The Golden Key

Righteousness. 

What is righteousness? 

I've wondered for most of my life. 

At first it was just a spelling word, something I felt proud of learning. 

Then it was a mystical necessity for my life as a Christian. 

Gradually, righteousness meant something that I was supposed to have, but unable to access. It shamed me, because no matter how hard I tried to understand it, the concept stayed frustratingly abstract. I thought I was righteous if others thought I was a good person. But then I found out that no matter how hard I tried, there were still some people I couldn't please. 

So I wasn't righteous anymore.

I got so frustrated by righteousness and all the conflicting ideas about it that I just gave up and figured if God wanted me to be righteous, He was making me so. 

I gave up my responsibility because I didn't know what to do. 

It's been really difficult to relate to a God that I'm ashamed to talk to. Jesus' love and character have only been like slaps in the face that I wasn't good enough, enough like Him. I hated myself for being imperfect, for being so undeserving. 

I felt bad for God to have me around, because I kept failing Him and hurting Him. 

Just before moving to Arkansas, I was going through one of the darkest times in my life. I was leaving my childhood home and friends behind, had a broken heart, and was being asked to give up my last dreams of college and career to go to the last place on earth I wanted to be. 

Because of all this incredible pressure (and others besides), I became very angry and bitter. I treated my parents badly and made life miserable for them when they needed support. I felt like my life was being ruined from the outside, and I wanted to end it from the inside. 

I was so ashamed of my behavior but so unable to change that I wanted to die. 

On our property in Kentucky, there was a ring of big oak trees that wrapped around the house and partially hid it from sight of the road. Having lived there for 14 years, I had my favorite trees that I would sit under to think or watch life happen around me. 

There was one small grove of oaks I never spent time around for some reason; I guess it was too close to the house or the grass grew funny there or something. But the very biggest oak grew there, in the midst of other smaller ones. Its trunk was over 3 feet in diameter; I could never wrap my arms around it and clasp my hands. Maybe that's why I didn't like it, but at this point in my life, it seemed like the solidity and strength I needed. 

I ran out the front door, my sight blurred with tears, and threw myself down under the oak, pleading, "God, please will You just kill me? I don't have the courage to do it, and I can't stand myself any longer. I keep failing You; I hurt everyone around me, and I feel bad for Your having to put up with me and love me. Please, just strike me dead right now. I deserve it." 

Needless to say, God didn't kill me. I got up and kept on living, and gained a lot of strength from enduring that situation. 

But I still felt bad for God because I wasn't righteous yet. 

And this is what I've been struggling with in my relationship with God. Why does He love me, when I keep messing up? Why did He love me in the first place? I'm  positive I didn't do anything to deserve it. 

Could God possibly love someone who doesn't do anything right? Someone who is supposed to be righteous, but can't get their act together? 

The answer is yes. God's love for us does not depend on our good works. I don't have to do a SINGLE thing to make God love me. It's taken me an awful long, miserable time to began to understand this, but it's like the daystar is rising in my heart. 

So God loves me though I am a terrible person. Righteousness is not something that makes Him love me. 

So what is righteousness, if it's not acts that please God? 

This is what I learned in my devotions this morning. It's short, but the catalysts of paradigm shifts are often simple. 

According to Inspiration, 

"Righteousness is holiness, likeness to God, and 'God is love.' 1 Jn. 4:16."

- Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, pg. 18

Ok, don't get stuck on the likeness to God part; that's not your responsibility.

We have to know what holiness is first. 

Here it is: 

"Holiness is wholeness for God; it is the entire surrender of heart and life to the indwelling of the principles of heaven."

- The Desire of Ages, pg. 555.6

So what did 1 Jn. 4:16 say? 

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 

- 1 Jn. 4:16,17 (ESV)

This is what the Holy Spirit taught me. Righteousness is simply wholly abiding in Christ, and He in me. The good deeds that come from this indwelling are just the effects of His love being perfected in me. 

I don't have to constantly worry if I'm doing something wrong, and I don't have to go to sleep at night trying to remember all of my sins to confess so that if I die in my sleep I won't be lost. 

I don't have to live alone, striving to be good.

Christ's righteousness will cover me as I dwell in Him and He in me. 

I just have to abide. 

Now I understand why David's one desire from God was to dwell in His house, behold His beauty, and learn more of Him. 

This is heaven, and it can start in your life today.

No matter what your past is, He will cover you with His righteousness if you give yourself completely to Him.

Holiness is attainable. Righteousness is possible. They are not only necessary, but vital to the life of a Christian. 

If Christ does not dwell in me and I in Him, I have nothing to share. My love would be like a obnoxiously clanging cymbal and do absolutely nothing but hurt.

I want to be holy and righteous because that means dwelling in the love of the One Who gave all for me. 

It finally clicked.