It’s the subtle errors that are the most dangerous. The ideas that are almost right. The ones that, in fact, seem right when you hear them, but that lead those who follow them to death (Proverbs 14:12).
Paul wrote to the church in Rome:
What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. (Romans 9:30-32)
There’s a deep irony in Paul’s message here. Those who didn’t give any thought to righteousness attained it. Those who pursued it did not. Worse, it’s specifically because they were pursuing righteousness that they missed the path to it. They were trying to become righteous by performing acts of righteousness, which sounds perfectly reasonable from a human point of view. This is the ultimate tragedy of sin: the people who most want to do right are deceived and led away from God by their very desire to please him. Righteousness is obtained through faith, not through righteous acts; a fact that had been established centuries before Paul’s time by both the Law itself (Genesis 15:6) and by the Old Testament prophets (Habakkuk 2:4).
The idea that I’ll be righteous if I make every effort to act righteously seems obvious. It appears just about everywhere, even, at times, in the church. Maybe especially in the church. Whenever people have any desire at all to do good, or to please God, this is what they naturally think of. But it’s a trap. God not only began the work, he also is the one who will finish it. (Philippians 1:6) Sanctification, to use the theological term, is no more my task than is justification, and for the same reason: I can’t do it! Not even a little bit. Either God does it all, or none of it gets done at all. It’s impossible to obtain God’s righteousness by my own efforts. Trying to become more righteous by behaving righteously reverses cause and effect. The reality is that I can only behave righteously if I have already, through faith, been made righteous.
To become righteous is to become like Jesus; there is no other definition that God recognizes. To become like Jesus, I need to pay attention to him. (Hebrews 12:2) When I take my eyes off of Jesus, all my attempts to live righteously fail. When I focus my attention on Christ, I don’t succeed in becoming righteous, but rather, he succeeds in manifesting his righteousness in me.
To the extent that I’m “working on” trying to do a better job of obeying God, I’m looking at myself, constantly checking to see how well I’m doing. But whenever I look at myself, I lose sight of Jesus. As I’ve been finding in my quiet times, in my reading, and in my prayer walks, my goal needs to be to spend less time and energy thinking about me, and focus instead on being with, listening to, and learning from Jesus. This takes practice. A lot of practice, as it turns out, because paying attention to myself is such a deeply ingrained habit.
The difference, as I said at the beginning, is subtle, yet it is the difference between life and death. Following the rules will lead me only to a dead end. I can’t obtain the righteousness that God wants, and that I want, by following the rules, but only by following Jesus.