When Righteousness is Unfaithful
When the going gets tough, it is tempting to turn back to what’s familiar. And we see this at play in the Book of Hebrews. There are a few unanswered questions about this book of the Bible. We don’t know who wrote it. That’s why our second lesson is not a reading from Paul’s letter to the Hebrews. And scholars debate over what it is. Is it a letter? Is it a sermon? Was it originally addressed to a particular church or to all Christians everywhere? We do have some good, educated guesses. The idea that it’s a sermon makes sense; it really doesn’t follow normal guidelines for letters of the ancient world. And it seems to be intended for a group of Jewish Christians who are considering turning back from Christian faith back to a non-Christian Judaism. And if this is really what’s happening behind the scenes for this book of the Bible, there is an underlying warning not to turn away from the promises that have become yours in Jesus. And those promises come through faith. The word faith carries more with it than simply belief in the existence of God or that the theological system God has set up works. Biblical faith has a component of relational trust in God and his promises. And so here we see the author to the Hebrews taking up this topic of faith. And it raises questions like the one we just looked at: what is faith? But also how does it relate to the God of the Bible? What does faith do in me and for me as a Christian? And these questions in Hebrews are relevant questions for us today. And as this book unfolds, Hebrews leads us to remember a profound moment of faith in the Old Testament, where the LORD renews and expands his promise to Abraham. So as we are exploring faith together today in our passages, let’s start by looking at Abraham, a man often referred to as the father of faith.
It’s important to see that before Abraham believed, he reminds God of his promise. His faith wonders about when he’ll see it fulfilled. But in God’s answer, he restates and graciously expands the promise. He had promised Abraham offspring, he now promised him innumerable offspring, as many as there are stars in the sky. And Abraham believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. Abraham brings his grownup reasonableness to God, and God says not yet. But the righteous God restates the promise and expands it and when Abraham trusts God, when he believes an audacious promise from God, the God of righteousness sees that relational trust in Him and in his promise and counts it to Abraham as righteousness. And when the God of righteousness reveals what he will count as righteousness, we would do well to listen.
From the Book of Hebrews, we get this further insight from verse 6: “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
Justifying faith is not simply belief that God exists, but it also trusts in his character. And we learn from the account of Abraham that if we want to be righteous, if we want God to think of us as a good person, we need relational trust in Him and his promises. And here, Hebrews tells us that any other act of righteousness outside of relational trust in God means nothing to the God of righteousness. Sometimes we can do the right thing for the wrong reason. And sometimes people do righteous stuff to keep God away. Who needs a righteous God when I’m righteous on my own? Since the garden, humans want their independence. We want to be good enough without anything outside us. But our righteousness is a joke. The kindest, most selfless thing you’ve ever done doesn’t earn you a drop in the empty swimming pool of righteousness, not when it’s done apart from relational trust in God and his promises. Because when we do righteousness apart from relational trust in God and his promises, we help a child in need or keep ourselves from swearing while we hold our hand out to God saying, “Go away, I don’t need you. This is my moment. I am the source of my own righteousness.” And we collect these moments in a scrapbook that we carry with us, a righteousness portfolio that we carry with us into our hospital bed at the end of our lives to show God when we meet him. And he opens it up and he sees a wonderful collection of moments we held our hand up to him telling him to stay away. Our reward on that day is not going to be a good one. It’s not going to be something we want. Our lifelong desire to keep God away through our own righteousness will result in God keeping us away from his presence for all eternity. As C. S. Lewis puts it, we either say to God, “Thy will be done,” or he says to us “Thy will be done.” The righteous God would rather see you do the smallest thing out of relational trust in Him and his promises than build the new cancer wing of a hospital while holding your hand up to him to keep him out of your daily affairs. Sure, God wants people to be cared for, and he would use your unrighteous kindness to help people, but he wouldn’t credit it to you as righteousness. He would see a huge moment when you told him to stay away.
So I have to be perfectly conscious of trusting in God whenever I do something good? I think there’s just a precaution. The question is more, do I ever think about my motivation when I do good? Or another one: am I doing good so I don’t need to think about God, just to check the goodness box for today? There could be some spiritual danger here. But if you are pursuing righteousness like we saw in Colossians last week, because we are acting out of our relational trust in God, to reflect his goodness? We’re probably on safer ground here. We’re mainly concerned with pursuing some system of righteousness apart from God and his promises.
The moment where Abraham believed God, like a child, reveals what is important to God. And what a gracious standard it is! The pagan gods demanded various sacrifices, but the one true God demands relational trust in him and his promises.
And the first hearers of the sermon to the Hebrews were considering rejecting that standard. Perhaps persecution of Christians had gotten more severe. The world, the flesh, and the devil hate a value system that doesn’t cut them in. And this righteousness that comes by relational trust in God and his promises leaves the world, the flesh, and the devil with nothing to offer, nothing to bargain with, nothing to control you with. God offers the reward and we get it through relational trust in him and his promises. When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness and Satan offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, Jesus says no and shows that his reward from God exceeds all that can be offered. Jesus’ reward and our reward doesn’t come through deals with the world, the flesh, and the devil, but through relational trust in God and his promises, through faith.
The author to the Hebrews takes us on a tour of the Old Testament showing us how the actions that God valued, the people who he judged favorably, acted in relational trust in God’s promises, from Abel, to Enoch, to Noah, to Abraham. And in verse 13, it says:
Hebrews 11:13–16 ESV
13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
And this is not simply a history lesson. There are implications for people considering leaving Christianity for their old life away from Christ and also implications for us. The person of faith is childlike. We look forward to the promised thing and live happily knowing that we can rest in God’s promises to us being fulfilled, whether in this life or in the new heavens and new earth. And like people who have inherited a plot of land, some beautiful ranch land in Montana, we sell our things and buy an RV and go live on our new property in gleeful anticipation while we wait for the final home to be built. We had some friends who did something like this. And the building process ended up taking a long time. And they lived in an RV with 3 kids for over a year. As the framing was getting done, should they have given up, sold their new land, and moved back to their old neighborhood? And the Israelites after wandering in the wilderness for 30 years, should they have packed up and left the pillar of cloud and fire and asked to be slaves again in Egypt? No. It would have been miserable. It’s not who they were called to be. It’s not the life God had called them out of. And for us, because we choose to believe God like Abraham, instead of turning back to our old ways of trying to accomplish some righteousness of our own, God will not be ashamed to be called our God. You see, if God is our God we will value what he values. And he does value righteousness, but the only righteousness he values is the righteousness that is the result of relational trust in Him and his promises. Righteousness done outside of that trust pushes him away every time he approaches. And eventually that unfaithful righteousness that pushes God away causes us to raise our voice with the crowd and say, “Crucify him!” But because of Jesus’ true righteousness, because of his perfect relational trust in God and his promises, and because of his love for us that moved him to die in our place, we can move out of a life of unrighteousness and faithless righteousness to one of trust in him and his promises. Promises like “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” and “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” and “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
Because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, he has made peace with God for us. Our relationship with God can be restored even after we’ve tried to keep him at bay with our own attempts at righteousness. We need to simply put down that hand holding him away and turn and look to him. When we do, we’ll see that he only wants to offer us his grace, a new start, a new life, if we would simply turn to him and trust him, and his good promises.
God has called us out to a new life with him. Let’s keep pressing forward to that city he’s prepared for us, not looking back to our old ways of justifying our lives to ourselves, but pressing forward with the true righteousness that he offers us, righteousness that comes by faith and real trust in him, leading to eternal life.
