That Will Be Your Righteousness

Today’s passage is Deuteronomy 6:14-25.  Let’s go!

Deuteronomy 6:14-25 (NIV)
¹⁴  Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you;
¹⁵  for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land.
¹⁶  Do not test the LORD your God as you did at Massah.
¹⁷  Be sure to keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you.
¹⁸  Do what is right and good in the LORD’s sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers,
¹⁹  thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the LORD said.
²⁰  In the future, when your son asks you, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?”
²¹  tell him: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
²²  Before our eyes the LORD sent miraculous signs and wonders–great and terrible–upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household.
²³  But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised on oath to our forefathers.
²⁴  The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today.
²⁵  And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.”

On verses 14-25:  Whether it’s not following other gods (v14-15), not testing God (v16), keeping all of God’s stipulations and decrees (v17), always doing what is right in God’s sight (v18), or teaching the next generation about God (v20), it is clear here that God’s standards are absolutely perfect.  That’s why God demanded perfect obedience from the Israelites.  Moses sums it up in verse 25 when he says that “if we are careful to obey all of God’s laws, that will be “our righteousness”.  By “righteousness”, Moses means that God will see them as blameless and qualified to be in His presence.

Here’s the problem though:  we can never perfectly obey God’s laws.  So how can we ever attain righteousness by our own effort?  We can’t.

But the bigger story of the whole Bible is that God saw our inability to meet all of His requirements and had compassion on us.  He sent His Son Jesus Christ for us.  Jesus is the only one who perfectly obeyed all of God’s laws. He lived the perfect life, died on the cross to pay for our sins, and then rose again from the grave to show that sin and death could not hold him down.  By placing our faith in Jesus Christ, the righteousness that Christ attained by obeying God’s laws perfectly, God imputes (or gives) to us.

That’s the good news of Christianity: it’s “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” (Philippians 3:9)

So where does our righteousness come from?  Not from our own obedience to the law, but from Jesus’ obedience.

Was Moses leading his people in the wrong direction when he wrote verse 25?  Was he deluding his people into believing that they could attain righteousness by their own effort?  I don’t think so.  I believe God allowed Moses to say these words to his people with one ultimate aim: to help his people realize that since we can never obey God’s laws perfectly, we can never attain righteousness on our own, and thus we desperately need God’s mercy.  In this way, verse 25 points us to our need for a Saviour.  Praise God that in Jesus Christ we have that Saviour!

Father, Your standards are absolutely perfect.  On my own I am absolutely unable to do all that You require.  But thank You that You had compassion on me.  You sent Jesus Christ to obey all Your requirements on my behalf and to die the death I was supposed to die.  Thank You that now through Jesus I have a righteousness that I didn’t attain by obeying Your law perfectly, but by placing my faith in the One who did.  In Jesus’ name, AMEN!