Right or Righteous?
Notice that we conveniently forget all the other things we haven’t yet stopped doing. I don’t know when you ultimately decide, “I’m a good person because I’ve now nailed 1,000 of the 7,440,000 things that I was doing wrong.” When is the bar high enough in your moral life—not only in what you do, but also in what you think—that you can actually call yourself a “good” person? Goodness for us is about a standard—what I am doing and what I am not doing.
However, that isn’t the biblical concept of goodness whatsoever. Surely God is good, meaning that He isn’t doing anything wrong. But way more than just being an isolated definition of proper behavior—the goodness of the kingdom, the goodness of God—is that He wants to do good to other people regardless of the condition that they may be in.
It’s like the difference between being right and being righteous. If I’m right, then I’m done. I can wipe my hands and say, “I’m right and you’re wrong.” I know what to think about you because I’m right and you’re wrong. Isn’t that convenient? When I’m good, you’re not. When I’m good, I can look down my religious nose and say, “If you get a little bit better, perhaps I can deal with you,” or “Let me feel so sorry for you for how bad you are.” It categorizes people. “Look at us, we’re in the club.” We identify ourselves as good and those other bad people are on the outside. That’s the spirit of the Pharisee. That’s not the spirit of Jesus.
The thing that religious people couldn’t understand about Jesus is that He kept relating to people regardless of their moral condition. That is the definition of “good,” wanting to bless, secure, love, people regardless of what it is that they’re doing right or wrong.
Aren’t you glad that He is more than just a self-contained “good” and that His goodness propels Him to do good to people who are absolutely not living the way that they are supposed to be living? You see, when I am righteous, not only am I right, but I am so filled with love for you, so concerned about your ultimate condition that I will do whatever I have to do in order to woo you and to draw you into a place of rightness yourself.
The goodness of God, the rightness of God, is an indiscriminant love, affection, embrace and welcome for everyone.
