There are two ways to think about our righteousness: legal and behavioral. An illustration should make it clear. If you break the law, such as parking illegally, you deserve a ticket since you are guilty. But it might be that an authority will take pity on you. Once I got a parking ticket in Topeka, Kansas. But they noticed that we had an out-of-state license plate, and so the note on our car said that they would forgive this parking ticket. I was guilty, but an authority said that, from a legal perspective, I would be considered innocent. I was forgiven. That is legal righteousness.
Behavioral righteousness, in contrast, is when you actually park only where it is legal. You don’t need forgiveness because you didn’t violate the law.
The clear teaching of Christianity is that our right standing with God is based only and entirely on the first type of righteousness. That is, we are unquestionably guilty of putting ourselves before God, acting as though we are more important and wiser and better than He is. So our only hope is that somehow we would be forgiven. Amazingly, through the death of Jesus, the perfect Son of God, in our place, God the Father is willing, even pleased, to declare us not guilty as we trust in Him! What great news!
But that isn’t the end of the story. As we looked at yesterday (listen), in 2 Timothy 2, Paul says that we are now to pursue behavioral righteousness. In fact, he commands us to. And, he says, if we want to be useful tools for God, we have no choice.
He then says that this behavioral righteousness includes two things. We are to flee ‘youthful passions’ and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace along with others who are doing the same.
So what might that look like in life? In particular, what would it look like to pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace? And how can we help each other do it? Your thoughts?
