting God's infinite worth in saving us.   And our righteousness after salvation brings even greater glory to God because it demonstrates His infinite power and worth in making us "who were once dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph 2:1-2) "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, proclaiming the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light" (1 Pet 2:9).  Our righteousness, our commitment to proper belief and communicating of truth through evangelism, highlights Jesus Christ for who He really is, the very self-expression of God. 
 

The Danger of Unbelief and False Belief

 
According to Scripture, unbelief, or false belief, is grounds enough to eternally condemn a person.  John MacArthur writes in regard to Romans 9:31-32:
 
Because [Israel] clung to wrong beliefs about the righteousness God requires and rejected the righteousness Christ would have provided for them, they were eternally condemned.  Their failure was first of all an error about a vital article of faith, not merely a flaw in their practice.  Their whole belief system (not merely their behavior) was wrong.  Unbelief was enough to condemn them, regardless of how they acted. [9]
 
The danger of unbelief and false belief is manifestly evident in these scriptures.  Yet strangely, this aspect of the faith is minimized while pragmatism is overemphasized.  Some pastors even condemn their congregations for studying their Bibles.  In these last days, when the familiar mantra "Just do it" is being religiously repeated, it would be wise to step back if only for a second and ask, "Just what are we doing?"  When the postmodern Church is saying, "Theology is divisive.  Put it away and just love each other and love the world," it would do us well to press the pause button and ask, "Didn't Jesus come to bring a sword, to divide rather than unite?  Didn't Jesus say the way to eternal life is narrow and few find it?  Am I really on the right road?  Am I really sharing the true gospel with the world?"  Those are valid questions because there is such a thing as a false gospel (Gal 1:6-8) and the Bible forewarns that there is coming a time when some will depart from the faith because of liars (1 Tim 4:1-2), that they will turn away from truth and wander off into myths (2 Tim 4:4)
 
What I am calling for is not some kind of belief without action.  Belief without action is also sin (Jas 2:17).  No, this is a call to undergird our actions with proper belief – with truth.  Without truth, our actions are not God-glorifying and, therefore, are unrighteous.  We need to be mindful of what we believe and how we communicate God's truth, if in fact we are communicating God's truth at all.  Action that is not first grounded in truth, that is not for the sake of God's name and glory, but only for the sake of action itself, is unrighteous action, no matter how noble it seems.  Showing kindness, mercy, humility, and sacrificial giving, all acts we are called to perform in love, are of no value whatsoever until we believe in such a way that honors the name of our great God and His Son Jesus Christ as supreme over all.
 
 

[1] John Piper, The Justification of God, (Baker Academics, 1993), p. 94

[2] See Ro 2:8; 3:4-5; 1 Co 13:6

[3] John MacArthur, The Truth War, (Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2007), p. 2

[4] The Justification of God, pp.

[5] John Piper, The Pleasures of God, (Multnomah Publisher, Inc.,2000), p. 43.

[6] Refer to chapter IV in The Justification of God for  an excellent in-depth discussion of the connection between Ro 9:14-15 and Ex 32-34.

[7] Ibid., 95.

[8] Ibid.

[9] MacArthur, pp. 33-34