Appearing Righteous

I have been attending non-denominational churches for so long, that I have recently forgotten that there are some denominations who still error on the side of legalism in terms of righteousness. Here I am, suddenly wide awake at 5 AM (very abnormal for me) on the day I thrive on sleeping in, feeling like I ought to address this issue in post as a follow up to my last. Thanks to some great conversation with a fellow blogger in Christ, I was reminded how steep in religion some denominations are, and how badly that hurts those who are led by that religion rather than by Christ!

My husband grew up in one of these denominations, and even though he's been out of that religion for over 10 years, he's still tearing down walls of bondage in areas of his life today because of it. We have all heard about (or seen first hand) these types of churches - the kind that teach about "appearing" righteous. They try to control behavior and appearance rather than teaching Christ and caring about each person intimately knowing and loving Him. These churches have strict guidelines about dress and hair, as if God even cares about how we look on the outside ("...God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." I Samuel 16:7). They stress doing and saying the right thing, regardless if your heart is right or not. They push people into serving without even a hint of concern about how the people may be doing spiritually. They judge by fruit first - not by passion for Christ - but mostly they are just judging. In that atmosphere, people feel compelled to "behave" righteously according to the standards of the church in order to "appear" saved. This is exactly what Jesus fought hard against with the Pharisees. We simply cannot do righteousness without BEING righteous first. And we can only BE righteous through our connection and relationship with Jesus Christ in love - because of HIS righteousness.

Being in Christ is a love relationship, one of really fully knowing Him, all He has done for us, and loving Him with all we are in worship and overwhelming thankfulness. When our hearts are bursting with love for Him, we do righteousness because we want to - because we want to be more like Him and do what He says. We cannot earn His love for us, nor work ourselves into loving Him - and we certainly cannot expect to please Him out of our works without that heart relationship. In Christ, we are already made acceptable to God; God cannot love or accept us any more than He already does. Our salvation is based on all Christ did and accomplished on the cross and simply recieved by faith. (Mark 12:30; Hebrews 11:6; Romans 3:21-26; Colossians 2:9-14; I John 3:5; Titus 3:5-7; I Timothy 1:9; Ephesians 2:8-9)

Motivation is a tricky thing in the human heart - our carnal nature is selfish and tends to always try to put an ulterior self-promoting motive into everything we do for God. This is one of the reasons Jesus instructed us to do our acts of righteousness in secret, without being seen or viewed by others. "Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven." Matthew 6:1. Jesus knew that "doing" righteousness without a heart of love for Him, and without an audience of ONE only, would cause the motivation of our hearts to be less than pure. When we are aware that others are watching (or judging) us by what they can see, we tend to focus on doing our righteousness in order to please them, or to compare ourselves to their righteousness (or lack there of), or to trust in our own works rather than what pours out of our hearts for love of Christ. When we do this type of false righteousness, it is works of the flesh, motivated by and done in the power of our fallen nature and human ability - and for it, we get our fleshly reward, with no eternal value. It puffs us up, it strokes our ego, and it makes others look up to us... but these are sins of pride, and we are never to allow others to look up to us, but rather we are to point to Jesus in all things! Also, we are to see as God sees, and not judge by mere appearances, but look to the inner being of our fellow human being. (Matthew 15:8-9; 23:6-12; Romans 8:1-8; 6:27; John 6:27; 7:24; Galatians 1:10; 6:3-4; Luke 17:7-10; I Corinthians 1:30-31; 10:31)

We can even deceive ourselves with works of the flesh. When we are taught that our works please God but those teachers de-emphasize or leave out completely the fact that what is critical before ever "doing" anything, we must first and foremost know and love God. This teaching causes us to become unbalanced and our works end up empty and done in vain. What those teachers mean is that our works please ourselves or other people, because only people look at appearances. (Galatians 5:1-6; Luke 11:39-44; Mark 7:6-8: Romans 16:18; I Corinthians 13:1-3; Philippians 3:2-3; I Timothy 4:1-5)

Back to being in Christ... when we come to know, trust, and love Jesus - and learn to walk in the Spirit and cultivate our relationship in Him, the more we want to read His Word, and give ourselves up to Him. The more we read of God's Word, pray and depend on His Spirit to lead and guide us, the more Jesus is able to not only dwell in our hearts, but live through us on the earth. As we learn and grow and obey out of our love and gratitude for Him, the more we are purified in our hearts, the more we see the eternal realm as reality (taking our eyes off the world and placing them on Him), the more our minds are transformed and we are conformed into His image. As we submit to Him, He does His work through us, through our voices, hands, and feet. We love as He loves, we care about what He cares about, and we do what He does. Just as Jesus only did as He saw the Father doing, spoke what the Father told Him to speak, and did nothing on His own - Jesus also calls us to this relationship with Him by His Spirit. Jesus pleased the Father because He always did what the Father told Him to do, but He did it out of His immense love and desire to please God intimately, not out of obligation, or out to please Himself or others. (Matthew 16:24-25; Luke 8:15; John 5:19-20, 30; 6:38; 12:49-50; 14:10-12; 15:9-10; Galatians 5:6; James 1:22-25)

We do not need others to tell us what is right and wrong, we will conform and grow into doing righteousness naturally as we grow in Christ and submit to His Word and Spirit. It is not our job to convict each other of sin and righteousness. However, we are on this earth for each other, to spur each other on to continue our life of submission and love to God - to continue to follow in Jesus' footprints as we started. Often we need more help when we first come to know Christ by others who are older in the faith, so as not to be a stumbling block to others. But certainly we need others to help us stay accountable to not take advantage or lightly the grace God extends to us so that we don't just sit back and ride out the rest of our lives as infants in Christ (infants that don't grow eventually die). People who are healthy in Christ grow... from the inside out. Let us remember to take on His yoke, because doing righteousness in Him is much easier than trying to do it in our own strength! Our job is to die to self and to grow closer and stay close to Christ Jesus personally - not just making room for Him in our lives, but giving Him our whole life. This is all we need to do, because He will do the rest! (I John 2:4-6, 27-29; John 16:7-11; Hebrews 10:24; I Thessalonians 4:1-2; 5:11, 14; Ephesians 4:14-16; I Peter 2:2, 16; Matthew 12:30; John 15:4, 9; Colossians 3:2-4; Galatians 2:20)


Related post: Righteousness