What is “God’s Righteousness”? (and other thoughts)
With school done, I had some free time today to read a bit of John Piper’s book The Future of Justification. In this work, Piper responds to the views of theologian N.T. Wright on the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ. What was stunning to me (and prompted this post) was that as I read what I consider an academic/theological work, I was struck by Piper’s exposition on Romans 3 and God’s Righteousness.
Attempting to offer input for how Wright may be mistaken about the doctrine of justification (for example, Wright claims that imputation of God’s (Christ’s) righteousness to sinners is a “category mistake” and “makes no sense at all”), Piper explains how Wright makes his chief mistake in this area by misunderstanding the definition of God’s righteousness. Wright says that God’s righteousness should be understood as “keeping covenants, judging impartially, dealing with sin properly, and advocating for the helpless.”
Piper points out that none of these actions are what righteousness is, rather he states that these are merely what righteousness does. From here, Piper continues to offer a proper understanding of God’s righteousness. This is where I was absolutely fascinated and enlightened.
In his book The Justification of God, Piper notes that the simple way of defining God’s righteousness consists in his “unwavering commitment to do what is right.” However, even this definition is lacking as Piper says “we don’t feel like we have gained much in defining ‘righteousness’ if we use the word ‘right’ to define it.” Thus, he shows through several Old Testament texts that “God defines right in terms of Himself.”
Therefore, Piper shows that “what is right, most ultimately, is what upholds the value and honor of God - what esteems God’s glory.” Moreover, he points out that the highest value that God gives in accounting for His actions is “the glory of God, or sacred and infinite value of His holiness, or sometimes simply His name.”
Taking this further, Piper adeptly explains how God demonstrated His righteousness through putting forth Christ as a sacrifice for sins. Here is Piper’s excellent explanation:
“But now we find God ‘passing over sin’ - that is, treating sin in a way that makes it look less outrageous than it is. This makes God look as though He does not properly esteem his own glory that sin belittles…In passing over countless belittlings of his glory (sins), he looks as though he counts his glory a small thing. This would be unrighteousness in God - the very essence of unrighteousness. Therefore, he puts Christ forward to vindicate his righteousness…When he justifies the ‘ungodly’…he is not unrighteous, because the death of Christ exhibits God’s wrath against God-belittling sin.” - Page 67
This leads me to my main point, namely that every single person reading this, in fact, every person on earth, has experienced the loving grace of God. Not everyone will receive it eternally, but every single time we value or love something more than God and His glory (sin), we deserve the full and complete wrath of a just and Holy God. We have loved and cherished other things and people more and the God who is worthy of our love and honor, we have dishonored through our daily sin and turning away from Him.
Have you ever stopped to consider that apart from God’s love revealed in Christ, we should and would all be in the face of God’s unimaginable wrath for sin at this very moment? And justly so at that.
In a world where many cry, “Why do bad things happen to ‘good’ people?”, shouldn’t we instead be asking why more bad things don’t happen to us?
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i need to remind myself of this daily–no, hourly, even minutely. thanks for this.