RIGHTEOUSNESS - The goodness of God, imparted to His children

We can't resist compromise unless we continually see the difference between the world's most noble views of right and wrong and what's right in God's eyes. Otherwise, it's all too easy to confuse God's mercy and love with today's "positive thoughts" about tolerance, unity and collective values. It's easy to ask, What would Jesus do?, but we miss the answer every time if we follow our own idealistic standards and subjective interpretations of God's mind and movements. The fact that man's collective actions seem to succeed based on human assessments, doesn't mean that "God is moving" in step with our pragmatic visions.

"You thought that I was altogether like you," He reminds us. "But I will rebuke you...." [Psalms 50:21] "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' says the Lord." [Isaiah 55:8]

Only by His Word and Spirit in us can we see right and wrong from His perspective. For "no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God." [1 Corinthians 2:11] But when we feed on His Word and rely on His Spirit , He sensitizes our conscience to His will and imprints His ways on our hearts: "I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people." Jeremiah 31:33

Those who reject God's Truth and Righteousness have a very different standard for right and wrong. Conformed to cultural values rather than to God's Word, their consciences simply endorse man's corrupted values. Since human nature doesn't change with time, this Old Testament warning is still relevant today:

"Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination?No! They were not at all ashamed; nor did they know how to blush." Jeremiah 6:15

In fact, the world's ways and God's ways are totally incompatible. That's why God's Word tells us repeatedly to shun the world's counsel even as we demonstrate God's love:

"The righteous should choose his friends carefully, for the way of the wicked leads them astray." Proverbs 12:26"Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: 'I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people.' "Therefore 'Come out from among them and be separate,' says the Lord. 'Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.'" 2 Corinthians 6:14-18
"... in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!"...all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But you must continue in the things which you have learned." 2 Timothy 3:1-14

In other words, don't let the world distract you from God's Word and ways. As followers of Jesus, we are "in the world" as salt and light, but we're not "of the world" as participants in its social and moral consensus. [John 17:11, 14] This division has kindled the world's fury through the ages. That's why Jesus -- knowing His disciples would face its cruel onslaughts -- explained the consequences of such an uncompromising stand:

"If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.... If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.... because they do not know Him who sent Me." John 15:18-21

Persecution seems both remote and unreal to Westerners unfamiliar with the torture of God's faithful ones in Communist, Hindu and Islamic countries today. Too distracted to learn history or Biblical prophecy, most of us neither look back to the persecution of the early church nor forward to prepare for the battles ahead. [See Revelation 13 and 17]. Those who have not been desensitized by imagined media violence might shudder at the following list, which shows man's ingenuity in inflicting pain on others. May it impress on our hearts the surpassing value early Christians put on the righteousness of Jesus Christ! Pleasing Him was worth more than life to them! A torturous death was not too high a price for a heavenly eternity with their Lord. They knew the cruel consequences of discipleship, but compromise was not an option!

• shut up in a sack with snakes and thrown into the seas
• tied to huge stones and cast into a river
• hanging on the tree (cross), they were beaten with rods until their bowels gushed out, while vinegar and salt were rubbed into their wounds
• tied to catapults and so wrenched limb from limb
• thrown to the beasts; others tied to their horns.
• Women stripped, enclosed in nets and exposed to the attacks of furious bulls
• tortured with scrapers, claws and pincers [then] delivered to the mercy of flames
• broken on the wheel or torn in pieces by wild horses
• the feet were slowly burned away...
• scourged to the bone, then placed near a grid-iron that he might witness the roasting of pieces torn from his own body
• fixing red-hot plates of brass to the most delicate parts of his body... [then] slowly roasted in the iron chair.
• 'melted lead, hissing and bubbling, was poured' [down their backs]
• a few.... escaped with the searing out of their eyes, or the tearing off of their legs."[4]
  

These faithful men and women could have won release by simply recanting their faith or affirming the gods of Rome. But they refused to deny their Lord! To them, the following Scripture was far more than a nice memory verse: "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." Romans 8:18. By God's wonderful grace, may we, too, demonstrate to a needy world the surpassing values of knowing and following our King -- in His ministry here on earth as well as in His suffering and death!

"I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death...." Philippians 3:7-11