Tuesday, July 5, 2022
Wisps of Light
Begin the Day
As the Spirit Starts
Our Hearts
Genesis 15:6
And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Galatians 3:7
so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham.
Words of Grace For Today
Righteousness is, by definition, the quality attributed to someone who does this right. Or as Wikipedia has it (like many other dictionaries – no surprise) it is the quality or state of being morally correct and justifiable.
Further as Wikipedia has it: William Tyndale (Bible translator into English in 1526) remodelled the word after an earlier word rihtwis, which would have yielded modern English *rightwise or *rightways. He used it to translate the Hebrew root צדק tzedek, which appears over five hundred times in the Hebrew Bible, and the Greek word δίκαιος (dikaios), which appears more than two hundred times in the New Testament.
It is tzedek here in Genesis that is translated as righteousness. It is connected with justice, and not merely the dispensing of decisions (that may or may not be just) as courts do, but about ensuring that decisions are just before they are made and that after ensuring that injustices are corrected.
It is all about doing, and doing it right, or doing what is necessary to make sure what is done wrong is corrected to be that which is done right.
So how is it that Abraham gets off being called righteous! He was a man of God, but he was also a cheat, thief, and con man. For those who do not want us to forget (rightfully so) our female ancestors, Sarah was right there with Abraham, helping him with his cheating, thieving, and conning! Abraham, less Sarah on this one, was ready to kill his own son, until God stopped him. So he could be considered, in his heart, to be a murderer. How can one such person be considered righteous.
Consider for a moment what then it means to be called a descendant of Abraham because of what we believe!
How can Abraham be consider to be righteous?
By faith.
He believed the right things?
Or as the New Testament witness clarifies again and again, we are saved by God’s grace (gift), not by what we do, think, or believe, but by what the Holy Spirit brings us to do, think, and believe.
So we do not really ‘do’ any of this on our own, certainly not by our own ‘free’ will.
And neither did Abraham.
God made it so. We might say God justly did it so.
And that is where all righteousness comes from, from God justly doing it … to us.
We get to be called righteous and we get to be eternally grateful, for left on our own righteousness is impossible, as plenty of history and current events give witness to!
Let us begin the day, then, trusting that the Holy Spirit will bring us to do righteously, and always giving thanks that it is so, also this day for us.