Whenever we talk about sin we also need to talk about righteousness. It doesn’t help someone very much when you tell them what they shouldn’t do if you don’t give them an alternative course of action. Yesterday, I looked at the nature of sin a bit. To summarize, sin is an addiction to the self and only Jesus Christ can set us free. We talk about this side of things a lot, but the natural question to ask is, “great, what now?” We must live for something other than ourselves. The purpose and drive behind our actions must be a love for Jesus Christ rather than our flesh. Christ’s version of righteousness is pretty simple. He told us to love God and love other people.

Whenever I talk about righteousness people always tend to get legalistic. For instance, someone once told me it was a sin to consume caffeine. People think that righteousness consists of keeping a perfect track record of all the things they think are good. I don’t think God sees righteousness quite this way. On the other side of the fence you get the people that have reacted against legalism. They shout “by grace alone” and reject any kind of standard for living. God clearly wants us to be righteous. He wants us to keep his commands. However, he doesn’t care about you keeping a bunch of self-imposed rules. When we come to know him, we come to find that what he really wants is love.

“And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” –Mathew 22:36-40

We spend a lot of time looking through the Old Testament so that we can understand the Father’s heart in greater detail. This is wonderful, but if you want to cut to the chase and get the short version, here it is. The heart behind all that God has ever told us to do is love. It is purity in relationships. A wise man once told me that the currency of heaven is relationships and this is how we cultivate them: by following God.

The first command is to love God. When I talk about this subject to people they always bring up Gandhi. They ask me whether Gandhi is going to hell because he wasn’t a Christian. Their point is they think Gandhi loved a lot and he, more than anyone, fulfilled God’s heart of love. That fact alone is debatable, but supposing that he loved other people to an inconceivably high degree, he still missed the whole first half of what Jesus was saying here. Loving God is the first requirement.  Without devotion to God you aren’t really able to love other people in any effective manner.

The second command is to love other people. Sometimes I think it would be nice to become a monk. I would love to move out to the desert and have my little cell and sit by myself and pray. I would be at peace, I think. I could leave behind all this mess and not have to deal with people anymore. It would be just me and God. Sometimes, when I am walking through the supermarket or something, I have a negative reaction well up inside of me when I see someone who is ugly or fat. These moments make me feel very unspiritual. This would all be solved if I never saw people like that, or any people at all for that matter. I’m speaking sarcastically, of course. We can’t really love God and not love other people. John tells us, “he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

This is the standard that God presents us with.  This is the way he wants his children to live.  Everyone says they like this lifestyle.  People talk about love all the time and hold it up as an ideal.  But if we look at our lives or read the newspaper, it is easy to see that people don’t really want to be unselfish.  I think it simply makes people feel better about themselves when they talk about love.  This is really a selfish action itself.  However, it would be a sad world if this kind of life were actually impossible.  God has made a way for us to live in love.  John tells us that we love because he first loved us.  It is Christ that is the perfect example of this kind of righteousness.  It is Christ living in us that makes us righteous.  If you have decided to follow him and have repented from sin, you must fill the places in your life that you have cut away with something.  Throw yourself wholeheartedly into loving God and loving other people.