Lest I wan­der too far down the path of heresy with my “every­thing is sin, so stop wor­ry­ing about it an get on with the job” vibe, I thought I should counter my ten points from last night with ten points on the antithe­sis to sin — right­eous­ness. This is almost entirely from Romans 6, which I think gives us a great plat­form from which we can deal with the prob­lem of sin taint­ing every one of our actions (even the right­eous ones). Verse one and two…

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sin­ning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

Some may think, and yet nobody has yet sug­gested, that Romans 6:11–14 are a nat­ural counter to my posi­tion from last night…

In the same way, count your­selves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. There­fore do not let sin reign in your mor­tal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instru­ments of wicked­ness, but rather offer your­selves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instru­ments of right­eous­ness. For sin shall not be your mas­ter, because you are not under law, but under grace.

This is mostly why I’m writ­ing this post. I don’t think we can con­sider sin with­out con­sid­er­ing the oppo­site… I think this par­tic­u­lar pas­sage, the rest of Romans and the rest of scrip­ture describes this ten­sion. Gala­tians 5 is another good exam­ple of the “bat­tle” going on within.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not grat­ify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to pre­vent you from doing what you would. But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.

1. We are not to “live in sin” any longer — we are now, thanks to the Holy Spirit, locked in a bat­tle between our two natures. Our tainted by sin nature and our desire to serve our new mas­ter via the Spirit.
2. Our new nature will lead to right­eous actions. Romans 6 again…
   

   Don’t you know that when you offer your­selves to some­one to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obe­di­ence, which leads to righteousness?

3. Right­eous­ness comes through faith, but is not lim­ited to faith. Appli­ca­tion in ser­mons, or bad advice, that con­flates right­eous liv­ing with faith­ful liv­ing is a bit unhelp­ful. There is more to “doing good deeds” than read­ing your bible. Nobody on the street ever thought “gee, God loves me” because you read your Bible for an extra hour last night.
4. God is holy. He hates sin. Even if it’s inevitable he wants us not to do it. Both Jesus and Paul use imper­a­tive lan­guage when describ­ing how we are to live with Jesus as Lord (both with regards to what we are to do, and what we are not to do). This to me sug­gests that we actu­ally do have to do this stuff. Our good works are never salvific (because, to push my bar­row a lit­tle fur­ther, they are always going to be tainted by our sin). But with­out good works there is no evi­dence that we are saved, and good works are what we are to do after sal­va­tion (think Eph­esians 2, James 2).
5. There are many things that we are called to do as Chris­tians. Being the “mis­sional” guy I am — I think all of the things we’re called to do are sub­sets of the need to be mak­ing dis­ci­ples. This does not mean that we should not do social jus­tice type stuff for the sake of procla­ma­tion of the gospel. We are not called to be street preach­ers who have no idea about the peo­ple they are speak­ing to — but to be rela­tional (the analo­gies for min­istry through­out the Bible sup­port this — ie shep­herds, fam­ily, etc). Procla­ma­tion with­out deeds is dead. While we’re sail­ing dan­ger­ously close to “preach the Bible when nec­es­sary use words” territory
6. We tend to be more “armour of God” than “fruits of the Spirit” in our empha­sis on right­eous­ness. We need to be both. It’s no good being equipped with faith and truth if we’re not also demon­strat­ing love, patience and humility.
7. While I don’t keep a record of my rights and my wrongs (and I don’t think of it like a score­card) — there would appear to be some Bib­li­cal case to be made for God pro­vid­ing extra reward (not just sal­va­tion) for right­eous liv­ing. I think most of these pas­sages are also tied to faith­ful min­istry. Because I believe that all “right­eous­ness” is a sub­set of min­istry (because I believe that all Chris­tians are in “min­istry” as part of the one body).
8. The right things that I do are only done as a result of the work of the Spirit, and are only pos­si­ble because of the sov­er­eignty of God (he pre­pares them in advance) — they are never a rea­son for boast­ing nor are they any­thing but filthy rags (Isa­iah 64:6) with­out the Spirit imbu­ing them with right­eous­ness (or remov­ing the taint of sin — I don’t think this hap­pens in the action itself, but in how God judges the action).
9. The right, good, or obe­di­ent actions of non-Christians are also pro­duced as a result of God’s grace in the form of com­mon grace. These actions, like our own, have no intrin­sic value or merit — the merit is extrin­sic only. It comes through God work­ing them out for himself.
10. I am much more wor­ried about my inabil­ity to do right­eous things than I am by my inabil­ity not to do unright­eous things. I expect that as a result of the Spirit I will do good things, and if I don’t I am dis­ap­pointed and have doubts. I expect as a result of the flesh to do bad things, and if I do I am not dis­ap­pointed, I just get on with try­ing to do right. I think I try to apply 1 Corinthi­ans 10:31 (which I think func­tions the same both in and out of con­text) to both my sin and my right­eous­ness. I sin so that God may be glo­ri­fied in show­ing mercy, and I do the good deeds pre­pared for me so that God may be glo­ri­fied in his goodness.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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