The words righteous and righteousness are not everyday words. Perhaps for that reason, people tend to confuse righteous with self-righteous, being overly proud of one’s moral achievements—not a good thing.

But in the Bible righteous simply means “right” or “in the right,” or “doing the right thing,” or “doing the just and faithful thing.”   African-American slang catches something of this meaning when it uses righteous to mean authentic, good, and beautiful: “That was a righteous song.” 

In chapter 3 of his Letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul writes that “the righteousness of God has been disclosed . . . through the faith of Jesus Christ.” This verse was decisive for Martin Luther and the Lutheran Reformation. After studying the verse for a long time, Luther decided it was saying something different from what he had long thought.

He had thought—and it seemed the church was telling him—that God’s being righteous meant that God looked with dismay on humanity’s shortcomings and was jotting down all the sins for which humanity deserved to be punished. If that is God’s way of being in the right, it is hardly good news, thought Luther.

But if God’s way of being righteous is indeed disclosed in Jesus, then it is good news, for Jesus’ way of being in the right is to console those who mourn, cast out demons, forgive sins, welcome the outsider, invite the poor to a banquet, and suffer persecution and death for our sake and rise again. In Jesus, God enters into the crisis points of life on the side of human beings. 

Jesus is not righteous in a standoffish way, as if he can’t bear to be tainted by humanity’s imperfections; Jesus’ way of being righteous is to get down into the messiness of life and death alongside humanity. 

Luther’s aim was to keep this good news of God’s rightness at the forefront of the church’s proclamation. Jesus’ way of being in the right helps us trust that God will meet us in all circumstances, even the most unpromising. And Jesus inspires us to side with our neighbors at the crisis points of their lives.

See you in church, 

Pastor David