What does it mean to be righteous? I suspect many people associate righteousness with a rigid moral fanaticism that tends to turn its nose up at others. To be labelled as self-righteous is never a term of endearment!

Yet the Bible holds a different view of righteousness. To be righteous means to be fit for purpose. It means to be aligned to God’s perfect standard and conformed precisely to his creative goodness. In this sense, righteousness is primarily about who we are rather than what we do. A person who thirsts and hungers for righteousness craves a pure heart more than just satisfying a set of moral rules.

To be righteous, then, is to be like a radio receiver perfectly tuned in to God’s goodwill and purpose. And a heart so tuned finds such joy and peace in the refuge of that alignment that it can do nothing but ring out in song. Like rosin on the bow, righteousness causes our souls to reverberate in praise.

Understood this way, the righteousness the bible speaks of is always God’s righteousness. It’s never self-righteousness. It’s a righteousness imputed and inducted on us from him.

God’s great promise to us in Christ is that his righteousness comes to us through faith. In the refuge of his perfection, our souls find complete fulfilment as they resonate in the glory of his presence. And so we have no grounds to boast in our own abilities, but we do have grounds to rejoice in him.