Matthew 5:6
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
When I was a kid, surfer talk was really in. It was the late 80s, early 90s, and I watched a lot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I am almost certain that it was in this context that I heard the word "righteous." As in: "Righteous, dude!" It wasn't until I was older that I had any idea what it meant to be righteous.
The word "righteous" comes from the Hebrew, "tsaddiq." It means to be in "right relationship." In the Bible it's used in the sense of being "in right relationship" with God and with one’s fellow human beings.
So what is that right relationship? In the 22nd chapter of Matthew when the question is put to Jesus: ‘which is the greatest commandment?’ He responds: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Here, Jesus clearly summarizes what right relationship looks like. A right relationship with God is one that puts him above all and a right relationship with one’s neighbor is one in which they are loved equally to one’s self (not more and not less). You can visualize it like a triangle in which God is on top and the Self and Others share an equal base:
The righteous person is the person that manages to keep their triangle from getting flipped or skewed… There are all kinds of ways you could mess this up. You could become self centered and place your own needs and wants above God and Others. Essentially, putting ourself in God's place.
Or we could go the opposite extreme: living for others and despising ourselves.
In our brokenness, we want so desperately to be loved and praised by others that we allow ourselves to be a doormat to the world. Maybe we even convince ourselves that this is the virtue of humility. That God wants self-loathing from us and that we deserve only abuse. When nothing is further from the truth! God wants us to see ourselves as his redeemed treasure, bought and paid for by the greatest sacrifice imaginable-- just like everybody else!
And that's the trick, isn't it? Loving our neighbor AS ourself. God wants us to know that we are loved. That we are fearfully and wonderfully made. But he wants us to see the same of our neighbor. Or else our triangle may start to look like this:
Keeping God above all else but looking down upon others. We become not righteous but self-righteous. Puff ourselves just a little further and we are on equal footing with God, sharing his throne room duties and standing in judgement over the world!
There are other ways we could get the triangle out of whack. We could put ourselves equal to others with God at the bottom, imagining that simple utopian love and brotherhood can solve the world's problems without the guidance of God. We could put some other besides God at the top of the triangle... perhaps some religious or political leader or even a family member who demands cultic devotion.
But righteousness... "right relationship" is keeping our triangle with God at the top and others on equal footing with ourselves. When we are acting out of love of God and love of neighbor, we are doing the right thing. It's when we get the balance off that we miss the mark and sin.
Maybe a useful question to ask ourselves is: how is my triangle? Am I "in right relationship" or is something askew? And, this is key, do I even want to be put right? Because righteousness starts with desire. We need to hunger and thirst for it. Finding this balance is a lifelong process of learning and growth. It is one that is only achieved through God's sanctifying grace.But Jesus promises that if we truly desire to love as loved, to be in right relationship, we will be filled.
Father, we know that we are far from perfect. We are fickle and wobbly. Sometimes we love you with our whole heart, other times we love nothing but ourselves. Sometimes we love our neighbor, other times we look down upon them in judgement. We ask that you would continue to perfect us in love so that we would be righteous in your eyes. Amen.
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