January 2, 2010
God’s Righteousness
I would like to begin by considering the condemnation of sin by God through his righteousness. It says in the Bible that God is bound by His righteousness – He, above all, is righteous. This means that, like a righteous judge, he is required to sentence all wrongdoings with the proper judgement.
A righteous judge has to condemn a thief to repay how much he stole, has to enforce an agreed upon contract, and has execute judgement. Certainly, the sour case of an unrighteous system was experienced when the bankers on Wall Street were bailed out without the promise of repaying the American people. Without righteousness, there is no ground for administration. Righteousness is the foundation of God’s throne – he has to administrate based on his righteousness.
In our case, His righteousness condemns any sin unto death. It doesn’t matter how great or small the sin it – it is unto death. The reason why we feel condemnation is that God is bound by his righteousness to condemn us and to put us under judgement. Even the smartest, most honorable, decorated, and loved person alive, if he has committed one sin, is condemned to death.
This means that we are all under the same condemnation, regardless of how good or bad that we are. Our thought is that the wicked deserve more punishment – but God’s righteousness puts everyone who has sinned in one category, and condemns them all equally.
I believe that everyone has some condemnation or some heavy burden that sin puts on them. We get so good at justifying ourselves because of this – no matter what we do, we feel condemnation by our past actions or even our current course of actions. We try to do good to free ourselves from condemnation, but eventually we just do our best to ignore this condemnation, writing it off as an animal instinct that evolution has yet to purge out of our system. Condemnation is a big part of our happiness or lack of happiness – it always is around us and always affects us. It is a weight that puts a very heavy burden on us and really haunts us in times of silence or introspection.
