"According To His Righteousness"

"I will praise the Lord according to His righteousness" (Psalm 7:17).


The Hebrew root word for righteousness, "tesdeq," means just, right and equitable. That is, if something is righteous, as the Bible defines the term, it is exactly what it is meant to be.


David declared that he would extol the virtues of the God who is always exactly what He should be. His thoughts, attitudes, words, actions and relating to His universe are pristinely and eternally perfect. Indeed, God defines righteousness rather than righteousness defining Him. He eternally exists as the very essence of righteousness, and wherever we encounter something that is what it should be, the living God originates, empowers and sustains its rightness. "Christ is made unto us... righteousness" (I Corinthians 1:30).


We must join the Psalmist in affirming and praising our Lord for the perfection of His character, nature and way. Our spiritual enemies continually seek to cast shadows on our perception of God, even as Satan's first temptation of Eve tacitly accused her Creator of withholding a good and necessary thing. "Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5). In countless ways, the devil, the world and the flesh whisper and shout the same innuendos in our direction, seeking to foment unrest in our hearts concerning the faithfulness of God. "He's not being what you need Him to be, or doing what you need Him to do" - if we could hear the devil's voice audibly, the constant refrain of his accusation would ring in our ears.


We must respond with constant affirmation that our Lord's being and doing are exactly what they should be. We must join David and "praise the Lord according to His righteousness." Fewer affirmations of truth and faith more prepare us to walk in the peace that increasingly results in our being what we should be. If we have believed, the Lord Jesus Christ has enrobed us with His righteousness by indwelling our spirits and constituting us as the temple of God (II Corinthians 6:16). Through Him we can "be filled with the fruits of righteousness," but only if we are trusting that God is righteous (Philippians 1:11). Because to the degree we know that our Lord dwells and acts in precise accordance with who He should be and do, we will more and more reflect the same...


"Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."
(II Corinthians 3:18)