For centuries, one of the primary questions that has been the concern of many, if not most, humans is: How do people enter the Kingdom of God?
In Matthew 5, verse 20, Jesus has a surprising answer to that question. Jesus says that we need a kind of righteousness that goes beyond the righteousness of the supposedly most righteous people. Jesus, in other words, is saying that there are two kinds of righteousness. There is a false righteousness and there is a true righteousness. The so-called most righteous people had a false righteousness, and they should not expect to enter the Kingdom of God. The goal, Jesus says, is a true righteousness that leads to the life that is really life, that is life in the Kingdom of Jesus which is abundant life now on earth and the hope of eternal life.
What is this true righteousness? It is serious that we figure this out, Jesus says (as we learned in the previous post), because the false righteousness won’t cut it. Jesus describes the Pharisees and the teachers of the law as having the false righteousness. Those people were religious elites in Jesus’ day. They were considered to be people of supreme righteousness, people who were obviously going to enter the Kingdom of God.
Jesus’ shocking teaching is that the religious elite didn’t live with the true kind of righteousness! They were too focused on keeping religious rituals and following religious law, most of which they made up. Though they focused on the law, they missed the heart of God. Jesus says that though they kept all these ritualistic laws on the outside, in their heart, their motivation, they were far from God.
Jesus was saying that we need a different kind of righteousness if we want to enter the kingdom of God. So let’s talk about that true righteousness.
Righteousness is the act of doing what God requires. What does God require? The ancient Hebrew prophet, Micah, wrote in Micah 6:8, “He has showed you, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Micah describes a vibrant, active faith. Faith that leads to righteous action. We see this in the life choices of Jesus.
For us, we have the vantage point of the cross, we know what would happen in a few short years after this sermon on the Mount, that Jesus would die for our sins. With that in mind, remember from the previous post when we read Matthew 5, verse 17, where Jesus taught that he came to fulfill the Law. Think about how he lived his life. What actions did Jesus do? He literally fulfilled the Law, because every action of his life was righteous. Jesus was the only one who acted justly, loved mercy and walked humbly with God every moment of his life.
Jesus didn’t sin. Ever. He was righteous, so he didn’t have to die. But he became our righteousness. We don’t have righteousness without him.
Having a righteous heart, starts with faith in Christ, trusting in his righteousness alone. It means swallowing our pride, acknowledging our need for him and his way of life. Then choosing to follow them in our daily lives. That’s how we have a righteousness that surpasses the so-called most righteous people, and thus how we can enter the Kingdom of God.
In the next post, we’ll learn what Paul has to say about how we can experience Christ’s righteousness in our lives.
Photo by Luke Porter on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 