Tag Archives: righteousness

Gospel Over Guidance: What the Qur’an Does Not Address

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Love for God is genuine only when God is a means to nothing else but God. Righteous acts are righteous only when they are done out of a love for righteousness and not as a means to anything else.

The Qur’an is not an adoring, worshipping love letter about God. It is a guide for what behavior will increase your chances of avoiding hell and earning heaven… Islam never addresses the root of man’s sin, that we have substituted some other delight for the place in our hearts only God should have…

Righteousness is only pleasing to God when you do righteousness solely out of love for him and righteousness itself. Good deeds can be wicked in the eyes of God if done for the purpose of merit or as a means to an end. Of course, merit, salvation, and reward form the entire foundation on which Islam is built.

The gospel teaches that what we have lost is the love of God, and that God can only be restored to us by giving himself back to us freely in Christ. The gospel offers God back to us, at no cost to us. In light of the beauty of God that we see in the gospel, the love in our hearts for him will naturally grow. As 1 John 4:19 says, “We love Him because He first loved us.”

J.D. Greear, Breaking the Islam Code, 97

God’s Person, the Cross, and His Resuce of Us from His Wrath

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Jesus has rescued me from the wrath to come (1 Thess. 1:9-10). Therefore, because of Jesus, it would now be an injustice for God to punish me for my sins. Punishment has already been given and received. God’s goodness to me is now confirmed not only by His mercy, but also by His justice. Better stated: God’s communicable attributes are ‘totalized’ or “simplified.” God’s goodness to me is confirmed by His Person of righteousness and mercy. Due to the cross of Jesus, for God to punish His people would the greatest injustice conceivable and a contradiction of who He is. It would be an injustice not in the human understanding of double jeopardy, but as an undermining of Jesus’ work.

The Father loves the Son. The Father delights in the Son—“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17; 17:5). “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand” (John 3:35). This is a preexistent, everlasting love. Jesus prayed, “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). The work of Jesus on the cross is to be exalted and heralded, not undermined and ignored—especially not by the Father who takes infinite pleasure in the Son and ordained the cross according to His definite plan (Acts 2:23; Isa 53:10-11).

Our hope is not in a detached superlative of the Divine Being. Our hope is in God Himself and all that He is for us in Jesus Christ.

God Does This: An Implication in the Book of Jeremiah of the God Whose Purposes Cannot Be Thwarted

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Jeremiah has been speaking the word of the LORD to the people as we come to chapter 23. He has been fuming God’s judgment on them. And in the midst of all this judgment towards these covenant breakers, we see something amazing about God. He is clear that the inability of the people to keep covenant has not hindered His purposes to make for Himself a people of worshipers. In fact, His continued purpose goes way back… I mean way back to Adam. 

This redeemed remnant made under the righteous Branch of David–the Branch of Whom it will be said, “The LORD is our righteousness (23:5-6)–this remnant will accomplish the earliest command given in Genesis 1:28. The picture is a world of people who worship the LORD…

“Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.”

(Jeremiah 23:2-3 ESV, italics mine)

 

 

The Prison that Says We’re Good Enough

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Each one of us needs grace that’s not only big enough to forgive our sin, but also powerful enough to free us from the self-atoning prison of our own righteousness. We’re not only held captive by our sin, but also by the delusion of our righteousness. Resting in God’s grace isn’t just about confessing your sin; it’s about forsaking your righteousness as well.

Paul Tripp, Whiter Than Snow, 29

Thank You

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“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

(Romans 3:21-26 ESV)

Standing Before the Owner of It All

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Just as in 38:3, the LORD answers Job. The concern is sovereign righteousness, 40:8 –

Will you even put me in the wrong?

Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? 

Father, You tell us again of Your work in creation. Behold Behemoth and Leviathan and the wonder of their frame, beyond our ability to tame or outmatch. You made the great creatures of the earth, You made house flies, You made us.

The climax of Your words to Job come in 41:10-11. The reference to the creatures described is an expression of the Your divine power and sovereign will. So much that You ask Job, and Father, You ask us…

Who then is he who can stand before me? Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine” (41:10-11).

Behold the Unsearchable: Job, 11

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Elihu continues with his declared intention in 36:3 to “ascribe righteousness to my Maker.” So he goes to assert the sovereign glory of God and His enduring righteousness (the Lord punishes the wicked and rescues the afflicted). Elihu cries, yes! Behold God! 

He implores the understanding for Job and the reader that there is none like God–transcendent in glory and incomprehensible in power. And after such theological discourse he concludes…

Behold, God is great, and we know him not… (36:26).

This is reminiscent of the Apostle in Romans 11:33-36. Compare Job 36:22-23. Paul sees the same logical reference in his defense of God’s election, namely, that God is always righteous and sovereign and entirely outside of our abilities to grasp. So who are we to say to him,

“You have done wrong?” (v. 23).