Holiness, Righteousness, and Truth (Oh my?)

I have no way to make this short. My apologies in advance for how long this entry is going to be...

At the Holy Spirit Conference this past August, a speaker got up just after a period of sweet worship and challenged our group. He said that the people in this group were to be praised for their seeking the Spirit, but that sometimes we fell short in the truth department. He went on to talk about righteousness...and there was a mind blowing idea for me in this. He said that, if one does a word study on righteousness, you'll find that it is a lot more than being a good person. A righteous person is one who will stand adamantly for truth. (I'd like to look into this a little more to see where he got it). He believed that God had shown him that one would be hard pressed to find three righteous people in all of America.

It was one of those nights where God was so close that it was easy to mutter rash prayers, like, "God, if you will show me how to be righteous, I will follow you." These past few weeks I've decided that any time I've sung the song, "Righteousness, righteousness is what I long for..." it's probably been a lie. Sigh. I am sometimes so content to allow people around me to stand deceived. There are a million strategies I employ almost daily to keep people from knowing what I believe. Truth is not such a popular thing in America or Japan. We prefer comfort. And it's much easier for me to cater to the need for comfort of those around me than to allow any truths I believe to come out and throw that off.

I think of words like righteousness and holiness as religious words that have lost any real meaning in the English language. They're most often used to reflect hollow piety. I suspect that most Americans using the word "righteous" mean 'self-righteous, Pharisaical, and hypocritical'. And this is a far cry--and a twisting--of the true meaning. True righteousness and holiness, I believe, would result in a kind of courageous, strong beauty. The kind of greatness that Jesus lived as he both lowered himself to wash his disciples feet and reamed the Pharisees with passionate truth.

A little while ago, a friend's comment left me reeling for several days. It was this: "God's first priority is not actually us...it is his glory...we are the crown of creation, true, but sometimes he just wants someone to go around preaching judgment and calling people to account...not for their good, but actually for their destruction." This comment overlapped with me reading Romans 9 and feeling as though I actually understood it for the first time...what it might mean when Paul says, "What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory" (9:22-23). These are the kinds of statements that leave me quivering. They clash violently with everything I grew up knowing...with every way I've learned and sought to serve God. They are the kinds of realizations that make me identify completely with Isaiah falling on his face and declaring woes on himself and his people upon getting a glimpse of the Holy One.

Two nights ago I sat down with the most intense person I have ever met. He's a Nigerian Christian named Miracle. We had prayed together at a student mission organization at Concordia, and he'd decided we should get together and talk some more. It felt something like an interview. We sat down across from each other on some couches and he would ask me question after question with a blank, unreadable expression on his face. He is, without question, one of those black-and-white truth people I would (affectionately) label a prophet.

Perhaps the most amusing part was when I was saying how I didn't know if I would go back to Japan or not. He kind of smiled and said, "You'll go back." I started to argue with him just because he was so sure about it, and so he stopped me, and this followed:

M: What if God says, "Go back to Japan, but it's going to be hard." Will you go?
P: Of course.
M: What if he says, "Go to Japan, but they're going to torture you for following me," Will you go?
P: If God says it, I'm going.
M: What if he says, "Go, but they're going to kill you." What then?
P: If God says 'go', I'm going! The consequences have nothing to do with it.

He sat back against the couch and said very matter-of-factly: "You'll go back". I tried to insist to him that I would answer any question beginning with "If God says..." with an "of course!". So, he then asked me, "Okay, so God says go to South Africa. Are you going?" I said yes. Thirty seconds later, I said, "But...I don't really think I'm going to South Africa." He just laughed at me then and wanted to know what was holding me back from returning to Japan.

...the power of good questions.

So, I "passed" all of the questions in his interview until we got to his question, "How does a person get to heaven?" Apparently what's been bugging him the most about being with all these Lutherans is the idea of 'grace alone'. So, we argued about this until Haidee came to rescue me sometime around 12:45am. His argument is that an unrighteous person will not be saved.

I ended up at home the next day devouring the entire book of Romans...and I am amazed at how much righteousness enters into this book about grace and mercy. Paul talks about salvation as being "slavery to righteousness". There are verses like this:

• "To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger." (2:7-8)
  
• "For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ" (5:17)
  
• "But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (5:21)
• "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life" (6:22)
• "And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. ... For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God" (8:3-4;13-14).

Here's what I make of this...righteousness is one of the fruits of salvation. So often as Lutherans, we focus on that moment of salvation...we are well aware that God can and does forgive any sin...and so we might go around living our lives like we aren't any different and like we haven't been given a spirit of power for the sake of righteousness. I think Miracle is right to be frustrated with us about that. A Christian should look different from a non-Christian. A person who has been bought out of slavery to sin and made a slave to Christ shouldn't be walking around in bondage to sin--not in bondage to addictions, to jealousy, to anger, to fear, to pornography, to greed, to idolatry. We can't win these battles in any way other than by the power of God's Spirit...and that is where grace comes in. Grace doesn't mean sitting apathetic towards our sin knowing that God has accounted for it. If the fruit of our salvation is apathy, it might be time to question the reality of our faith--and whether we know this Jesus Christ that we profess to believe in.