The Webster’s dictionary defines the word “righteous” as
“doing that which is right” / “just” / “equitable”
“free from wrong / guilt / or sin”

The thesaurus give you such words as:
blameless / full of integrity / irreproachable / pure-hearted / unbiased
reputable / truehearted / uncorrupted / upright / undeviating
impartial /  unimpeachable

“Justice” and “righteousness” are closely intertwined / almost synonymous
You really can’t distinguish one from the other
The word “just” / and the word “righteous” are identical
in both the Old Testament and the New Testament

The justice of God is what results
when the righteousness of God is administered

The Greek word that’s translated “righteousness” is / δικαιοσύνη / dikaiosunˉe
it means to be “upright / upstanding / just”

In Hebrew / this is the word / tsaddiq / “tsedeq” / means “straight”
In fact in Hebrew / the word for “righteous” and the word for “straight”
are the same word

Something that was righteous / was something that had a “straight edge”
– its a means of measurement

When God says He is righteous / He’s saying / amongst other things
“In my law / you will find “the straight edge” by which
you measure all lives / all acts / all thoughts / attitudes”

It is through His righteous decrees that we are able to tell
what is good – bad / right – wrong / decent – decadent / kind – cruel

You could say of God / that He “cuts it straight”

The Word of God clearly teaches us / that our God is a righteous God
There are so many / I will give you only a few

Gen 18:25 / “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?”
Deut 10:17 / “”For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords
the great / the mighty and the awesome God
who shows no partiality /and takes no bribe”
Psalm 92:15 / “The LORD is upright / He is my rock
and there is no unrighteousness in Him”
Psalm 97:1 / “The LORD reigns / righteousness and justice
are the foundation of His throne”
Psalm 145:17 / “The Lord is righteous in all His ways”
Psalm 11:7 / “For the Lord is righteous / he loves justice
upright men will see his face”

His will for us is righteousness / He says:
“Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness
and all these things will be given to you as well” / Matt 6:33

Moses says of God: “He is the Rock / his works are perfect
and all his ways are just / a faithful God who does no wrong
upright and just is He” / Deuteronomy 32:4

God is righteous / because He is holy

God’s righteousness is an expression of His holiness

When God administers justice / He does so because He is holy

And / righteousness is not merely something God does

Righteousness is Who God is

Jeremiah simply says: / “Righteous are you / O Lord” / 12:1

God’s righteousness is His nature / and not just an act of His will
Righteous is the very essence of His Being
God acts righteously / because he IS righteous
God deals justly / because He IS just

And we may be totally confident / that
– whatever God wills / is righteous
– whatever conforms to the revealed will of God / is righteousness

If God wills / that you love your enemies
that’s got to be a righteous  thing to do
If God wills / that you bless those who persecute you
that’s got to be a righteous thing to do

By virtue of the fact / that God is God
whatever God wills / says / or does / is righteous and just

So it is rather easy to define what is right / what is wrong

“Right” / is simply all that / which God desires and affirms
“Wrong” / is simply all that / which God hates and forbids

To be righteous is to act and speak consistently
with whatever God’s righteous nature requires
To be unrighteous is to act and speak inconsistently
with whatever God’s righteous nature requires

Everything in the world is good
to the degree it conforms to the nature of God
Everything in the world is evil to the degree it fails to do so

The reason we believe truth is right and lying is wrong
is because God is truthful

The reason we believe justice is right and injustice is wrong
is because God is just

The reason we believe love is right and selfishness is wrong
is because God is love

Sometimes we use the phrase / “Justice requires that God does such and such”
referring to some act we know He must perform

This is both a wrong way of thinking / and a wrong way of speaking
I have myself been guilty of this erroneous way of speaking myself

Justice is not some external standard
outside of God / to which God must conform

When we say “Justice requires God to do this”
we imply / that there is a principle of justice / outside of God
which compels Him to act in a certain way

But there is no such principle
For if there were / it would be superior to God
for only a superior power can compel obedience

In a taped message Tozer said / “My brethren / Always remember
Nothing ever required God to do anything
If you have a God that is required to do anything
then you have a weak God who has to bow His neck to some yoke
and yield Himself to pressure from the outside”

