September 24, 2013

Isaiah 44:22-23 — I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee. Sing, O ye heavens; for the Lord hath done it: shout, ye lower parts of the earth: break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein: for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel.

Yesterday, I wrote about a way in which it seemed to me that Old and New Testament beliefs fundamentally. Today, when Myra and I were reading in Isaiah, I was prompted with the thought that there are other ways in which they are very much the same — one being this question of “how can righteousness be achieved?”

The Apostle Paul writes about this a lot. He quotes Habakkuk – “The Just shall live by faith” twice and returns to the topic again and again, notably in his letter to the Galatians.
Habakkuk was only one of the Old Testament prophets who addressed the notion that man’s activities could not suffice to wipe away sin and bestow righteousness.
Isaiah has The Lord saying that He wipes man’s sin away like a thick cloud that suddenly vanishes or as a vapor that never was … He, The Lord is the Redeemer. It was not the sacrificial system that did away with sin. It could never truly serve that purpose. No human act could bring righteousness, or remove sin.

I see two confusions about righteousness. The first is the peculiar idea that having accepted Jesus as Lord, we are somehow immune to sin — incapable of sinning. If it were so, how would Paul have written to the Romans “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”? Or how would John have written in his first letter “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”?

The second confusion, which I sometimes find myself falling into, is the notion that if I try harder I can somehow make myself “better” — more righteous. Most of the time I remember that this is an “either / or” and that once God has declared me righteous, then that’s what I am — before the judgment seat. I’m still going to sin. Maybe I can sin less often — I have the choice. Paul to the Romans again, “Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness.” I am declared righteous, by God’s sovereign choice and grace, but I am not yet holy!