God of Righteousness

Maurice Roberts

All men become like the objects of their worship. Our inward character is being silently moulded by our view of God and our conception of him. Christian character is the fruit of Christian worship; pagan character the fruit of pagan religion; semi-Christian character the fruit of a half-true understanding of God. The principle holds good for us all: we become like what we worship - for worse or for better. 'They that make them are like unto them' (Psa. 115:8).

Since this is so, it follows that we must labour above all else to attain to as perfect a view of the character and being of God as we can. To go wrong in our idea of God is to go wrong everywhere else in our religion. This is probably the most difficult problem of all. It is the problem of problems. If only we knew God as he is and if only we thought of him and conceived of him as he is! If we came to that point, we should find ourselves standing on the highest pinnacle of all knowledge and we should then begin to make spiritual progress indeed. No wonder even Moses cried out to God: 'Show me thy glory'! (Exod. 33:18). We are not fit to lead others or to teach them till we have first seen the glory of God and come to appreciate his excellency and his supremacy.

The great game which Satan has played with mankind all throughout history has been to misrepresent God to us. Satan's trade is to put about false and counterfeit ideas of God. He did so in the beginning with catastrophic success:
'Yea, hath God said?' (Gen. 3:1). The energies of hell are being continually spent on this one project above all others: to portray God in false colours and in a false light. This is the devil's industry - to put a 'spin' on the true view of God. The history of religion is one long, sad commentary on the devil's propaganda - war against God. Let God be Zeus, or Jupiter, or Baal, or Thor, or anything at all. But let not God be God. Let God be wood, or stone, or gold, or bread, or 'the ground of being', or 'the great, universal spirit' or whatever you will. But let not God be what he is. No one has used the spin-doctor's art more successfully than the arch-enemy of our souls. His craft has been behind all idolatry, both ancient and modern. And modern idolatry is scarcely less damnable than that of the ancients.

Before any man can preach he must be brought to see God clearly for what he is. This is the first and greatest qualification of a prophet. He must know God in his essential character. The prophet is one who declares God to be what he is. Over against the hundred-and-one false views of God which prevail in this world, the prophet affirms God as God in truth. The genuine prophet is in this respect radically different from the false prophet. The false prophet conforms his view of God to that of popular opinion. His view of God does not offend anyone because the presentation which he makes of God is conventional and acceptable. The false prophet always presents a god who is tame and quiet. His god fits comfortably into the existing scheme of things. His god excites no wholesome fears, stirs no unwelcome qualms in the mind, disturbs no sleeping consciences, arouses no holy indignation, inspires no righteous revolution.

If the people want a golden calf, the weak prophet gives in to them. If the king and queen of the day patronise Baal-worship, the false prophets are ardent in their support. If the Roman emperor of the day claims to himself divine honours, the false prophet will oblige by offering on the altar his pinch of incense along with others. He is a popular fellow.

The true prophet, however, is always unwelcome and unwanted. He is invariably so rude as to break through all the codes and conventions of his day. He points upwards to the God who is, and who is so different from what men want to hear concerning God. He points to a God who is righteous. He announces the God who is above everything else, jealous of his own glory. He proclaims a God who is both law-giver and judge, a being who is transcendent and cannot be domesticated like a mere lap-dog whom sinners can stroke and need not fear.

This difference between true and false prophets is very noticeable all throughout Scripture. It explains why Moses, at the sight of the golden calf, threw down the tables of stone in holy indignation. It accounts for the behaviour of Micaiah the son of Imlah, who could not speak good of wicked king Ahab but only evil (1 Kings 22:8). It explains why Amos had the reputation for being a man who 'conspired' against the king (Amos 7:10). It gives the explanation for the untimely death of John the Baptist, of Stephen and of a host of other martyrs. They all proclaimed a righteous sin-hating God. Had they preached 'smooth things' (Isa. 30:10) they might have prolonged their lives.

The false gods are always 'intra-mundane'. That is to say, they belong to this world and are a part of this world. They are enclosed in the existing scheme of this world's affairs, and they smile benignly on mankind. The uncomfortable thing about the God of the Bible is that he insists on proclaiming himself to be above everything and everyone. He is 'God of gods' and 'Lord of lords'. There is no appeal from his sentence. Neither men nor governments can veto his decisions nor reverse his plans.

The true God is 'extra-mundane'. He is outside this little world in which we live, and he speaks of it in a way that makes us feel small. He sits on 'the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers' (Isa 40:22). The God of the Bible plainly has no very great opinion of what we are apt to call 'human greatness'. He announces bluntly: 'Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balances, they are altogether lighter than vanity' (Psa. 62:9). This is a lesson which proud men have had to learn painfully. Pharoah had to learn it in his day. So did the Herods and the Caesars. So will every proud man in the end.

There is no one single question which our age and generation needs to face more than this: 'Who and what is God?' At the root of all the false religion and false worship in the world today is just this: ignorance of the character of God. The unholy haste with which men and churches are rushing to barter Bible truth or tradition or novelty is inspired by this very thing: ignorance of God. All the suave talk so often heard about 'unity and love', when it is not defined in biblical terms, is all a by-product of the same failure to study and understand the character of God.

It is a harder thing than many think to arrive at a true view of God's character and to hold on to it unswervingly. A true view of God must revolve around these two statements: 'God is light' (1 John 1:5) and 'God is love' (1 John 4:16). God is perfect in love and in holiness. Both are true. We are safe so long as we hold both in our minds together. We go astray as soon as we let go either. The church of the Middle Ages lost sight of a God of love; our age is in grave danger of losing sight of the holiness of this God of love.

When Christianity loses touch with righteousness it sinks down into baptized paganism. If the gospel of the love of God in Christ does not lift us up to love God's law and God's righteousness, it has not entered into our heart savingly. 'He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous' (1 John 3:7). 'Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother' (1 John 3:10). Those who are here described as 'not of God' are certainly not just the irreligious outside the church but also, and more particularly, the religious within it who have had no saving change of heart.

Nominal Christians look for all the world like real Christians, except that they have neither love of the brethren nor love of righteousness. Love and righteousness are what spring up in the soul as soon as we are born of God. If they do not spring up in the soul, it is because the soul is still unchanged. Men are yet in their sins.

Whenever a race of men becomes obsessed with a sense of the love and righteousness of God, the world is turned upside down. It was so in the time of Christ and his apostles. It was so at the Protestant Reformation. The hearts of Luther, Calvin and Knox were aflame with love of truth and righteousness. They were men whom God mastered. They had the true view of his character as the God of perfect love and light, not love only but light and righteousness also. They saw their calling to be to plead for truth and to do justice at all costs. They could never have braved the opposition unless they had first come to know God in a most powerful way as the God who is 'over all and blessed forever' (Rom. 9:5).

The manner in which men know God is reflected in the degree to which they appreciate his claims on their lives. Our age, sadly, has produced a great deal of wayward Christian worship and practice, and this is the proof that our knowledge of God is only small. We have heard of the zeal for righteousness of Cromwell, Whitefield and Chalmers. But the thing that marked them as great Christians has been seen of late in all too few, in spite of all our modern privileges.

The power of true religion is in its passion to apply the principles of righteousness to all the practical affairs of our life on earth: at home, at work, in church, in society and in national life. The apostles state this in their epistles over and over again. Our difficulty today is this: Where shall we begin in our modern societies, where righteousness is almost dead and buried?

We might begin by acquainting ourselves better with the God of righteousness himself and then by beseeching him to stretch out his mighty arm again.