When God executes justice / it will not be
that He is compelled by some external code / to do so

He is merely acting consistently with His own character
He executes justice / simply because He IS just
He is just being Who He is

God is His own self-existent principle

When He dispenses justice He simply acts like Himself from within
Nothing compels God to do right
All He does and says is right
In fact “Justice” / is a name we give to the way God is

God is not only righteous

He created us in His image / and we can know right from wrong

And this innate sense of righteousness
is one of the marks of what it means to be made in God’s image
These are marks / imprints / signature God places in the human heart
Only humans have them / animals don’t have them

There is a professor of philosophy at Boston College in the US
He’s a Christian who believes in moral absolutes and he teaches philosophy

And in his class on ethics / he would always ask the students
“What do you believe about morality? / and 95% would always say
there are no absolute moral principles
morals are simply your own personal subjective value
and you cannot impose your personal morality on others

And every years he does this / he says “Fine / Now / since you believe
all morality is simply your personal and subjective feeling
I would like to share with you my own personal feelings about how
I grade your term papers in this class
He says I want you to know / right from the start
all girls taking this class / will be getting a flunking grade

Immediately the students male and female alike would protest
“You can’t do that / that’s not fair”

And he would say “Wait a minute / What do you mean “That’s not fair”
If you told me / that one’s take what is right and wrong
is a matter of one’s own personal and subjective feeling
and that my take of what is right and wrong
differs from  yours
and that you happen not to like my take
of what is right and wrong / that’s fine

But you didn’t say that
What you have just said is that my particular view of fairness is wrong
but how could one’s own idiosyncratic personal taste be wrong
and before what binding tribunal is it wrong?

Then he would tell them this / he would say to them
“You know that in your deepest depth of your heart
that there is a universal objective value called justice
and it stands judgement over both you and me
and you can invoke it against me
when I say all women in this class will get a flunking grade

But in your understanding of what morality is
you have no basis for doing this

All of you / who hold to the view / that all morals are relative
you don’t live consistently with your philosophy / you can’t

You say there are no moral absolutes / but
You live as if there are

If you were consistent you would’ve said “I don’t like your value”
but instead you say that / You said “It’s unfair”

Far more consistent was someone like Jean Paul Sartre
who / when the Nuremburg Trial was going on / said / in print
“You can’t judge the Nazis / because if there is no god
there is no way to know right from wrong
and you have no right to judge these people for what they did
they saw things their way

That / is consistent!

The point is this / You know that torturing children just for the fun of it is wrong
You know it’s wrong to sleep around
You know that it’s wrong to abort babies from their mother’s womb
If you think you don’t know that / go take a look on what comes out
of the other end of those suction machines of the abortion clinics
– 42 m. of them a year / come out then other end that way

By the way / in France / a woman can have legalised abortion
even after they’ve been 12 weeks into the pregnancy

Not a wonder that John Warwick Montgomery wrote a powerful warning
entitled / France Take Care Not to Lose Your Soul

Here in New Zealand / we live in a time / when almost every other month
we hear of someone killed in a most violent way
or someone prominent in society / caught committing a crime

Cheating / perjury / lying / deception
are almost everyday occurrence now

Why / because when God says “The law of God is perfect reviving the soul”
He is saying that unless you’ve got a perfect straight-edge
unless you got an objective moral value / your soul dies

The point again / is this / There are absolute moral laws
And the reason there are object moral laws is because there IS
an absolute moral Lawgiver / our righteous God

Now / if God is righteous
what are some of the implications of this / to our lives
– what does it mean for me? / how should I then live?

FIRST / Because God is righteous / He hates whatever is unrighteous
God wouldn’t be righteous and just / if He didn’t hate unrighteousness

He will never close one eye to injustice

Quite firmly He declares in Exodus 23:7 “I will not acquit the guilty”

We saw last week that / even as sinful human people
we could be outraged when we hear of grave violence and injustice
perpetrated on people who are young / old / helpless

And when these perpetrators are not brought to justice
we become outraged

Now / we didn’t get that from nowhere

God is righteous / and He has a deep hatred of evil
Psalms 45:7 / You love righteousness and hate wickedness
Romans 11:22 / Beware the kindness and severity of God”

