God's Righteousness

This is another edited post from the old blog, reposted in preparation for this week’s theological term.

That God is righteous means that what He thinks and what he does is always “excruciatingly correct,” to borrow a term from Miss Manners. There is moral perfection in every single thought and activity of God. 

God’s righteousness, then, is an aspect of his holiness. All of his actions are righteous because they have their source in God’s unchangeably holy character. We know that God’s actions are righteous simply because it is God who does them, for any thought or action that come from God comes from the one-and-only morally perfect being, from the One who exists as the perfect standard of righteousness.

If we use terms the same way they are used scripturally, then God’s righteousness and His justice are the same thing. Both terms—righteousness and justice—are translated from exactly the same words in the original languages. We don’t usually use the words as precise synonyms, however, and commonly save the word justice to refer to God’s righteousness as it pertains to his law giving and law enforcment, including his impartial punishment for lawbreakers and blessing for lawkeeping.

We call God’s righteousness one of his communicable attributes. The term communicable refers to those attributes that God shares (or “communicates) with us. This means that when we are righteous, we are exhibiting derived righteousness—righteousness that doesn’t come from us, but from God. If we are righteous, we are righteous because the Holy Spirit communicates righteousness to us. Even when we are glorified so that we become spotlessly righteous forever onward, it is due to the work of the God’s Spirit (Romans 8).

What does scripture teach us about God’s righteousness?

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. (Psalm 97:2 NASB)

Righteousness as an essential character of God, for righteousness and justice are the underpinnings of his rule; they determine how God acts as Lord over all the earth.

One of the most often quoted texts on God’s righteousness is Abraham’s question of God in Genesis 18:25:

Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the godly with the wicked, treating the godly and the wicked alike! Far be it from you! Will not the judge of the whole earth do what is right? (NET)

Abraham appeals to God’s essential righteousness—and rightly so!—when he pleads for God to spare any righteous people who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah from his judgment against sin. Abraham understood that God’s righteousness (or his justice) keeps him from acting toward godly people in the same way that he acts toward the wicked. A righteous God will never give anyone judgment that they do not deserve.

God’s righteousness is the source of all his judgments:

….he now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness…(Acts 17:31)

The judgment that is yet to come has its source in God’s righteousness. It is because God is righteous that he must judge sinful people. To forever overlook the immorality of mankind would not be in accordance with his perfect morality, so on a day that he has already determined he will display his righteousness through his condemnation of unrepentant sinners. 

In addition, that God keeps his word is a facet of his righteousness.

You have fulfilled your promise, for you are righteous. (Nehemiah 7:8 NET)

Because God is righteous, when he promises something, that promise will always be kept.

That God is righteous also means that he instructs us in how to be righteous.

Good and upright [or just] is the LORD; Therefore He instructs sinners in the way. (Psalm 25:8 NASB)

Since he is the only perfectly righteous one, he is also the only one who can tell us how to be righteous. It is from of his righteous and benevolent nature he reveals his perfect standards of righteousness to his creatures.

In the Old Testament, God’s righteousness is often closely associated with deliverance. For example:

My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day…. (Psalm 71:15 ESV)

….my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed. (Isaiah 51:6)

God delivers his people because he is righteous. Vindication for his people is a requirement of his righteous character.

What does it mean for us that our God is righteous? That God is righteous means that none of us ever receive less from God than what is right. When we go complaining to God about difficulties in our life, we can’t grumble about the unjustness of our suffering and be showing anything but our ignorance. After the psalmist doubted God’s righteousness and complained that things were not unfolding fairly for him, God vindicated his own righteousness by showing the psalmist the perfect justice coming in the end. Then the psalmist says of his own previously complaining self:

When my heart was embittered
And I was pierced within,
Then I was senseless and ignorant;
I was {like} a beast before You. (Psalm 73:21-22 NASB)

Our God is always right and just, even when we don’t understand how that could be true. Any complaints against what we receive from him are foolish.

And a righteous God is a God who can be believed. There is no room for doubting him, for an upright God keeps his word. If we have been born again, then God has promised us an inheritance and we can bank it. We will be kept for our eternal possession, because from God’s righteousness, come guaranteed promises.

For the LORD is righteous,
He loves righteousness;
The upright will behold His face.
(Psalm 11:7 NASB)