In the book of Job, written sometime between the early sixth and late fifth century BCE, God describes Job as a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. What is such a man like? If we were to be blameless and God fearing, what sort of things ought we do?
I don’t know about you, but growing up I often imagined good ole Job as a quiet, monkly figure who amassed wealth and other manifestations of favor from God through smart and godly business practices. I imagined his actions as self-contained. He surely was righteous because he did no wrong, a passive righteousness, a lack of sin. Similarly, I conceived personal righteousness in the same terms – if I don’t actively sin, I am being righteous. Always righteousness was framed in terms of protecting it from sin.
Job considers righteousness as something completely different. Job, in verse 14 of chapter 29, poetically links righteousness and justice, saying:
I put on righteousness and it clothed me;
my justice was like a robe and a turban.
While it makes perfect sense in retrospect, it something that I never really considered before. Just as robes and turbans clothe a person, justice the the action of the righteous. Lets look around this verse and see how Job was righteous.
- delivered the poor who cried and orphan who had no helper
- blessed the wretched
- caused the widow to sing for joy
- eyes to the blind
- feet to the lame
- father to the needy
- championed the cause of the stranger
- broke the fangs of the unrighteous (those acting unjustly, apparently)
- made the unrighteous drop their prey (those who were people oppressed) from their teeth
How different this is from what I used to imagine? Job is not cloistered, separated from society, being a “perfect” individual. Here he is actively engaged with those around him, helping those in need and opposing those who oppress. He is righteous because he takes an active stance against sin in the world. Thus, if we are to be righteous, we must conceive righteousness in the same terms – it is not enough to not actively sin, we must act for divine justice on earth. It is not our righteousness that needs protecting from sin – it should be sin (or injustice in the world) than need fear our righteousness!
Addendum: As Hank rightfully pointed out, I am not talking about how we obtain righteousness, instead I am talking about how we show our righteousness. We are declared righteous by God through no deed nor merit on our part – but, we need to be righteous instead of trying to protect our righteousness.
“It is not our righteousness that needs protecting from sin – it should be sin (or injustice in the world) than need fear our righteousness!” I love that line because it is so true. But I think one has to be cautious with Job. While he was without blame, he was not without sin and transgression and iniquity (cf. Job 13:23; Job 14:16-17).
I think that you must be very careful not to create legalism with this idea. The NT never put righteousness in this sense. The NT has a “be what you are” view of works of righteousness for the believer. We do works of rightouesness because we are made righteous by Christ. We work out from our justification. What can be taken from this post is that the basis for our righteousness is our righteous deeds. That simply is nowhere taught in the New Covenant. What can be inferred from this post is that if I put on righteousness by my deeds, I will be righteous. This has a very Pelagian tendancy to it. This can be burdensome when the inevitable failure comes. I find that it helps people to know that they are free from making these works the basis of their standing before God and so they can radically pursue the very same deeds. When failure comes, they know that they are not damned for it. They know that they can get back up and try again.
I know that you are really trying to keep people from using the doctrine of imputation as an excuse to not be active in showing Christ to the world. But I don’t think this is the way because of how dangerous it can be (I’m thinking Matthew 7:21-23). Those who have been gifted by the Holy Spirit to preach and to teach the Word must make it clear that we are saved to do good works (cf. Ephesians 2:8-10; James 1:22-27). The New Covenant is to enable it members to obey God’s command to love your neighbor as yourself. But one must make it clear that we work from our justification, not for it.
But don’t misunderstand me here. I have heavy leanings towards a postmillennial eschatology. Postmillennialism strives to create a “golden age of righteousness” here on earth. I have a lot of simpathy with this desire to see the kingdom of God on earth before it is consumated at Christ’s return. I do believe that we must minister with a view of Matthew 25:31-40.
Hank,
For the most part, I agree with you. This is not how we become righteous – we already are declared righteous by God. I wanna stress the next step – we are to be active in our righteousness, which is something I am pretty sure we agree on.
[...] Michael Imler presents The Jobian Take on Righteousness posted at Theology for the Masses. After the Christmas pageant, I asked my 6-year-old son if he [...]
I just added this post to the Christian Carnival! Just landed in my email this afternoon, sorry it didn’t go in with the initial posting.
Great thoughts, thanks for this article. I agreed with your take on this. I see James’ teaching on “faith without works is dead” as going along with this view of active righteousness.