God Loves Righteousness
Psalm 89:14
“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.”
Psalm 33:5
“He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.”
The last few weeks we have been focusing on God’s love for us. Now I want to expand our focus to include the Lord’s love for righteousness. God cares deeply for and is motivated to act in the best interest of the people that he created. The Lord also loves righteousness and cares deeply about and is motivated to act in accordance with his standards.
In other words, God is driven by his love for man AND his love for righteousness. Many people do not think in terms of righteousness being an object of God’s love, but we must not miss this critically important theological truth.
The two verses from the Psalms that are quoted above make it abundantly clear that the Lord loves righteousness and justice. Indeed, righteousness and justice are the very foundation of his throne.
The Lord’s love for righteousness and his love for man is a key theological truth that every Christian should understand.
Man’s rebellion and sin presented God with a great dilemma because it put these two objects of his love in conflict. God loves man and he loves righteousness, but man is sinful and unrighteous. If God simply forgives man without applying the standards of his law, then God fails to satisfy his love for righteousness. But if God simply condemns man without application of mercy, then he fails to satisfy his love for man.
Given man’s sinful state and the Lord’s holy standards, how can God satisfy his love for righteousness and his love for man?
The answer is the cross of Christ. On the cross, Jesus died as our representative and thereby satisfied God’s standards of righteousness. The wages of sin is death, so God, driven by his incredible love for us, sent his son to the cross in our place and paid the price for our sin, thereby liberating us from sin’s penalty and reconciling us to God.
2 Corinthians 5:21 says it perfectly: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
On the cross, God’s love for us and his love for righteousness were both satisfied. The price that the Lord paid to accomplish this was enormous.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3.16-17)
There is only one appropriate response to this amazing gift of grace and love from the Lord: repent of our unrighteousness, receive his gift of grace, and live every day in a manner that is worthy of his call upon our life.
“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” (Ephesians 4.1)