If your theology only teaches you about the kindness of God
but says nothing about the severity of God / you have a faulty theology

The Word of God teaches us quite categorically
that God absolutely hates unrighteousness

And because God hates it  / we need to watch the way we live
for whether we are aware of it or not
we stand daily / before a righteous God

SECOND /  Because God is righteous / He is the standard of righteousness

God’s righteousness is the standard by which we shall be judged

But when judgment day comes
we are NOT going to be judged by the Ten Commandments
or by some other standard found in God’s Word

We will be judged by the sterling standard of God’s righteousness

Speaking of the long-awaited Messiah / it was prophesied
that when He comes / “He will judge your people in righteousness
your afflicted ones with justice” / Ps 72:2

Psalm 45:6 / The sceptre of God’s kingdom / is a sceptre of righteousness

Many of you know that I collect vintage plumb bobs
A plumb bob / when it stops swinging / when it is at repose
it is an embodiment of truthfulness

You cannot argue over the final bearing / that it points to
– it is final / canonical / the benchmark of undeviating exactitude

This is partly why I collect them / it is a symbol moral uprightness

And this is why / the plumb line is mentioned
in no less than three places in the Word of God

* Amos, the prophet of social justice
walked among a defiant and wayward people
dangling a plumb bob from his sinewy hand / Amos 7:7

* Isaiah 28:17 / “I will make justice the line
and righteousness the plumb line”

* Zechariah 4:10 / “For whoever has despised the day of small things
shall rejoice / and shall see the plumb line
in the hand of Zerubbabel”

And God’s righteousness is the plumb line by which we shall be judged

THREE / Because God is righteous / we too are to be righteous
In fact your righteousness / or lack of it
is the acid test / whether you truly born again

1 Jn 2:29 / “If you know God is righteous / then you must also know
that everyone who practices righteousness is truly born from God”

People who are not concerned about doing right
cannot be true believers in God

That’s straight from 1 John 3:10
Let me read it to you from The Message
“Here’s how you tell the difference
between God’s children and the Devil’s children:
The one who won’t practice righteous ways isn’t from God
nor is the one who won’t love brother or sister / A simple test”

1 Cor 6:9 puts it most simply

“The unrighteousness will not inherit the kingdom of God”

In fact Jesus / “For I say to you / that unless your righteousness
exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees
you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven”

Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness?
even when no one is watching / and
even if by doing so / it’s going to cost you hugely

Are you striving to be righteous in all your dealings with people?
Is there something within you that hungers and thirsts after righteousness?

FOURTH / God will one day judge the world
with the fullest expression of His righteousness
and on that day / full justice / will be executed

The day of judgment and justice is looming on the horizon
The law courts can re-define the institution of marriage
The lawmakers may decide what moral behaviour will be tolerated
Educators may decide what may / or may not be taught in schools

We need to rest assured that through all these / God is unfazed
For one day / God will snatch back what has been taken from Him
And on that day / it will be what He decides as right or wrong
that matters

On that day / people will find to their own horror
that justice does not go to the highest bidder
that morality is not defined by the group that has the biggest vote

On this side of heaven many of our cries for justice
will not be fully answered / There will never be full justice here

And godly men and women have shed much tears
crying out for justice / for vindication
but often it appears that their cries have gone unheard

Jeremiah asked much the same question:
Why do the wicked prosper? – Jeremiah 12:1-4
The prophet Habakkuk cried / for justice
Job look for it / David pined for it

We are have been through times
when every fibre of righteous indignation rise up within us
and we cry out to God “How long God”

Peter Berger / in his slim volume A Rumour of Angels
reminds us that there are deeds that are not just evil but monstrously evil

When Eichmann was condemned to be hanged
there was a general feeling that “hanging is not good enough”

By the way I need to point out / that all those cries
were not always attended with private malice
– those cries were made not just from a Jewish national psyche
– those cries were made
from the heart / of a deeply-violated international psyche

But what would have been enough ?
If he had been tortured to death
in the most lengthy and cruel manner imaginable
would that have been “enough” ?

