God’s Idea of Righteousness Pt. 1
By David Brandt Berg Aug 20, 2015
There is no goodness except God.1 God is the only one who is good. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”2 Everybody’s bad except those who have the goodness of God, the love of God, and the righteousness of God. God’s Word says that all other righteousness, man’s righteousness, your own righteousness, your own goodness, is like filthy rags. “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.”3 In other words, God says if you don’t have His goodness, which is true goodness, true holiness, real love, real mercy, you have nothing but a filthy rag!
God’s idea of righteousness is the pitiful, hopeless, lost, humble, sinful sinner who knows he needs God. Those He came to save. “He came not to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners.”4 So God’s idea of goodness is godliness—a sinner who knows he needs God and depends on Him for salvation—not the self-righteous who think they can save themselves by their own goodness.
God’s idea of saintliness is not sinless perfection, self-righteousness. It’s a sinner saved by grace, a sinner who has no perfection, no righteousness of his own at all, but is totally dependent on the grace, love, and mercy of God by faith. Believe it or not, those are the only saints—there are no others.
God knows you’re anything but perfect and can’t be perfect and never will be perfect, and usually you’re pretty much of a mess, like the rest of us. So the only question, the only standard, is: Do you depend on the Lord, trust Him and His grace and His love and His mercy and give Him all the glory and the credit? If there’s anything good you ever do, do you give Him the glory? Do you say, “Thank Jesus; don’t thank me. Thank the Lord. It’s all the Lord!”
That’s what the Lord looks to as saintliness, the person who knows he’s a sinner and therefore gives God all the glory if anything good comes of what he’s done. As Paul said, “I know that in me, my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.”5 There’s nothing good about me or my flesh; anything good is only the Lord. That’s sainthood!
David—a sinning saint
The greatest men in the Bible were guys who made terrible mistakes and realized they were sinners, that they needed God. I never got much encouragement from those who were so perfect, like Enoch, who walked so close to God that he got completely out of touch with humanity, so God had to take him out of this world. I take a lot more heart from the pathetic stories of the drunks and the harlots and the publicans and the sinners who came to Jesus for love and mercy.
In fact, one of the worst characters in the Bible is my greatest inspiration. One of the most wicked men in the entire Bible, who was a murderer, an adulterer, and a liar, but whom God turned around and called a man after His own heart, King David.6
The most encouraging thing about David’s example was not his perfectionism but his human failures, sins, and shortcomings, which gave God a chance to get all the glory and show there’s hope for me—and you. I always figured if God could forgive even as bad a guy as David, surely He could forgive me. I think King David has been an encouragement to a lot of people—to know how much mercy God has and how much forgiveness He has, how good He can be if you’ll really repent like David did.
He was one of the biggest sinners in the Bible and did some horrible things. But look what a marvelous change occurred in him when the Lord really humbled him. It came through a humbling of his spiritual pride.
1 Matthew 19:17.
2 Romans 3:23.
3 Isaiah 64:6.
4 Matthew 9:13.
5 Romans 7:18.
6 Acts 13:22.
Anchor TFI