Doing Righteousness?

Carol was always busy in a flurry of activity. She did, and did to the point of exhaustion. What was behind it all? Why the stress and anxiety to do and do? Carol thought she needed to do so that God would declare her righteous. This required her constant performance for others and for God. She learned how to make herself appear to be a strong Christian, but she came to realize she was wearing a mask. She thought God should hide her sin—not because she was sorry for it, but so that she might look better before others and not be rejected.

A powerful legalism flourished in Carol’s life. Everything stood or fell on how well she followed the laws. If she thought she had done enough in a day, then she was entitled to see herself as worthy and meriting justification. If she didn’t measure up to her codes and regimes, or those that others had imposed upon her, she viewed herself as condemned. This vicious circle led her to repeated defeat and perplexity, with seemingly no way out of the maze.

Carol needed to become aware of an entirely new way of seeing things. It was a revelation to her to understand that Christ did for her what she could never do for herself. And that she had misconstrued what she was asking God to do for her. God is not out to hide our sin, but to expose it. In Christ, God had already done everything necessary for her justification. If she confessed Christ as Messiah, she was justified. To be justified by God, to be declared righteous, was the gift she could accept with the empty hands of faith. Carol had been so caught up in a doing mentality that she missed the essential truth of justification as a gift. There is, of course, a place for a being-and-doing connection, but Carol had put doing before being a Christian. She came to realize that doing is crucial, but that it comes out of being justified.