Surely not!
No human punishment is “enough” for deeds as monstrous as these

There are deeds that demand not only condemnation
but damnation in the full religious sense of the word

There are certain deeds that cry out to heaven
Deeds that cry out to heaven / cry out for hell

There are some sins so utterly outrageous
no human court of law is able to fully rectify the crime

Only God’s damnation is the ultimate fitting punishment

The point is this: / Godly men and women over the ages
have been crying out to God for justice / retribution /  and vindication

But this side of heaven / full justice will never be served

The wicked will get away / and live quite comfortably to a ripe old age
The righteous will often suffer grief / and cut short / sometimes violently

But we have this clear promise in Acts 17 / to the Athenians / Paul said
“God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent
because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world
in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed Ac 17:30-31

What a dreadful day that will!

The sea will give up its dead
the graves will release their hold upon the dead
and all the unrighteous will stand before the justice bar of holy God

On this day the sword of His justice will not be scabbarded
but unsheathed / and many will face its bare blade
And none will escape its edge

Only those / who have the righteousness covering them
shall prevail unscathed and unharmed
– they will be sheltered under the righteous wings of their King
who has suffered their unrighteousness for them

But one thing is sure / every created being
saved and unsaved alike / angels and devils alike:
will say on that day: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

Again the point is this / God will one day judge the world
with the fullest expression of His righteousness

How then can we ever be saved? / Who then can be saved?

Ezekiel says / “The soul that sins / it shall die” / 18:4
Habakkuk says / “You are of purer eyes than to behold evil
and  cannot look on wickedness / 1:13

Who / indeed / can be saved?
To have eternal life you must be as righteous as God is righteous
If you are to escape God’s condemnation
and be declared acceptable to God
you’ve got to be as righteous as God is righteous
– that / is the benchmark

But / we’re simply not righteous
Romans 3:10 / “There is no one righteous / not even one”

Your best deeds of righteousness just isn’t good enough
You must become righteous / just as God is righteous

Jesus / in the Sermon on the Mount says:
“For I say unto you / that except your righteousness
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees
you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” /Mat 5:20

Who then / can be saved?

These guys prayed seven times a day / they fast twice a week
They tithed everything they possessed
even right down to whatever was growing in their spice garden

Not only do we not come close / they leave us for dead!

And on top of that Jesus says to us
Even the Pharisee’s righteousness
is not the righteousness enough for God

How then may we be saved?

We’ve all have clearly broken God’s laws
The evidences stack up against us / are irrefutable

No / we can’t be saved / But GOD can save us
and this / is how God dealt with the problem

He declared us / the guilty ones / “Not Guilty”
He declared us / the unrighteous ones / “Righteous”

Now / many people have asked / Is God being unjust and unrighteous
letting unrighteous people go off the hook?
If the High Court judge / or the President of a country / granted a pardon
to someone who had been convicted of a heinous crime
merely because he felt sorry for the criminal
you’d be outraged

And here / it would look like God / in His desire for mercy
has overlooked His desire for justice

Shouldn’t justice be satisfied / Shouldn’t crimes be punished
Of course they should
And God seen to that

By declaring us “Not Guilty”
God did not turn a blind eye to the need for justice to be satisfied?

Yes / His justice has to be satisfied / Our sins have to be atoned for
Remember Hebrews 9:22 / Without the shedding of blood
there is no forgiveness of sins”

And that / was what God did

He gave His own sinless Son / to take our place

“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf
so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”
2 Corinthians 5:21

In the death of Jesus God’s demand for retributive justice was satisfied

Jesus absorbed the full measure of God’s wrath
which the justice and righteousness of God demanded

Our guilt and sin were fully imputed to Jesus
Jesus suffered the retributive justice of God in our place

The death of Christ served a judicial purpose

You did not receive mercy / before justice was satisfied

All that / is a free translation of Romans 3:21-26

So now / it is possible for you / to stand rightness before Him

But it is also precisely right here / that we need to be careful

For if you reject this sacrifice / that completely satisfies the Father’s justice
then there is nothing left for you
but “only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire
that will consume the enemies of God” /  Hebrews 10:27

We need to be careful / that on that day

when we stand before the White Throne of Judgement
that we do NOT stand naked
without the covering of the righteousness of Christ

For without the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ covering us
no one can hope to stand
but instead / we will be consigned / to eternal damnation